O'Melveny's loss is Loeb's wealth management gain.

Wealth managers Stu Tobisman and Leah Bishop, partners at the law firm of O'Melveny & Myers LLP for a combined 60 years, are leaving to head up the estate planning department at Loeb & Loeb LLP at the end of the month.

"A number of our partners have known them for quite some time and they have an impeccable reputation in the community," said John T. Frankenheimer, Los Angeles chair of Loeb & Loeb.

The parties were in talks for several months. The duo works for high net worth individuals-those with substantially more than $20 million in personal holdings--and closely held corporations.

Tobisman said the team had long talks with O'Melveny about ways to stay with the firm but ultimately it became clear to both sides that it wouldn't work. He describes the split as extremely amicable.

We felt that to provide the continuity and consistency we need for our clients, we needed to be at a firm that had a significant commitment to the private client practice," Bishop said. "Although O'Melvney is a great firm, and I had significant misgivings about leaving, it's not a priority area for O'Melveny."

The partners plan to move their entire team to Loeb & Loeb, including associates Linda N. Deitch, Laura B. Berger, Deborah J. Korney, Alyse N. Pelavin and Tarin Gary Bross along with four paralegals, an administrative assistant and up to six secretaries. The addition of Tobisman's and Bishop's team will bring to 22 the number of attorneys in Loeb & Loeb's tax and wealth services practice in Los Angeles, a 47 percent increase.

The shift likely means the end of the estate planning practice at O'Melveny, which at 120 years old, is the city's oldest law firm and among its largest with more than 1,000 attorneys. Partner Dan Petrocelli has kept O'Melveny in the headlines recently, representing former Enron executive Jeff Skilling in his trial for alleged fraud and insider trading. Loeb & Loeb is nearly as old as O'Melveny, but much smaller, with a total of about 200 attorneys.