Gray Cary is spending $12 million to move the law firm’s headquarters back Downtown. Five floors in the Wells Fargo Building will provide room for 140 lawyers and feature a state-of-the-art courtroom for national training purposes.

“We believe the space will be truly spectacular and one of a kind in San Diego,” says Terry O’Malley, Gray Cary’s CEO and chair. The firm’s Downtown presence had shrunk to 1-1/2 floors with its headquarters located coincidentally in the Wells Fargo Building on Executive Drive in UTC.

While the UTC office shrinks from three floors to two, work begins in January on a complete tear-down and remodel of the Downtown space.

The firm has several reasons for the move. “Our practice in San Diego involves a lot of courtroom work and so physical proximity to state and federal courts was an important consideration,” O’Malley says. “In addition, our trial lawyers have a long tradition of training young lawyers very carefully and aggressively. We wanted to build a world-class training facility that not only will support the efforts of training local attorneys but will allow us to bring out our young litigators from around the country to a single location. It will have all the technology we use in modern courtrooms to present our clients’ cases. It will also allow us to do jury focus groups with appropriate observation opportunities and one-way glass panels and other tools that we use to sharpen our presentations before we actually go in the courtroom.”

The court, conference and initial office space should be complete in April with the rest of the work done by May or June. Initially, 110 of the firm’s 150 attorneys in San Diego will work from the space. “We expect to be growing in San Diego in both our corporate and litigation practices,” O’Malley says. “This will give us room in both buildings to accommodate that growth.” Mark your calendars for a splashy open house a year from now.

— Tim McClain