Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe has rung in the year by announcing a new office in Boston, hiring partners from Ropes & Gray to create a data and cybersecurity stronghold in Massachusetts.

Cyber and privacy experts Doug Meal and Heather Egan Sussman, who will be heading the litigation and advisory practices respectively, will be joined by Arvind Swaminathan, who had joined the firm’s Seattle office in 2015 from DLA Piper, and has experience as a federal cybercrime prosecutor.

Cyberinsurance specialist Seth Harrington also joins from Ropes & Gray, and will assist clients with privacy and cybersecurity compliance as well as payments-related data breach matters.

‘Cyber was the thing that most drove us to Boston,’ says Orrick chair Mitch Zuklie. The firm has long been noted for its strength in technology-related matters, and this apparently client-driven move will give strengthen its position on the Eastern seaboard in a practice area that is only becoming more important. ‘We always think about a new market [in terms] of where we can build top-tier destination practices in areas that are critical to tech, energy and infrastructure, and finance – so Boston is clearly a market that makes sense for Orrick in terms of our strength in tech and innovation.’

‘It was an opportunity to combine our practice with their already substantial practice,’ says Meal, ‘[and build] the pre-eminent privacy and cybersecurity practice, not just in the United States, but globally.’

Other US firms to establish a base in Boston in the last year include Hogan Lovells, Kirkland & Ellis, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, and Arent Fox. The city has long been nicknamed “the Hub”, and this is doubly apt for its status as a growing nidus of tech development, with Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) nearby, a supportive environment of venture capitalists, and behemoths like Amazon recently announcing plans to expand their presence in the city.

Meanwhile, the partner moves mean that Ropes & Gray’s privacy and cybersecurity practice is now led jointly out of London and Boston, by Rohan Massey and Mark Szpak respectively.