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Hunton & Williams adds 8 lawyers from Akin Gump

Hunton & Williams LLP beefed up its labor and employment practice and opened a San Francisco office last week by adding eight lawyers from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.

Laura M. Franze, who practices from Dallas and Los Angeles, was co-chair of the practice area at Akin Gump and will join the Richmond-based firm as co-chair of its practice group as well. Coming with her are three other partners, two of whom, Fraser A. McAlpine and M. Brett Burns, will open the San Francisco office.

The fourth partner, Roland M. Juarez, also will work from Los Angeles and Dallas. One associate will join the San Francisco office and the other three will be based in Dallas.

“We’re pretty irresistible,” Hunton chairman Thurston R. Moore said with a chuckle of the firm’s ability to attract such a high-profile group from another major law firm.

Moore said acquisition of the Akin Gump attorneys fits the firm’s growth strategy of emphasizing client needs and the right fit of attorneys over location. But he said the firm is happy to be in San Francisco with an opportunity to expand its practice in the areas of privacy, data protection and intellectual property.

Hunton now has more than 1,000 lawyers in 19 offices in this country, Asia and Europe. The firm was founded in Richmond more than a hundred years ago, and still has about a quarter of its attorneys there.

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