Cole Schotz Miami Leader on Rejoining Firm, Office Launch

Cole Schotz PC this week announced the opening of its third Florida office, launching a location in Miami following the arrival of three attorneys from local boutique firm Salazar Law LLP and a separate real estate associate hire.

The Salazar Law team is led by member Luis Salazar, who started his career with Cole Schotz, spending five years in its Hackensack, New Jersey, office before moving to Miami to join Greenberg Traurig LLP and later his own firm, which he ran for 14 years.

“Returning to Cole Schotz with my talented colleagues from Salazar Law is a powerful next step — one that strengthens our team’s position as a litigation force in the South Florida market,” Salazar said in a statement Monday. “We’re proud to launch this next phase of our careers at a firm that reflects our values, shares our commitment to client service and embraces the creative, solutions-oriented approach that has always defined Salazar Law. “

The Salazar Law team, which also includes member Jose Ceide and associate Lorenzo Lorenzo Jr., focus their practices on high-stakes commercial litigation and financial restructuring, including Chapter 11 bankruptcy, working with middle-market companies, businesspeople and family offices, primarily from Latin America.

The addition of a downtown Miami office complements Cole Schotz’s existing offices in the nearby towns of Boca Raton and Palm Beach, and the expansion came months after the firm opened an office in Washington, D.C.

Salazar spoke with Law360 Pulse on Tuesday about his decision to rejoin Cole Schotz and launching the firm’s Miami office, his work with clients based in Latin America and the history behind his decision to start his own law firm. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What went into your decision to return to Cole Schotz, and what do you think about launching in Miami?

As you know, I started my career with Cole Schotz over 30 years ago as an associate, and I made lifelong friends and colleagues. These are people who attended my wedding and are still part of my life. I’ve also shared cases with them in the years after I left the firm.

At my own firm here in Miami, we focused on really high-stakes litigation, and the cases we took on were very resource-intensive in terms of people and e-discovery, and we oftentimes went off against law firms that staffed 12 to 14 lawyers on a single case to go along with their additional resources and back office support.

The same clients we had been representing in these matters were also asking us for related services in different practice areas, so Cole Schotz also gives us more of a broad practice offering to give our clients. Also, our team has been a boutique for some time, and we’re looking forward to working with more partners and colleagues with larger teams put together with better brainstorming and idea potential.

We felt that it was time for us to join a firm that could give us the support we needed to continue taking on these types of cases, but we didn’t have much of an interest in joining a random BigLaw firm, we wanted to join one where the people had a similar point of view as we did. The folks at Cole Schotz were like family to me, so it was really a perfect fit.

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