Hot on the heels of several large national and global law firms that have recently opened offices in Atlanta amid significant market upheaval, the largest law firm in North Carolina has moved into Buckhead.
Its arrival comes as Atlanta law firms feel the pros and cons of an increasingly competitive environment — some folding after attorney exits and others flourishing.
Moore & Van Allen opened its new office, the first outside the Carolinas, on Wednesday inside Buckhead’s 3630 Peachtree high-rise, where the firm has secured expansion rights.
Thomas Mitchell, chairman and managing partner of the 400-lawyer firm, said Atlanta is a key market in the firm’s plan to branch out in the Southeast and attract new talent to build its core practice areas to better serve clients.
“We are actively trying to grow our practice in Atlanta and having this physical space, we’ve already seen, has really helped us in our recruiting efforts, and we’re gaining some momentum there,” Mitchell told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Moore & Van Allen, founded in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1950, has had a handful of lawyers working remotely in Atlanta for several years, including partner Brett Moskowitz, who co-leads the firm’s entertainment finance practice. Moskowitz said there is “tremendous demand” for top legal counsel in Atlanta.
The law firm is one of many nabbing office space in Atlanta’s highly sought-after Midtown and Buckhead neighborhoods. A recent report by commercial real estate advisory firm Avison Young revealed law firms accounted for 11.9% of all Atlanta office leasing in 2025, up from an average of 6.4% in prior years.
Rick Nash, an Atlanta-based principal at Avison Young, said he recently negotiated local offices for a couple of outside law firms as they expanded their immigration and estate law practices. He said law firms want to be in Atlanta because its diverse economy is thriving.
“We’re seeing a big influx into Atlanta,” Nash told the AJC. “I don’t see it slowing down.”
It’s sink or swim for some Atlanta law firms
While the city’s legal market growth has crippled some local law firms that have lost scores of lawyers to larger players, other Atlanta law firms are benefiting.
Taylor Duma’s closure on the eve of its 21st anniversary released groups of attorneys to other firms, including Smith Gambrell & Russell, one of Atlanta’s oldest law firms.
Smith Gambrell, founded in Atlanta in 1893, took 14 intellectual property lawyers from Taylor Duma. The extra talent comes as Smith Gambrell’s success has forced it to create a new leadership position in its flagship Atlanta office, where around 160 lawyers and another 70 other employees are based.
Thomas Hong, who has spent almost his entire career with Smith Gambrell in Atlanta, is now six months into his new position as the managing partner of the firm’s Atlanta office, which is still its largest. The firm has more than 350 lawyers and last year exceeded $240 million in gross revenue.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Hong said Smith Gambrell’s firmwide chairman and managing partner, Stephen Forte, is increasingly pulled away from Atlanta to the firm’s 14 other offices around the globe. Hong said his priorities as the Atlanta office leader have been making sure its staff are happy and finding ways to grow.
“We continue to grow in Atlanta and it continues to be an attractive market, as you can tell from all the firms opening up shop or trying to enter the market,” he told the AJC.
Hong said the hottest growth area is energy and construction, driven by client demand.
“We really just cannot hire enough in that group,” he said. “And we’ve been trying to convince people to move to Atlanta, we’ve been trying to do all sorts of creative things to try to help because there’s a huge demand in that particular group.”
Atlanta’s growth drives business opportunities
For Moore & Van Allen, which pulls in around $300 million in annual revenue, having a larger presence in Atlanta provides opportunities to enhance core practice areas, Mitchell said. He said the firm’s financial services practice is likely the largest in the Southeast with more than 100 attorneys, and other firm strengths include mergers and acquisitions and private equity.
“We see Atlanta as a great environment for us to build out, not only doubling down in those core practice areas but also the specialty practices that are there, the talent that’s there, whether it be tax, health care, securities, employee benefits,” he said. “We’ve really drawn a triangle from D.C. to Dallas to Florida, and Atlanta really is the next logical step for us in that strategic plan.”
The Atlanta office is the firm’s fourth. It has around 350 lawyers in Charlotte and a handful of staff in Raleigh, North Carolina, as well as about 30 attorneys in Charleston, South Carolina. Several remote lawyers work in other states, including New York and Virginia.
Many law firms are expanding offices within Atlanta as the city experiences a “rush to quality” in securing commercial space, Nash said. He said law firms and other businesses around the country are closing small, less productive offices and concentrating on real estate in large economic hubs.
“With people working from home a lot, I think we’ve seen some kind of rightsizing in other markets around the country,” he said. “And what people are doing is they’re kind of gravitating to the bigger markets for any growth.”
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