Perkins Coie Departures Bring McGuireWoods, MoFo to Seattle (1)

Nearly 20 trial lawyers from Perkins Coie left the Seattle-native firm’s home office to help launch Pacific Northwest outposts for competitors McGuireWoods and Morrison Foerster.

Former Perkins Coie business litigation chair Rike Connelly leads a team of eight Seattle-based Perkins Coie lawyers who joined McGuireWoods this week, she said in an interview. The team, operating out of McGuireWoods’ newly leased office in Seattle’s Safeco Plaza skyscraper, includes a partner who co-led Perkins’ trial practice and another who co-led the self-driving vehicles industry group.

Meanwhile, Morrison Foerster said Thursday it opened an office in the city, where 10 former Perkins trial lawyers joined as partners. The new partners add to the firm’s trial practices working with tech clients on product liability and complex business disputes.

The departure of the Perkins Coie lawyers is occurring in the run-up to the firm’s merger with UK-born Ashurst. The combination due to become final in the third quarter of this year is projected to create a 3,000-lawyer firm with offices in 23 countries.

Perkins Coie is the most prominent Big Law firm to grow out of Seattle and serves the area’s biggest industries with clients such as Boeing, Starbucks, and Microsoft. The firm also represents West Coast tech giants such as Alphabet Inc. and Uber.

Perkins Coie said in a statement it “is grateful for the contributions of our former colleagues, and we wish them well.”

McGuireWoods

For McGuireWoods, the moves deepen the firm’s litigation benches in products liability and mass torts, antitrust, and appellate litigation.

Connelly, the Seattle office managing partner for McGuireWoods, said her first goal is to promote the firm’s Seattle office to lawyers throughout the firm. “Having the ability to work in a fantastic firm and grow that brand into a new market was an exciting opportunity for us,” she said.

Rike Connelly

McGuireWoods

The Seattle departures weren’t motivated by the Ashurst Perkins Coie merger, and none of the moving partners require security clearances for their jobs, Connelly said.

Headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, McGuireWoods grossed more than $1.1 billion in revenue in 2024, according to Bloomberg Law data. It has represented the parents of Otto Warmbier, an American college student held in captivity by North Korea, and former vice President Mike Pence amid a special counsel probe into Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election.

The firm’s litigators are representing Bank of America and dating app Tinder, court dockets show. “We are excited about joining the culture of excellence here and starting in the Pacific Northwest to help expand” McGuireWoods’ West Coast reach, Connelly said.

Morrison Foerster

Not all of the partners joining from Perkins Coie are based in the new Seattle office of Morrison Foerster; at least two partners—Ray Hartman and Jacob Speckhard—work in San Diego.

The new Seattle location represents the firm’s 19th globally. The city “represents a critical market for technology and regulated industries, areas that are well aligned with our core capabilities and areas of strategic growth,” said firm chairman Eric McCrath in a statement.

The opening gives the firm depth and scale across the trial, complex litigation, product liability, and regulatory practices, and its technology and AI industry groups, the MoFo statement said.

“A number of the most consequential product liability and consumer litigation issues facing technology companies today are being shaped in this region,” said Brendan Murphy, one of the new Seattle based MoFo partners, in a prepared comment.

The firm headed into the year with an emphasis on adding to its West Coast offices. Paul Lin and Hyongsoon Kim joined Morrison Foerster as partners in Los Angeles, the firm announced last month. Lin joined the mergers and acquisitions group, while Kim joined the complex litigation and advisement group.

McGuireWoods’ Team

Connelly’s team and McGuireWoods became acquainted by litigating cases together for years, Connelly said. McGuireWoods in 2024 hired Seattle-based Perkins partner Michael Scoville, who worked from his home before the launch of the new office.

J. Tracy Walker, the managing partner of McGuireWoods, said the Seattle-based hires are less about growing in a specific geographic market and more about expanding trial benches in key practices—multidistrict litigation, product liability and mass torts, and appeals.

“We did not have specific plans to open an office in Seattle this year,” Walker said. “The more important aspect of our growth and the opportunity in Seattle was finding lawyers who are outstanding and fit in strategically with a practice area that is significant for the firm.”

Connelly was a member of the Perkins Coie trial teams that represented major firm clients Boeing and Uber. She declined to say whether any of her clients have indicated plans to transfer matters to her new firm.

Several of the incoming lawyers accepted leadership roles at McGuireWoods. Todd Rosencrans, former vice chair of the product liability litigation group of Perkins Coie, will co-lead McGuireWoods’ aerospace and defense team; Christopher Ledford will co-lead the product liability group; and Daniel Ridlon, who co-chaired the autonomous vehicle systems group, will oversee McGuireWoods’ new autonomous vehicles practice.

Eric Wolff, former co-chair of the Perkins Coie appellate practice who left in March of last year, is also on the team, along with former trial co-chair Abdul Kallon, a former Alabama federal judge. Former product liability chair Mack Shultz and senior counsel Monique Wirrick also made the move.

Walker said he aims to bring the total office headcount to 20 to 25 lawyers and staff by next week with more hires from local law firms. He said it’s possible more lawyers will join from Perkins Coie.