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In just the last few weeks, Florida-born Am Law 100 firms Greenberg Traurig, Holland & Knight and Akerman have been scooping up real estate lawyers at a seemingly fast pace.
The three firms have been filling roles in that space across the country, including lawyers that specialize in niche areas of real estate. Meanwhile, firms of all sizes have been listing real estate as a top sector to grow in despite a broad slowdown in the sector last year.
Real estate lawyers have been the No. 1 request for Miami-based legal recruiter Joe Ankus for the past two to three years, ever since some of the Big Law firms started moving into town, he said.
“No. 1 on their wish list, which is impossible to deliver, is a team of five to eight real estate lawyers,” Ankus said. “I don’t see an uptick because my demand for real estate lawyers is huge. It’s insatiable. You can’t satisfy them.”
One of the possible reasons for the consistent demand now is a lack of emphasis roughly a decade and a half ago, when real estate activity was a casualty of the Great Recession, according to Ankus.
“The class of associates that would be partners or midlevel partners doesn’t exist because they weren’t trained at the time real estate was down,” Ankus said. “Now, what you’re finding is there’s a gap of talent.”
Greenberg Traurig announced new real estate partners almost every week of February. The firm has added partners in Massachusetts, New York, California and Florida this year alone. It even added a four-lawyer team from White & Case in Japan in late January.
Meanwhile, Holland & Knight has added at least three partners in Illinois, Texas and Florida since mid-January.
In February alone, Akerman added three partners to its real estate team in New York, Illinois and Nebraska.
The moves highlight how hot demand is for these lawyers, and how Big Law is increasingly scooping up much of the supply.
Despite a general slowdown in real estate deals last year, that’s more likely a normalization from the frenzy law firms saw following the pandemic, according to Eric Rapkin, chair of Akerman’s real estate practice.
“Pretty much every law firm had their best year ever in 2021 and maybe their best year ever also in 2022. They were just absolutely incredible years of performance,” Rapkin said. “To me, 2023, while a huge slowdown … it’s a slowdown to what was more of a normal world of 2017, 2018 and 2019. So it’s not like it crashed and there was no nothing to do, like in 2008, 2009 and a good part of 2010. It was more like it came back to Earth.”
But even with demand becoming softer last year, Greenberg Traurig saw a pickup late in the year, which helped it boost revenue, according to CEO Brian Duffy.
Because demand is heading in the right direction, firms are constantly looking to scoop up quality real estate lawyers.
But there’s also an apparent interest in certain niche areas of real estate, according to Michael Baum, co-chair of Greenberg Traurig’s global real estate practice.
“Real estate has become a key sector of investment globally for all the sovereign wealth funds and other global investors,” Baum said. “We’re seeing a lot more investment in real estate-adjacent stuff. Whether it’s energy or digital infrastructure, those are the places that there’s still incredible growth opportunities, and we’re seeing significant global investment in that.”
Some of the latest real estate hires at Greenberg Traurig, Akerman and Holland & Knight have been in specific areas such as energy, taxes and capital markets, making those particular candidates even more attractive to firms.
And these firms apparently have an appetite to keep expanding as the year continues to unfold.
“Greenberg Traurig continues to invest in the real estate brand and continues to find amazing opportunities to strengthen my team,” Baum said.
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