About a year after Eversheds Sutherland announced plans to incorporate in San Francisco, the global firm has opened an office that will serve as a hub for local and international attorneys. It is also Eversheds’ first office to experiment with hospitality operations.
The company signed a four-year lease for 5,806 square meters for the space, located at 101 California in San Francisco’s financial district, which opened provisionally in late December.
“We wanted the office to be an incentive for people to come here,” said Baird Fogel, executive partner for the San Francisco office. “The Bay Area and much of the country is struggling to get people back into the office. I have made it my task to make the office attractive. When it’s dark and dingy, people don’t come in very often.”
The room is newly renovated and has been individually designed and expanded. In addition to around a dozen individual offices, it has a central communal area and several conference rooms.
Baird Fogel, Partner at Eversheds Sutherland. Free photo
Eversheds currently has six attorneys and three partners in San Francisco. Although interest and recruiting activity has been “constant” over the past year, Fogel said the new office is another opportunity to attract talent to the company.
Fogel, a transactions attorney specializing in sports and energy matters, joined Eversheds from Morgan, Lewis & Bockius last March. He is one of the founding partners of the office, along with Evershed’s technology and data partner, Brandi Taylor, who relocated from San Diego. In August, the company hired Dan Brown, an insurance partner of McDermott Will & Emery.
The company plans to continue to grow aggressively and strategically, Fogel said, citing key practice areas including privacy, technology, litigation, corporate, antitrust and esports.
Eversheds, formed from a 2017 merger of UK law firm Eversheds and US Am Law 100 law firm Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, is not alone in its ambitions in Northern California.
Since 2020, several companies with UK roots have set up offices in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, including Simmons & Simmons, Allen & Overy and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.
Freshfields, like Eversheds, are dedicated to creating enticing office spaces with an indoor-outdoor vibe. Meanwhile, other companies in Northern California are trying out hotel, open floor and other unique space concepts.
As for Eversheds, the new spaces will not only benefit potential recruits, but also international Eversheds lawyers, many of whom represent large tech companies like Zoom and Intel in the region.
“The idea is that it will become an international hub for Eversheds’ lawyers,” Fogel said. “As such, the office is a guinea pig for a new initiative that is underway at Eversheds: the hospitality industry.”
Fogel said attorneys could reserve an office for that day, but no one would have a permanent office. It’s a concept that Eversheds is considering in other areas in the future.
“Those of us in San Francisco will probably set up an office or two that we sit in quite often, but even those offices will be up for grabs when we’re not there,” Baird said.
