Some law firms opening micro-outposts in Los Angeles: regional offices of national firms must grow or face closure.

The national law firm Mintz Levin PC has more than 500 lawyers spread across eight offices. In addition to 250 lawyers in its Boston home base, it has more than 70 lawyers in both its New York and Washington, D.C. offices.

But out west at the firm's Los Angeles outpost, the annual holiday parties are much more intimate events. The office has only two attorneys.

Over the past 12 months there has been a rash of offices in downtown and Century City opened by national firms. Most envision an outpost of at least 25 attorneys, but growing is no simple proposition, and several large national from have concluded that a small presence in Los Angeles is better than no presence at all.

In addition to Mintz Levin, other national firms with small Los Angeles offices include Philadelphia-based Fox Rothschild LLP and Andrews Kurth LLP, of Houston. Both firms have hundreds of attorneys in offices across the world, but their Los Angeles offices have less than five attorneys each.

"Out of town firms have every expectation of significantly growing their Los Angeles offices over a period of three years," said Richard Kolodny, a Los Angeles-based legal recruiter. "Clearly, some firms succeed but some firms fail."

And those firms that don't achieve their goals, both with regards to headcount and revenue, usually close shop.

But not always. Mintz Levin established its Los Angeles office six years ago by recruiting two attorneys and while the office has not grown it is not for lack of trying.

The firm has been in talks with a number of potential lateral partners and even had preliminary discussions about consolidating entire local law firms into its national practice.

But even at its current size, Mintz Levin's leaders said their small Los Angeles satellite has been successful.

"(The Los Angeles office) has been very important to the firm because it has managed to act as a platform for us with existing clients and in developing new client relationships," said Steven Rosenthal, the Boston-based co-managing partner of Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo PC, the firm's full name.

Burdensome costs

Legal industry consultants and recruiters said that while small offices can be profitable and serve as important conduits of business, bigger national firms prefer offices with dozens of attorneys because those offices are better able to handle the largest and most profitable transactional and litigation matters.

Additionally, the costs associated with opening and maintaining an office can become burdensome to the national firm if it does not have at least 25 attorneys, a number law firm leaders and legal industry consultants generally consider necessary for an office to truly establish itself within a national firm and in LOs Angeles' legal marketplace.

"It requires a great deal of time and attention to have an office," said Newport Beach-based legal industry consultant Peter Zeughauser. "You have to buy equipment and hook it into the network. You spend almost as much time on a small office as you would on a big one."

And as Santa Monica-based legal recruiter Alan Miles points out: "If a law firm is dealing with significant clients on the West Coast, it will need more than two attorneys."

Fox Rothschild can boast of having more than two Los Angeles lawyers; it has three. But leaders of the 400-attorney, 14-office firm aren't cheering.

"A five-attorney office doesn't make sense for us," said Mark Silow, the Philadelphia-based administrative partner of Fox Rothschild. "We like our offices to be full service with 20 or 30 attorneys. A small office with only three or four attorneys is not sustainable over the long run."

The firm has had a LOs Angeles office since October when it merged with the New Jersey-based labor and employment law firm Grotta Glassman & Hoffman PC, which opened offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco in 2004.

Silow said that even though the Los Angeles office is small, it has been a net benefit to the firm, servicing the labor and employment needs of clients such as Automatic Data Processing Inc. and several hotel chains with California-based matters.

Andrews Kurth LLP is in a similar situation. The firm has more than 400 attorneys in seven U.S. offices and two foreign outposts--Beijing and London. But the firm's nearly 20-year-old LOs Angeles office has four attorneys, according to its Web site.

Andrews Kurth declined to comment for this article.

Mintz Levin and Fox Rothschild have every intention of one day celebrating their own 20th anniversary in the city, and the leaders at both firms concede that the only way to ensure they are still around to do that is to grow.

"We think Los Angeles is a great marketplace for us," Silow said. "We are looking to grow that office."

Mintz Levin is also focusing on lateral recruitment efforts, and as a demonstration of its commitment to growing in Los Angeles the firm is moving from its current space in Santa Monica into a larger suite of offices in Century City this week.

"We will have space for 15 more attorneys," Rosenthal said. "We are starting to focus on growing in Los Angeles in a significant way."

While these national firms have concluded that the only way to survive in Los Angeles is to grow, there is at least one national firm that has taken a different approach.

The 142-year old Boston law firm Ropes & Gray LLP has an office, of sorts, in Los Angeles but it is nowhere near the attorney packed hubs of downtown Los Angeles or Century City.

Of the firm's 800 attorneys, one works primarily from his home in the San Fernando Valley, about 350 miles from Ropes & Gray's nearest full office in Palo Alto.

"The Los Angeles legal market is extremely well covered by some of the best lawyers and law firms in the country," said John Chesley, a partner at Ropes & Gray in San Francisco. "We have to be very judicious about how we enter that market."

By DREW COMBS 

Staff Reporter