AmLaw 200 firm Honigman has hired five lawyers to launch a subsidiary for US attorneys looking to practise US law from Israel. 

The new entity, Honigman Law Israel (HLI), is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Michigan-based firm and will house US-qualified lawyers seeking to practise exclusively under US law. 

The firm has recruited five New York-based lawyers to lead the charge, all of whom will be moving across from their former firms in the US to Honigman in Israel. The group includes corporate partner Sam Katz from Ellenoff Grossman & Schole, M&A lawyer Inbar Rauchwerger from Goodwin Procter and finance expert Aviv Avnon from Davis Polk & Wardwell. 

Also joining the venture is tax lawyer David Snyder from Roberts & Holland and corporate and capital markets lawyer Rachel Rhodes from Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. 

Compensation for HLI attorneys will match the firm’s US LLP scale, which begins at $205,000 for first year associates. 

In a statement, the firm said HLI’s launch is an ‘outgrowth’ of the firm’s ‘intimate familiarity’ with Israel-US business deadlings and the ‘reduced significance of geography realised through the pandemic’. 

The venture’s creation required ‘the better part of a year of investment’ on the firm’s behalf, it said, to ‘work through myriad tax, ethical and legal challenges’.  

‘As shown by the first five hires, the value of the investment has already been proven,’ the firm added. 

David Foltyn, Honigman’s CEO and chair, said: “We have continued to see incredible demand for our transactional counsel, which in turn requires that we continue to grow with the most talented lawyers. With HLI, we have created a win-win opportunity for A+ attorneys who want to reside in Israel for personal reasons but did not have a path to doing so, and for Honigman, which can deepen and expand the great talent we can devote to our clients.”

Honigman currently has eight offices in the US, including six in its home state of Michigan.