McKee Nelson hired a team of six securities litigators from King & Spalding's New York office.
Jeffrey Smith leads the team which comprises Smith, Steven Brody, Susan DiCicco, Scott Eckas, Michael Gordon and Jennifer Hurley McGay.
The group joins McKee Nelson's business litigation department and will focus on the defence of lawsuits involving complex financial transactions.
"A huge portion of the US economy is financed by complex securities transactions," said Reed Auerbach, managing partner of McKee Nelson's New York office.
"They almost always work as anticipated, but in those rare cases in which a deal goes wrong, the cost to the participants can be enormous. Successfully managing a problem transaction requires experienced litigators who also have a deep understanding of both the capital markets and complex transactions."
McKee says the group will add a new dimension to its capital markets transactions practice which, in 2006, advised on over $800 billion in securities issuance.