Monday, September 16, 2002
Page 3
Two Employment Litigators Move Across Town to Join Perkins Coie
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Attorneys William Kannow and James DeRoche have joined the expanding local office of Perkins Coie, leaving the firm Crosby, Heafey, Roach and May and taking with them several prominent corporate clients including Smart & Final and UHaul.
Seattle-based Perkins Coie has steadily expanded, doubling the number of attorneys since the Los Angeles office first opened in 1988.
Bruce Sherman, the managing partner of the firm’s Los Angeles office, called the acquisition “part of a strategic plan by the firm to continually expand and strengthen our already-prominent national labor and employment practice.”
With the addition of the two new attorneys the total number of legal professionals dedicated to labor and employment issues at the firm’s six offices nationwide rises to more than 40. The firm has had a strong labor and employment practice since its inception in Seattle in 1912, added Kannow, that serves such notable clients as Boeing, and Starbucks.
Kannow will be joining the national labor and employment practice as a partner at the Los Angeles office, while DeRoche, who also has expertise in labor law, in addition to franchise and trademark litigation, will join Perkins Coie as of counsel. Both attorneys were partners at Crosby Heafey when they moved to Perkins Coie.
Kannow lauded his new firm as a “tremendous” platform upon which to “expand his growing labor and employment practice.”
As a native of Santa Monica, Kannow has remained in Los Angeles, having studied law at Loyola Law School downtown. DeRoche, on the other hand, returned to Los Angeles to practice law after graduating from the McGregor School of Law at the University of the Pacific in Sacramento, California.
Both Kannow and DeRoche joined their former law firm, Crosby Heafey, in 1990 when their firm Clinnin, Siracuse and Belcher merged with Crosby Heafey. Due to their long history together and close working relationship, Kannow said, he suggested DeRoche accompany him to the new firm when Perkins Coie became interested in acquiring him because of a mutual client.
Copyright 2002, Metropolitan News Company