Fat, Happy Law Firm Seeks 250K Feet in Midtown or Downtown

At the moment, should a partner from Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP desire to take a white-shoed stroll from his midtown headquarters at the McGraw-Hill Building to the firm’s recently acquired satellite office downtown at 2 World Financial Center, it would take one hour and nine minutes, or so sayeth HopStop. By subway? Thirty-seven minutes. That can’t be good for productivity.

And so the firm, which recently acquired both fallen rival Thacher Proffitt & Wood’s core group and its lease at 2 World Financial Center, is on the hunt, through broker Jones Lang LaSalle, for about 250,000 square feet in which to consolidate its office space.

The firm’s agreement with Brookfield Properties for more than 135,000 square feet at 2 World Financial has an early termination clause, and Rock-McGraw Inc., landlord of Sonnenschein’s ample offices at McGraw-Hill, is willing to take back space, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.

Jeffrey Mutterperl, a spokesman for Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP, would say only that “with the addition of 100 new lawyers from Thacher Proffitt earlier this year, and having added several additional new lawyers since then, we are considering an array of space options to consolidate our New York presence.”

drubinstein@observer.com