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Law firm closing its Madison office

Mike Ivey  —  10/07/2008 11:37 am

A national law firm specializing in biotechnology and life sciences issues is closing its Madison office but the 25 affected employees are expected to land with another firm.

San Francisco-based Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe opened here in 2000 because of the city's burgeoning biotech sector. It had hired local attorneys John Skilton and David Harth from the Madison office of Foley & Lardner to help launch the practice.

But Heller Ehrman announced recently it was permanently laying off nearly 1,200 workers nationally beginning in late November. It has 650 lawyers in 14 offices.

In Madison, the firm offices are at 1 E. Main St. in the Block 89 development.

Harth said that although Heller Ehrman is dissolving, he said the entire office is joining another firm of "equal or greater prominence than Heller."

"No one is losing his or her job, not one employee," Harth said.

A storied law firm founded in 1890, Heller Ehrman was considered one of the most solid and successful in the nation only a year ago, according to a recent report in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The firm, which rode out the 1906 earthquake, arranged financing for the Golden Gate Bridge in the 1930s and recently helped overturn California's ban on same-sex marriages.

Mike Ivey  —  10/07/2008 11:37 am