Well-Known Securities Law Firm Merges With Outsider.

Contributing Columnist Benjamin Mark Cole writes about the local investment community for the Los Angeles Business Journal.

KNOWN to a generation of Los Angeles dealmakers, the name Freshman, Marantz, Orlanski, Cooper & Klein was taken off the door of the Beverly Hills law firm last week as part of a merger and replaced by Kirkpatrick & Lockhart LLP.

Not to worry, says Leib Orlanski, the peripatetic partner of Freshman Marantz and head of the 17-lawyer outfit's securities practice since 1983.

"Everything will stay the same. We have autonomy, even our phone number will stay. We will just have a fabulous connection to a major firm," he said.

Pittsburgh-based Kirkpatrick & Lockhart is a national law firm, with 560 attorneys in multiple offices. It was ranked as one of the top five firms nationwide in IPO work in 1998 by the New York Law Journal. But for Orlanski, it was Kirkpatrick & Lockhart's patent law strength that sealed the deal.

"They are particularly strong in intellectual property rights -- all the areas that securities lawyers are getting into more and more," said Orlanski.

As dot-coins proliferate, something as simple as an idea or elements of business plans are in fact patentable, said Orlanski. "We are calling upon intellectual property lawyers constantly," he said. "Clients need to confirm that they have patentable ideas and investors do, too."

Also, securities markets, which were somewhat regional back in the early 1980s, are now national in scope, pushing law firms to follow suit. The regional brokerages have been merged into coast-to-coast empires, and venture funds invest such large pots of money -- usually by industry not region -- that flying cross-country to eyeball deals is second nature.

Obviously, e-mails and faxes render state lines and time zones less meaningful. And dot-coms, which have dominated the initial public offering market for the past several years, by their very nature are national companies.

Freshman Marantz was the law firm of the underwriter or issuer on 60 IPOs in the 1990s. Today, the IPO niche is obviously a dot-com business.

Still, people want to talk to their lawyers in person. "Kirkpatrick & Lockhart has been doing a lot of West Coast deals, and they have been flying people out. Now we become their Los Angeles office," said Orlanski.

But what about taking the name "Orlanski" from the masthead? "Believe me, that's the least of my concerns," said Orlanski, 58, who earned his law degree in 1968 after studying at USC. "In fact, I have been working weekends and nights to get another round of venture capital raised for a client, not worrying about the nameplate."

Last week, Orlanski inked documents raising $16 million in second-round financing for Cushopper.com from well-known venture outfits J.H. Whitney & Co. in Stamford, Conn., and Beverly Hills-based Smart Technology Ventures. Cushopper.com has exclusive rights to sell wares and services to 100 credit unions by linking to their Web sites.