Top 50 US firm Arnold & Porter has hired a six-partner team in the US from Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner.  

The multi-practice team is led by partners Eric Prezant, Donal O’Brien and Randy Miller. Prezant and O’Brien will join the 1,000-lawyer firm in Chicago alongside partners Karl Marschel and Brandon Neuschafer and counsel Monica Carroll, while Miller joins in Denver and the final partner, James Attonito, joins in New York.   

Arnold & Porter said the group’s arrival would strengthen its transactional capabilities across multiple offices, while adding M&A capabilities and augmenting its restructuring, finance and real estate practices. The firm also highlighted the team’s experience in the food and agribusiness industry, which it said would benefit its own clients in the sector.  

Richard Alexander, chairman of Arnold & Porter, commented: “We are thrilled to welcome this team to our firm. We have been impressed with their practice and their ties to their diversified client base for whom they serve as key trusted advisors. Their arrival will further strengthen several key practice areas of the firm across a number of our offices.” 

Prezant has joined the firm’s bankruptcy and restructuring group after nearly 17 years at BCLP. He represents clients in corporate and real estate acquisitions and dispositions, brownfield redevelopment projects, M&A and corporate restructuring and workouts. 

Meantime O’Brien and Carroll have joined the corporate and finance group. O’Brien brings more than 20 years’ experience in acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, corporate restructurings, spin-offs and joint ventures, while Carroll counsels companies across industries including food and beverage, wholesale diamond distribution and customer product development.  

Marschel completes the new arrivals in Chicago; he represents public and private clients in all aspects of real estate, from acquisition and development to negotiating development financing and navigating tax incentives. 

Meantime Miller has joined the firm’s commercial litigation group after more than 20 years at BCLP, where he led the Denver office and co-chaired the global food and agriculture sector group. His practice covers M&A litigation, contract and commercial trade disputes and corporate governance and control issues, among other matters.  

Prezant and Miller told Reuters they had been attracted by the strength of Arnold & Porter’s regulatory offering, as they come across a lot of regulatory issues in their work, and also by the growth of the firm’s Chicago and Denver offices. In the past five years the firm has added 16 new partners and counsel in Chicago, where it now has more than 50 lawyers, and has more than doubled its lawyer headcount in Denver since 2017.  

The final new arrival – New York-based Attonito – has also joined the corporate and finance group. He counsels food and beverage, technology, real estate, manufacturing and healthcare clients on corporate transactional matters including M&A and general contractual matters.  

The team’s hire follows Arnold & Porter securing a co-leader of Foley Hoag’s life sciences industry group, Hemmie Chang, last September to open an office in Boston. 

The same month the firm hired a five-partner product liability litigation team across Houston and Washington DC from litigation firm Shook Hardy & Bacon, amid an uptick in federal and state regulatory scrutiny facing product manufacturers.