Page 32 - BusinessWest August 4, 2021

their business clients — are better off because of it.
One-stop Shop
Business clients, after all, are at the heart of both firms’ work. Besides a shared focus on transactional law, which incorporates activities like contracts, finance, construction
and real estate, risk management, restructuring and bankruptcies, board governance, intellectual prop- erty, and a host of others, Halloran Sage also boasts broad expertise in business litigation.
“That’s a service that we had not been offering for a number of
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years,” Peter Shrair said. “Even when we offered it, it clearly wasn’t with that depth of people. We had one or two, maybe at one point three people doing litigation, but they might have 30. And depending on the size and complex- ity of the matter, they have the skill, knowledge base, and depth of people to handle it.”
The firms are similar in other ways — for instance, both have a large bank- ing practice, representing different banks, “so there’s a synergy right there,” David added.
“We collaborate very well across practices,” O’Connell said, “and that is one way where the firms can mutually help each other, with the Cooley Shrair folks bringing a wealth of transactional and business banking knowledge that really strengthens our practice areas. But we also have a very robust litiga- tion practice.
“I would say Halloran is a full-ser- vice firm, and our litigation portion
of the firm is very large and robust
— we’re one of the biggest firms that focuses on litigation in Connecticut,” he went on. “And one of the reasons we have such a long history in Connecti- cut is our ability to provide clients with essentially one-stop shopping.”
Joining a Connecticut-based firm — Halloran Sage has five offices in the Nutmeg State — also makes sense in that three of Cooley Shrair’s attorneys were already admitted to the Connecti- cut bar, and the firm has worked with many clients from across the border.
This isn’t the first time Halloran Sage has taken on an established group of attorneys all at once, but most of
its growth over the years has been organic, O’Connell said. For instance, it launched a New Haven office with two attorneys in 2012, and has since grown that site to 12 attorneys.
“It was a big success story to build and maintain a presence in that part of the state,” he noted. “We have an office Washington, D.C., but [Springfield]
is our first office outside Connecti-
cut with a large presence. This really broadens our reach to become not just a Connecticut firm, but a Southern New England firm.”
Client relationships won’t be dis- rupted, Peter Shrair said, but may shift over time.
“If it’s a more natural fit for some- one from Hartford to handle some- thing, they’ll handle it,” he explained, noting, as an example, a litigation case that came in just that morning and was referred to attorneys in Hartford. “We’re looking for whatever is best for the cli- ent — if a client can be handled better out of New Haven, we want to handle that out of New Haven. If it can be han- dled better in Springfield, presumably we’ll handle it in Springfield. “Really,
it deals with whose practice area it fits best in.”
Cooley Shrair
Continued on page 36
CASEY O’CONNELL
“We collaborate very well across practices, and that is one way where the firms can mutually help each other, with the Cooley Shrair folks bringing a wealth of transactional and business
banking knowledge that really strengthens our practice areas.
”
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32 AUGUST 4, 2021
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