Global law firm plans 500 hires in new Richardson office

The nation’s second-largest corporate immigration law firm on Thursday opened a headquarters-like office in Richardson, where it will employ hundreds of lawyers, paralegals and other legal professionals.

 

San Francisco-based Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP, known as BAL, is calling the Richardson office a “Center of Excellence” rather than a headquarters, managing partner Jeremy Fudge told the Dallas Business Journal in an interview after leading a tour of the North Texas office.

 

The new space at 2400 N. Glenville Drive has about 270 employees now and will house 320 on-site employees within a year, Fudge said. Most of those will be hired locally rather than moving from California or other offices, he added.

 

BAL expects to employ about 500 attorneys, paralegals and staff there in the next two years, making it the largest of the firm’s 18 global offices, said Fudge, who is now based in the Richardson office.

 

"Establishing a COE in Richardson is an integral part of BAL's dynamic, exciting growth strategy," Fudge said. "By combining our North Texas offices and expanding our operations presence here, we are establishing one strong, centrally-located hub.”

 

The firm's focus on corporate immigration means that companies hire BAL to deal with a wide range of immigration issues. Much of the firm’s work comes from companies moving their employees from one country to another.

 

“With the move to this space, part of the intent is to move our operations groups — finance, (human resources), (information technology) — here, because of the cost benefits of Richardson, specifically, and also Texas compared to California,” Fudge said. “We spent several months analyzing cities all over the country.”

 

The firm factored in talent, infrastructure, costs, taxes, education systems and other factors before choosing Richardson, Fudge said.

 

Other finalist cities included Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; and Houston, he said.

 

Once the firm chose the Dallas-Fort Worth region, Richardson edged out downtown Dallas and other localities because the property BAL selected has plenty of green space, a courtyard, and “spaces where you can just feel like you’re living and breathing,” Fudge said.

 

“We wanted a campus-style setup,” he said. “A lot of our clients are tech clients in Silicon Valley, and their offices are very much like this. Not particularly tall buildings, but a cluster of four or five buildings and a campus.”

 

The proximity to Collin College and the University of Texas at Dallas is another benefit of the Richardson site, Fudge said.“We need a lot of people, and we need lots of different types of people, so this is a good location relevant to talent,” he said.

 

BAL’s space spans three floors totaling 61,380 square feet in Building A at the former Verizon campus.

 

The campus — a four-building, 388,600-square-foot office complex — has recently undergone a $6.5 million redevelopment.

 

BAL has locations in key international markets, some of which include Dubai, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai, Singapore and Sydney.