The recruitment line-up will bring the number of London-based shipping lawyers to eight to match its US team.

A team of seven London-based maritime lawyers are joining Squire Sanders & Dempsey as part of a strategy of building a new international network focussed on the broadening legal needs of shipowners.
Four of the recruits are coming from Thomas Cooper, including its well-regarded head of shipping Graham Harris.

The move begins the long-awaited internationalisation of the Squire Sanders maritime practice that was established with the recruitment of Brian Starer and a New York team in 2008.

Starer also has recruits lined up in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore, so his plan to develop a new type of international maritime practice is coming together.

Starer describes Harris, who is in his mid-fifties, as “one of the deans of the London admiralty bar and a consummate maritime lawyer”.

Harris is the “grey haired old sage” who, according to Starer, will complement the “young hard charging lawyers” he has also recruited.

The other recruits from Thomas Cooper include Dharmendra Nair, Ann Mazzucco and Anne Pickering.

From other law firms, there is Linos Choo, Andrew Sanderson and a lawyer whose identity cannot yet be identified.

With Peter Crossley, Squire Sanders London managing partner who is also part of the maritime team, there will be eight shipping lawyers in London, the same number as in the New York office.

Starer says he has spent much longer putting together an international team than he expected when he quit Holland & Knight to join Squire Sanders.

“The collapse of Lehman Bros sent a shot through all of us,” said Starer, who adds that the financial crisis has had as much a chilling impact on lawyers as anyone else.

While work levels and disputes held up in the immediate wake of the crisis, there has since been a big downturn.

“Initially you could not find a maritime lawyer worth his salt who was not really busy but that stopped at the end of 2010. We are now in a new zone,” noted Starer.

So he has been more circumspect about recruitment than he was in 2008 when he told Trade­Winds he was looking to hire an international team of 35 to 50 lawyers.

Starer says the “pulse of international shipping” is still strong in London with perhaps 70% of worldwide arbitrations and 70% of the insurance market run out of the UK. He adds that 50% of tanker chartering, 50% of sale and purchase (S&P) and perhaps 40% of dry-bulk chartering goes on in London.

“London is the logical first step for us. If we didn’t get that right, the rest of the stuff would be very difficult,” he added.

Squire Sanders hopes to have a Shanghai team in place within six months but Starer acknowledges this might prove too optimistic with Hong Kong and Shanghai to follow.

Starer says he has come up against Harris as an opponent over the years and been impressed while more recently litigating against Nair, who took a very tough stance. “I thought this is the sort of guy [I would] like on my team,” Starer added.

He also identifies Choo as bringing interesting skills to the firm. He has a Singapore father and Greek mother, so he is a lawyer that is very comfortable doing business in the Far East but also a fluent Greek speaker.

Starer is a renowned casualty lawyer but says that while he is not giving up that sector, it is no longer enough to sustain a law practice and is not what shipowners want.

“My main purpose in leaving Holland & Knight was to set up a different kind of maritime transportation practice that reflected the times,” he said.

“Most shipowners are into much more than just ships. They are hedging their bets in all kinds of things from wind and solar energy, to environmental and energy specialities.

“If there is a circle of opportunities with maritime in the middle, a lawyer who is going about business seriously today has got to look at energy, international dispute resolution, environmental, communications, private wealth, structured finance as well as insolvency and restructuring. You have got to offer a menu for the serious representation of a shipowner.”

Starer turns 67 in April but is not thinking of retirement.

“Until I get a global network up and running you don’t have to worry about me going to cut hay at the farm,” he added.

He also has one of the shipping industry’s biggest cases on his desk — the Spanish government’s action against classification society American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) over the break-up of the 81,000-dwt tanker Prestige (built 1976) and the pollution that resulted.

The Spanish government is about to change for the second time during the Prestige litigation but Starer says the return to power of the conservative Partido Popular should not see a change of policy as the ligitation started when they were previously the ruling party.

“The Prestige is not about one government or another. This was a blight on Spain and its people as a whole and there is a commitment to seeing it through to the end,” he added.