Headquarters |
Paramount Plaza New York City |
---|---|
No. of offices | 9 |
Major practice areas | Litigation |
Key people | Marc Kasowitz, founder and managing partner |
Date founded | 1993 |
Company type | Limited liability partnership |
Website | http://www.kasowitz.com/ |
Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman is a New York law firm founded in 1993. It employs 350 lawyers and maintains offices in several states. The firm focuses on product liability litigation, corporate, family and employment law, as well as intellectual property, bankruptcy and creditors' rights. Notable clients have included Donald Trump,Robert DeNiro, Celanese, ArvinMeritor, Liggett Group, Enron, WorldCom and Mia Farrow.
The firm was founded as Kasowitz, Hoff, Benson & Torres in 1993 when Marc Kasowitz left the Mayer Brown law firm with 18 other lawyers and two clients.David M. Friedman was added as a partner in May 1995, and William Bruce Hoff, Jr. left in November.
The firm began in New York City with 18 lawyers and after 6 months expanded to include a Houston branch office. Friedman joined the firm in 1993 or 1994 and opened its bankruptcy practice. In 1996 several new lawyers joined the firm to begin its employment and matrimonial practices. It opened a New Jersey office in 1997, Atlanta in 2001 and in 2003 the fiirm opened a San Francisco office while former assistant district attorney, Leslie Crocker Snyder, joined the office in New York. By 2004 the firm had increased to 160 lawyers and included an additional office in Atlanta. The firm opened its Miami, Florida office in 2006 and expanded its San Francisco, California office in 2007 by merging with the seven lawyer firm, Topel & Goodman. The 2005 launch of the intellectual property arm of the company led to several personnel changes with various key lawyers arriving and departing. This included Peter J. Toren who left the intellectual property department in the spring of 2007.