Berry, Appleman & Leiden Join Forces With Leading Corporate Immigration Attorneys in Texas to Form Expanded Global Firm.

Steven Ladik, Shawn Orme, Paige Taylor and Staff Move From Jenkens & Gilchrist to BAL 

SAN FRANCISCO -- San-Francisco-based Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP (BAL), one of the top global corporate immigration law firms in the field, is joining forces with top immigration attorneys in Texas to form an expanded global firm with new offices in Dallas and Houston.

More than 40 attorneys, paralegals and staff from the corporate-immigration law practice of Dallas-based Jenkens & Gilchrist are joining BAL, bringing the firm's employee count to more than 200 employees in four cities across the U.S.: San Francisco, McLean VA, Dallas and Houston. Steven Ladik, Shawn Orme and Paige Taylor join BAL's David Berry, Jeff Appleman, Warren Leiden, Theresa Fisher and Liane Cooney as partners.

The Texas offices are scheduled to open on Feb. 12, 2007. Ladik will serve as managing partner of the Dallas office and Orme will serve as managing partner of the Houston office. This expansion will give BAL a presence in three of the largest high-tech corridors in the country and in a major U.S. energy center.

"These top professionals operating in Texas significantly expand our capacity to provide global services to multinational clients," said BAL managing partner Warren Leiden. "We now have a critical mass of senior-level professionals with the brainpower and strategic legal skills to help multinational companies manage an increasingly global workforce," he said. "We believe that the ability for our U.S. and global clients to get all the global corporate immigration legal services they need within one law practice is a distinct competitive advantage."

"Those of us joining BAL will now have an expanded presence on both coasts and a global immigration practice that we can offer to our clients," said Steven Ladik.

"Immigration compliance is a major issue for companies bringing foreign employees into the U.S., sending American employees abroad or transferring employees between countries outside the U.S.," said Leiden. "Companies need to be certain that all their employees are always in compliance, anywhere in the world. We provide that assurance, and more, to them," he added. "We give clients the ability to have central control of their multi-country immigration projects through our proprietary information technology, we provide uniform excellence and expertise from our legal staff across all our offices and we deliver seamless service with quick turnaround," he noted.

In 2006, BAL was named one of the top practices in the country and the number one corporate immigration law firm in California that has "the practice of corporate immigration law down to a science" by Chambers USA and Chambers Global, independent guides listing the world's leading lawyers for business. New partner Steven Ladik and the group he manages were named number one in Texas by Chambers.

About Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP (www.usabal.com)

Berry Appleman & Leiden is full-service corporate immigration law firm representing employers across the United States and the world. It was established in 1980 and offers comprehensive legal services and innovative information technology tools to manage U.S. and global immigration issues and corporate immigration programs and policies. Corporate clients include information technology, media, scientific, Internet, engineering, research, industrial, manufacturing, financial and medical institutions of all sizes.