Large Firms
May 31, 2001
IP Partner Is 11th to Quit Firm
SAN FRANCISCO - An 11th lawyer has resigned from the Bay Area offices of Chicago's Baker & McKenzie. Antoinette Konski, an intellectual property partner in the Palo Alto office, resigned this week to join the Silicon Valley office of San Francisco's McCutchen Doyle Brown & Enersen.
Antoinette Konski, an intellectual property partner in the Palo Alto office, resigned this week to join the Silicon Valley office of San Francisco's McCutchen Doyle Brown & Enersen.
Konski was not available Tuesday evening, nor was the firm's Bay Area managing partner, Peter Engstrom. Baker & McKenzie typically requires 60 days' notice for withdrawal from the partnership.
Konski will follow a trail of lawyers who have resigned from the local Baker & McKenzie offices since March. Two technology partners, Deborah Bailey-Wells and Michael Arruda, announced plans March 30 to join McCutchen Doyle in San Francisco. At the beginning of the month, real estate partners Timothy Tosta and Judy Davidoff and six other lawyers said they were leaving the San Francisco office for the small local firm, Steefel Levitt & Weiss.
Baker & McKenzie will be down to about 100 lawyers in San Francisco and Palo Alto after those who have resigned so far leave. The firm is one of the world's biggest, with nearly 3,000 lawyers.
Konski, 40, has a practice that focuses on the genomic and bio-informatics and biotechnology sectors. Her practice includes domestic and foreign patent preparation and prosecution and strategic counseling.
McCutchen Doyle intellectual property and technology group Chairman James Lewis could not confirm a start date for Konski. He said, "We're very excited about her coming over. She will add significant strength to biotechnology [patent] prosecution practice," he said. McCutchen Doyle had about 50 lawyers in its intellectual property group at Lewis' last count.
"That has been one of our strategic focuses," Lewis said. He wouldn't comment on whether any more lawyers for that group are in the pipeline.
McCutchen Doyle has more than 315 lawyers in four California offices.
Lewis said Konski will be the first biotechnology partner in the firm's Palo Alto office, which already has "some very good" associates with that practice focus.
Lawrence Watanabe, a recruiter for the Los Angeles legal search firm, Watanabe Nason & Seltzer, has moved lawyers out of Baker & McKenzie's three California offices in San Diego, San Francisco and Palo Alto. He had no comment on future placements, but did confirm that he brokered the deal with Konski.
He noted that McCutchen Doyle is recruiting even as it continues working on a deal to merge with Washington, D.C.'s Piper Marbury Rudnick & Wolfe.
"On McCutchen's side, this is obviously evidence that the firm, whether they merge with Piper Marbury or not, they're committed to building their intellectual property practice," Watanabe said.
Karen Coleman
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