On November 15, 2023, James Nelson was featured in The Recorder for a Q&A detailing why Venable has taken a community-centered approach to growth in California. Nelson also described his role in helping launch the firm’s San Francisco office over a decade ago, and the office’s strategic priorities for the coming year.
“It’s really a person-by-person, relationship-by-relationship, brick-by-brick exercise,” Nelson said when asked about the firm’s commitment to recruiting local talent. “For us, we historically have maintained the connection that exists with true equity partners, who are colleagues and collaborators with the rest of the great attorney talent and staff talent. It means something, whether that’s hiring associates, training associates, finding clients, servicing clients. That collegiality—I describe it as a big flat partnership for input and efforts—that leads into the communities.”
Nelson also shared his thoughts on how the San Francisco legal market has changed over the last decade: “It’s clear more folks have come in and decided this is a great legal market, which it is, so there’s a lot of activity in the Bay Area marketplace. I think that’s a good thing in many ways. It is validating of the decisions we made over a decade ago to be here in the first place and that the economic opportunities continue. We’re in a good place, and we’re getting even better.”
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