Bell Seltzer Merging With Atlanta Megafirm

North Carolina’s largest intellectual property firm will soon merge with a megafirm in Atlanta.

Bell, Seltzer, Park & Gibson, a boutique firm with offices in Charlotte and Raleigh, recently announced plans to join 335-lawyer Alston & Bird.

The exact date has not been set, according to Jack Sullivan, Bell Seltzer’s managing partner.

“We’re looking for final approval by both firms in the near future,” he said. “We’re still working toward merger and we’re now dealing with the mechanics and the administrative burdens.”

Alston & Bird, founded 103 years ago, has a 320-lawyer headquarters in Atlanta — the largest of any law firm there — and a 15-lawyer branch in Washington. About 35 new associates are expected to sign on in September. A general practice firm, Alston has 26 sections, including an intellectual property group with 20 lawyers.

Bell Seltzer, formed 75 years ago, is the largest patent firm between Atlanta and Washington. All but one of its lawyers are licensed as patent attorneys.

The new firm will keep the name Alston & Bird. However, the intellectual property group will be known as Bell Seltzer, Park & Gibson, Sullivan said.

Sullivan called the marriage between the two firms a good match.

“We needed the expertise of their various practice groups,” he said. “And they needed the technology we could lend to that kind of practice, in the various disciplines of engineering and science.”

The merger will not be without casualties. Alston & Bird may have hoped to buy their way into the lucrative Research Triangle Park market, a hotbed for high-tech product development and new company start-ups

However, in June, 17 of the 19 lawyers at Bell Seltzer’s Raleigh office mutinied. Among them were four partners, Jim Myers, Mitch Bigel, Ken Sibley and Mike Sajovec, who formed Myers, Bigel, Sibley & Sajovec.

That group took up residence at offices in Cary. According to one source, those partners split off from Bell Seltzer only after being assured that their departure would not derail the merger.

“They didn’t want to work under a Charlie’s Angels scenario, taking orders from a voice on the speaker phone,” the source said.

The new firm will add one more attorney in September and has ambitious plans. Down the road it hopes to have 30 or 40 in all, according to Sajovec.

“We’ve decided to continue to specialize in intellectual property,” Sajovec said.

The new firm will have no trouble rounding up work, he said.

“We probably had a 98 percent rate of clients coming with us,” he said. “We’re continuing to do the work we did previously.”

Until the split, the growth of Bell Seltzer’s Raleigh office had been meteoric. In 1989, the firm had only three attorneys there. It jumped to eight in 1993 and 18 in 1996.

Growth at the Raleigh branch fueled the firm’s double-digit increases in 1994 and 1995, according to Lawyers Weekly’s surveys of the state’s 25 largest firms. Bell Seltzer had 53 attorneys in 1996.

Sullivan said the Raleigh office, now down to three attorneys, would be restaffed.

“We will rebuild and we are in the process of hiring other lawyers, but it will take some time to rebuild to the stature that office once enjoyed.”

Other Atlanta Mergers

Bell Seltzer is the third North Carolina firm to attain a Southeast presence by hooking up with a Georgia dance partner.

• In June 1996, Womble Carlyle absorbed the 25-lawyer Atlanta firm of Parker, Johnson, Cook & Dunlevie. That pushed Womble up to 260 lawyers and earned it the distinction of being the nation’s fastest growing law firm.

• Winston-Salem’s other giant, Petree Stockton, last year joined forces with Kilpatrick & Cody, also of Atlanta. The makeover included a name change to Kilpatrick Stockton. The merger gave Petree Stockton international outposts in Brussels and London, as well as a Washington address. It also landed the firm in the top 50 nationally.