UK’s Allen & Overy To Enter Boston Amid US Expansion

On Thursday, UK magic circle law firm Allen & Overy announced it is hiring five IP litigation partners from Goodwin Procter as it continues its growth in the United States with plans to open a new Boston-based office. 

The team is led by New York-based patent litigator Elizabeth Holland who is set to become the head of Allen & Overy’s life sciences practices. Holland will be joined by former Goodwin partners Bill James in Washington DC and John Bennet and Nick Mitrokostas in Boston. Daniel Margolis will join the firm in New York. 

In an interview, Elizabeth Holland said she had not been planning to leave Goodwin Procter, though had been thinking about how she could further expand her practice.

“When I got the call about this opportunity, it was really something different. It was not a chance to be the third or fourth patent litigation partner, but instead, I would have the ability to build a practice with partners I’d worked with for years,” Holland said. 

In a statement, senior partner Tim House said Allen & Overy’s aim is “to become the only elite global law firm to offer scaled, coordinated, top tier intellectual property litigation capabilities to life sciences businesses across the U.S., UK, continental Europe and Asia-Pacific.”