Sheppard has continued its aggressive expansion of its high-stakes patent litigation and trials practice, hiring a 15-lawyer intellectual property team from Perkins Coie, the firm announced Thursday. This follows the departures from the Seattle office earlier in the year.
The new partners include Veronica Ascarrunz, Robin Brewer, Andrew Klein, Tom Millikan, and Joseph Reid. The group is spread across Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Del Mar, California.
This marks the second major IP litigation hire from Perkins Coie this year. In June, Sheppard brought in the three-partner team of David Fournier, Allison Glasunow, and Kourtney Mueller Merrill. The firm also recruited a 21-lawyer IP group from Ropes & Gray in September.
The departures come as Perkins Coie finalizes its merger with UK-founded Ashurst. Partners at both firms voted this month to combine, creating a $2.8 billion, 3,000-lawyer global powerhouse expected to launch later this year. Millikan told Lawfuel the merger and timing of the vote had no bearing on the group’s decision to join Sheppard, which recently rebranded from Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP.
“With one of the largest and most preeminent patent litigation practices in the country, this team further enhances our ability to deliver winning results for innovation-driven clients in their most critical disputes,” said Sheppard Chair Luca Salvi.
A Perkins Coie spokesperson said the firm is grateful for the lawyers’ contributions and wished them well in their new roles.
The team is recognized for its sophisticated multi-forum patent litigation strategies, regularly appearing before the International Trade Commission (ITC), federal district courts, and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. The group has deep experience in standard-essential patents and FRAND licensing matters.
Many of the lawyers represented Amazon in two high-profile ITC trials against Nokia involving patented video-streaming technology. Perkins Coie and Sheppard were both on Amazon’s legal team in those matters, which settled last year. Some of the former Ropes & Gray lawyers who joined Sheppard earlier were also involved, Ascarrunz noted.
“You could visibly see the investment the firm was making in its IP litigation practice,” Ascarrunz said. “It was a fantastic opportunity to reconnect with the Perkins and Ropes folks.”
Ascarrunz and Brewer will co-lead Sheppard’s ITC practice. She noted the venue is experiencing a significant surge, on pace for more than a 200% increase in filings this year compared to recent years. Recent Federal Circuit rulings have broadened access to the ITC for more industries, a development some view as aligning with efforts to strengthen domestic manufacturing.
Millikan has collaborated with Sheppard lawyers on behalf of Amazon in disputes against Nokia and InterDigital involving standard-essential patents and FRAND issues. Much of that global litigation centers on video compression technology for streaming services and spans jurisdictions including the UK, Germany, India, and Brazil.
“Sheppard has expertise in helping guide clients through those very sophisticated international matters,” Millikan said.
The hires reflect Sheppard’s continued heavy investment in litigation amid strong industry-wide demand for top courtroom talent, which has proven more robust than growth in corporate or M&A work. The firm’s business litigation headcount grew nearly 18% from 2024 to the third quarter of last year — among the highest rates among the nation’s 50 largest law firms by revenue, according to Bloomberg Law data. Sheppard’s revenue rose more than 13% last year to over $1.3 billion, per The American Lawyer.
