Taylor Wessing vows to rebuild depleted Paris
Taylor Wessing vows to rebuild depleted Paris" class="inline_image inline_image_left" src="/pictures/web/images/14511_P5_desenilles.jpg" />Taylor Wessing and Nixon Peabody have both pledged to rapidly expand in Paris following the settlement of a court battle that resulted in the latter opening in the French capital with 25 of the former’s lawyers.
Taylor Wessing France (TWF) is set to take on five lateral hires in November and has pledged to regrow its decimated Paris office of 35 lawyers back to around 60 lawyers by April 2009.
Nixon Peabody’s raid saw TWF’s managing partner Arnaud de Senilhes move across, along with 12 other partners and 12 associates.
The US firm is also keen to start a French recruitment drive. De Senilhes said: “We want to build a better leverage than we have now. We’re hiring 20 associates and would like to reinforce our team from the top with four to five partners.”
He added that it was intended that the hires would come from a variety of firms over the next 12 to 18 months.
The two firms settled their court battle last week (TheLawyer.com, 29 October), putting an end to a series of claims and counterclaims that revolved around an allegation that Nixon Peabody had violated a non-poaching agreement after botched merger talks between the firms.
The terms of the settlement, which both sides claimed was amicable, are confidential. However, sources close to the firms have contradicted each other, claiming that each firm was exclusively paid by the other to settle the dispute.
Both firms declined to comment.
