A total of 20 lawyers joined the Northeast law firms McCarter & English and Barclay Damon
Two regional Northeast US law firms announced that they have recruited 20 lawyers from Boston-based Burns & Levinson.
The firm recently confirmed that its operations are winding down following a series of major departures earlier this year, Reuters reported. McCarter & English, a Newark-founded law firm, has hired seven partners from Burns & Levinson whose expertise covers trusts and estates, real estate, and business litigation. Along with the lawyers, nine professional staff members are also joining McCarter & English.
Meanwhile, Barclay Damon, a 300-lawyer firm with offices across New York, Boston, Toronto, and Washington, DC, has recruited ten intellectual property and real estate lawyers from the dissolving firm.
The closure of the 64-year-old Burns & Levinson comes after several significant departures earlier in 2023, including a 25-lawyer group that left to establish a Boston office for Blank Rome and another 17-lawyer team that joined ArentFox Schiff. Other partners and associates from the firm have moved on to firms such as Locke Lord, Polsinelli, Rubin and Rudman, and Verrill.
Paul Mastrocola, Burns & Levinson's managing partner, said in a statement that while the firm had considered multiple merger proposals, they ultimately decided against them. The offers, he said, "would not work for the remaining partners as a group and for our wonderfully varied practices." As a result, the remaining lawyers are expected to join other law firms.
Barclay Damon’s chair, John Langan, noted that his firm had entered into combination talks with Burns & Levinson in June, but they could not reach an agreement despite the Boston firm’s solid profitability and favourable rates. "We just couldn’t make it work," Langan commented.
Maria Laccotripe Zacharakis, managing partner of McCarter & English’s Boston office, emphasized that the new hires would strengthen the firm’s life sciences and technology practice groups. According to Reuters, Boston has become a competitive hub for out-of-town law firms, drawn by its growing status as a centre for technology and life sciences. Other major firms, such as Paul Hastings, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, and Wiggin and Dana, have also opened offices in Boston this year.
