After opening with three attorneys in 2019, the Haynes Boone Charlotte office has grown to 25 lawyers, with plans to continue that momentum through the end of the year. The Charlotte office’s growth was recently featured in an American Lawyer article, along with comments from Charlotte Office Managing Partner Justin Riess.
Read an excerpt below:
The pandemic and the ups and downs in the financial markets in recent years could have combined to nip the growth of Haynes Boone's Charlotte office in the bud.
Instead, the Texas-based Am Law 100 firm has increased head count in the office since 2019 with lawyers who almost entirely deal with finance – despite opening right before the start of a pandemic that essentially shut down the economy and court system and the Federal Reserve's subsequent move to repeatedly raise interest rates and slow economic growth to tamp down inflation.
Haynes Boone has grown to 25 lawyers in Charlotte after opening with three lawyers in 2019. Office Managing Partner Justin Riess – one of the three who opened the office – said he hoped to add about five more lawyers by the end of this year to bring the total to 30.
Riess said the Charlotte, North Carolina, office may expand into other areas other than finance if the "right opportunities present themselves" and a "nice group comes along" that fits the office's culture.
"Our philosophy is to find the right people, not to just find people," he said. "Culture means a lot."
Riess said the firm has focused on finance-related practices in Charlotte because demand for legal services is still centered on the city's financial industry. He said the firm wants to grow the office's head count and practice areas, but it typically does so by adding lawyers in practices that "make sense in the city you're in."
The firm did add Chelsea Corey, the office's first commercial litigator, as a partner in early September from King & Spalding, with her work centering on areas in addition to financial services such as bankruptcy and the energy industry. But the latest addition is partner Ed Ivey in the firm's finance group, where he specializes in swaps and derivatives after moving from Moore & Van Allen in late September.
"I think the people that we've hired, they're really all in on Haynes Boone," Riess said.
He said it "took a while" after opening the office to add one lawyer, "and then all of a sudden, we had five, and then we had 10 more. So it's been ramping up in a way that's nice." …
"Sometimes it's a marathon. But we'd rather get the right people that want to be here long term and are really additive," Riess said.