Ten Stroock Litigators Join Crowell & Moring as Ex-Firm Crumbles

New York litigator Joshua Sohn and a group of nine other Stroock & Stroock & Lavan lawyers are joining Crowell & Moring in the wake of their former firm’s dramatic collapse.

The move, announced Monday, marks the latest in a slew of exits from Stroock. The nearly 150-year-old Manhattan firm earlier this month announced it would soon dissolve, after being decimated by departures and unable to find a merger partner.

Sohn is a general litigator with more than 25 years of experience in real estate, regulatory, and other disputes. He is lead counsel in an employment discrimination class action against the New York City Board of Education, alleging that a teaching certificate test was biased, which Crowell said has resulted in $2 billion in damages and benefits.

“Josh’s first-chair trial experience in commercial and real estate litigation expands what we can offer clients and fits squarely within our strategy to build out a commercial and financial services litigation powerhouse in New York,” said Keith Harrison, co-chair of the firm’s litigation group.

A total of 28 former Stroock partners—including Jeff Keitelman, the firm’s former co-managing partner—are headed to Hogan Lovells. Alan Klinger, the other co-managing partner, is set to join Steptoe & Johnson, which picked up nearly 30 Stroock lawyers in July after merger talks fell flat.

Sohn said his discussions with Crowell began over the summer. The full team, which includes a senior counsel, three counsels and five associates, will be based in Crowell’s New York office.

Joshua Sohn

Crowell & Moring

“I, for a few reasons, was looking to make a move,” he said in an interview, “and talked to a whole lot of firms doing lots of different things. And I ended up meeting lots and lots of lawyers at Crowell. What came through from all those conversations was that there’s a real convergence of how they do things and how I like to do things.”

The D.C.-founded firm has been steadily growing its footprint in the city. Crowell has doubled its total number of lawyers in New York to 98 over the last five years, according to the firm. It plans to move to a new space in Hudson Yards in January.

“It’s exciting and it’s fun to be a part of growth and part of sort of an abundance mindset versus a scarcity mindset, which I’ve encountered in other law firms,” Sohn said. “There really is an attitude of ‘we like who we are, we like what we do, and we want to spread that even more.’”