US firms eye Heller talent after firm's collapse

Two legal recruiters said they had heard that Los Angeles office managing partner Nancy Cohen, a rainmaker in Heller's insurance recovery practice, will move to Proskauer Rose.

One legal consultant close to the situation said that Heller's insurance recovery group, which includes 40 lawyers, will make the move with Cohen.

"I know Cohen is very loyal to her people," the consultant said. "Unless there is a big contingent that wants to go somewhere else, that is most likely where she is going to go." Many "crazy things" can happen in this situation, the consultant added, but "I do not think they're going to split up."

Lawyers in Heller's Venture Law Group have been in talks with a number of suitors, including Cooley Godward Kronish, Morrison & Foerster, Fenwick & West, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and Morgan Lewis & Bockius, people close to those talks have said. A legal consultant said that the VLG group will go to Cooley, but "nobody has said they have signed an agreement."

One-time merger candidates Baker & McKenzie and Winston & Strawn are thought to be leading contenders to take on sizable portions of Heller.

San Francisco's legal community has expressed sympathy and regret for the failed firm.

"This is a sad day for the San Francisco legal market," said Ralph Baxter, chairman of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe. "Heller was a great law firm with terrific lawyers and terrific people and it is truly sad."

"It is very sad," echoed Gordon Davidson, chairman of Fenwick & West. "Heller is a grand firm in every sense of the word." "It is a sad end to a fine firm with a proud history," said Keith Wetmore, chairman of Morrison & Foerster.

The firm has long been a pillar of the San Francisco legal community. It traced its roots to 1890, when Emanuel Heller opened his law practice in San Francisco.

The firm arranged financing for the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and helped create the consortium that built the Hoover Dam.

Key clients have included Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Philip Morris, McDonald's, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Levi Strauss, which the firm took public in 1971.

The Recorder is a US sister title of Legal Week.