Baltimore law firm Offit Kurman Attorneys at Law has entered the Los Angeles market after joining forces with downtown-based Clark & Trevithick this month.
Fourteen of Clark & Trevithick’s attorneys are joining Offit Kurman as part of the transaction, with the 15th having previously announced his retirement. The financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The affiliation brings Offit Kurman to more than 280 attorneys and represents its first California location.
“We have had a strategic expansion plan,” said founder and chairman Ted Offit in an interview. “We thought it was best for our business to open up new offices in new cities to try to grow in our vision. We don’t see a lot of firms our size, so we established a plan that we would grow locations primarily by finding firms that practiced in the mid-market.”
Debbie Petito, who was a co-managing partner with Clark & Trevithick and is now a principal attorney with Offit Kurman, hailed the partnership as a win-win for each firm, which both represented mid-market and privately held businesses and enterprises.
After launching in 1987 in Baltimore, Offit Kurman’s first phase of expansion was throughout the New England area, while the second gravitated Southeast into the Carolinas. California represents the the third phase.
“California is one of the most important — if not the most important — places to practice in, especially if you’re growing your practice nationally,” Offit said. “Our clients, they all do business in California, and now we’ll be able to represent them in California as well.”
The two firms began talking in April and struck an agreement by June. The deal became official on Dec. 1, and all of Clark & Trevithick’s holdovers will have the option of becoming equity partners. For the immediate future, both names will be used in communications, but Offit Kurman will eventually become the sole brand.
After integrating the necessary clients, Offit Kurman will then look to add more attorneys to the L.A. team — Clark & Trevithick had moved to a new office in 2019 and has the room to expand.
