Carolyn Reers picked an eventful time to move from her in-house position at J.P. Morgan Private Bank to Norton Rose Fulbright.
Reers started at the firm this week less than a month after the global giant finalized its merger with 115-lawyer Manhattan-based Chadbourne & Parke.
Reers joins the merged firm, which now has a total of about 4,000 lawyers in 58 offices and 32 countries, as its first lateral partner to arrive since the sealing of the Chadbourne & Parke deal.
"That was a bit of a coincidence but a fortunate one," said Reers, who first announced her intention to join the firm last fall.
Reers had been at J.P. Morgan since 2013 and was in private practice for two decades before that, most recently as a principal in Cummings & Lockwood.
"I missed private practice," she said about her decision to leave J.P. Morgan for a Big Law partnership.
But Reers also stressed the opportunities that the large global firm creates for her practice, which focuses on international and estate and tax planning for ultra high net worth individuals, closely held corporations and CEOs of private and publicly traded companies and includes a significant amount of cross-border matters.
"Carolyn has served her clients' ongoing estate planning and trust administration needs for more than 20 years. She is a significant addition to our outstanding trusts and estates group, which has grown significantly following our recent combination with Chadbourne & Parke," Daryl Lansdale, Norton Rose Fulbright's U.S. managing partner, said in a statement.
Norton Rose Fulbright was created by a previous, 2013 merger between London and Houston-based powerhouses Norton Rose and Fulbright & Jaworski. The latest merger adds significantly to its presence in New York and elsewhere, but leaves the Chadbourne & Parke name behind.