Another 26 lawyers from K&L Gates have joined the five-partner consumer financial services team that moved to Mayer Brown.

"Basically everyone came over," says Larry Platt, who was one of the five K&L Gates partners to originally join Mayer Brown in late February, along with Phil Schulman, Steve Kaplan, Melanie Brody, and Jonathan Jaffe. (More information here.) The new group of laterals from K&L Gates joining Mayer Brown's financial services regulatory & enforcement practice includes 10 additional partners, one counsel, 15 associates, one staff attorney, and one government affairs adviser. K&L Gates declined to comment on the moves.

The additional 26 lawyers have relocated to Mayer Brown's 1999 K St office. Finding a firm with room to accommodate the entire practice was part of the consideration when the group's senior partners began speaking with other law firms in November, Larry tells us. The senior partners resigned on the morning of Friday, Feb. 26, and started at Mayer Brown that afternoon. They couldn't disclose the news to any of the others until they'd actually resigned, so many in the group didn't know until Friday that the partners were leaving. After that, the process of transferring everyone began, including all of the administrative aspects of moving a group of that size.

Some of the biggest characteristics of the group are collegiality and loyalty, Larry says. He'd been at K&L Gates since '95, and worked with some of the same attorneys at another firm before that. When they came to Mayer Brown, they found many attorneys who had spent most, if not all, of their careers there, he says. "People can always vote with their feet, and if they stay, that's a good sign."