Sadness in San Francisco: Thelen to Close Doors

[WSJ Law Blog]

This just in: Thelen LLP’s Partnership Council recommended today that the firm’s partnership vote to dissolve the firm, the Recorder is reporting.

According to the story, management asked the partnership to vote for dissolution during a partner meeting that began at 10:00 a.m. PDT and lasted more than two hours. The vote will remain open for seven days and the firm hopes to shut down by Dec. 1.

The 84-year-old San Francisco-based firm consummated a merger with New York’s Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner in late 2006, reaching a high 600-plus lawyers, but Thelen has been on the wane since then. Name partners Peter Brown, Richard Raysman and Jeffrey Steiner — and more than 100 other lawyers — have left the now-roughly 400-lawyer firm this year.

More recently, since merger discussions with Nixon Peabody, according to the Recorder, various groups from Thelen have been looking to jump ship to other firms, including rainmaking energy partner Ellen Bastier and firm Chairman Stephen O’Neal.

The news follows the dissolution last month of long-time Bay Area legal heavy Heller Ehrman. Given the indstry wide layoffs, junior lawyers, without books of business, may have a hard time finding work in the near term, says Bay Area recruiter Stacy Miller Azcarate.