Pillsbury opens door to Brobeck partner

Pillsbury Winthrop has become the latest West Coast firm to pick up a casualty from the collapse of Brobeck Phleger & Harrison.
Benjamin Quinones, a San Francisco-based business and technology partner, is set to join Pillsbury shortly, making him just one in a long line of Brobeck lawyers who have secured alternative employment.
Morrison & Foerster this week announced that it was taking on corporate partners Jay de Groot and Steven Rowles.
However it is Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld that has scored the lion’s share of Brobeck lawyers by taking on 18 attorneys, including four partners, just days after the collapsed firm announced its imminent closure.
Steven Zager, head of Brobeck’s litigation team, last week revealed his intention to leave the firm for Akin Gump just hours before Morgan Lewis & Bockius pulled out of merger talks.
There is now speculation that Morgan Lewis, Brobeck’s one time white knight, is hoping to cherry pick some of the firm’s litigation lawyers.
Other West Coast practices are understood to be interested in taking on whole offices, potentially relieving Equity Office, Brobeck’s landlord, of some of the crippling property liabilities it will be left with following the firm’s demise.