Dewey & LeBoeuf, an international firm with more than 1,400 lawyers, plans to close its Hartford office at Goodwin Square by February and is offering its 22 lawyers here the chance to relocate to other offices within the firm.
The Hartford branch, opened in 1988, is the center of the firm’s national and international environmental practice. It also specializes in corporate and litigation practice areas and ranked as the 21st largest law firm in Greater Hartford.
The firm will wait to announce the new base for its environmental practice until after the Hartford lawyers make decisions about where they would prefer to relocate, according to Angelo Kakolyris, a Dewey & LeBoeuf spokesman.
The firm said it is also closing its offices in Austin, Tex., and Jacksonville, Fla. In recent months, it has also shut down outposts in Newark, N.J., Pittsburgh and Salt Lake City.
The firm said it is consolidating operations to focus on major commercial and financial centers around the world. It operates offices in 13 countries.
The consolidation comes in the wake of a merger last year of the firms Dewey Ballantine and LeBoeuf Lamb Greene & MacRae into the new Dewey & LeBoeuf. The combined legal giant generates annual revenues of more than $1 billion.
Post-Merger Consolidation
“The decision [to close the Hartford office and other outposts] is designed to continue the successful integration of Dewey & LeBoeuf, which saw its profits per partner increase to $1.57 million in 2007 following the Oct. 1, 2007 merger,” the company said in a written statement.
Kakolyris said the firm isn’t abandoning Hartford completely. After February, it will maintain a small satellite office in the region but won’t assign lawyers to it full time. The firm has not yet decided where that office will be located.
Although Dewey & LeBoeuf’s move will strip away more than 40 people, including lawyers and support staff, and open up 38,000 square feet of office space in Goodwin Square, some in the legal community said the departure isn’t a major blow to the city.
“I don’t think Dewey was ever a force in Hartford,” said Coleman Levy, of Levy & Droney, the 14th largest firm in the region. “Whether they are here or not won’t make much of a difference.”
Dewey & LeBoeuf’s move appears to be a corporate restructuring rather than a response to a declining economy, said Levy. It would have been more of a setback if a local firm had laid off 22 lawyers, he added.
