Meredith Riley is Director of our California Partner Placement Division. Since 2001, she has successfully represented several practice groups, individual partners and associates to leading law firms including: Skadden Arps; King & Spalding; O’Melveny & Myers; Akin Gump; Alston & Bird; Norton Rose Fulbright; White & Case; Crowell & Moring; DLA; Greenberg Traurig; Morrison & Foerster; Perkins Coie; Quinn Emanuel; Proskauer; Jeffer Mangels; Loeb & Loeb; Gibson Dunn & Crutcher; Reed Smith; Baker & Hostetler; Arent Fox; Blank Rome; Vedder Price; Buchalter; Holland & Knight and Snell & Wilmer.
In the last few years, she has handled the moves of many high-profile rainmakers and outstanding partners throughout California including: DLA corporate partner Khoa Do who brought his eight figure practice to Winston & Strawn (chair of No. Calif. corporate practice); sr. patent litigation partner Kenneth Parker to Gibson Dunn & Crutcher; Sheppard Mullin corporate partner Jonathan Atzen to Perkins Coie; a five lawyer L&E Reed Smith group to Hunton Andrews Kurth; Akin Gump project finance energy partners to Crowell & Moring; patent litigation guru Scott Feldman to Baker & Hostetler; Daniel Rygorsky from Troy & Gould to Buchalter; Akin Gump insurance partner James Fitzgerald to Drinker Biddle; leading finance partner Danielle Garcia from Blank Rome to Holland & Knight; commercial and employment litigator Brian P. Maschler to Arent Fox; Locke Lord corporate partner Daniel Peters to Katten Muchin; Goodwin Procter antitrust litigation partner Patrick Thompson to Perkins Coie; Mintz Levin products liability partner Michelle Gilette to Crowell & Moring; DLA cyber security and data privacy chair Joshua Briones and Ana Tagvoryan to Blank Rome; white collar partner Pamela Naughton to DLA and Germain Labat, former Mayer Brown litigation partner to Vedder Price – as litigation chair. “Absolutely first-rate” is how one partner described Meredith’s performance. Another described her as “professional, thorough, tenacious”.
In addition, Ms. Riley has collaborated with Esquire President Sandy Lechtick on several notable transactions, including the launch of Alston & Bird’s San Francisco office- with nationally known trial lawyer Robert “Bo” Philips and his nine-lawyer Reed Smith litigation team and Michael Agoglia, former Morrison & Foerster M.P.; Amar Thakur, formerly Foley & Lardner IP chair/lead trial lawyer to Quinn Emanuel; a highly respected first chair trial lawyer (former AUSA) and his team to King & Spalding.
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Meredith received her B.A. in Communications/Journalism and then spent several years in the entertainment sector. She transitioned to executive and legal search in 2001 and joined Esquire Inc.in 2010 where she practiced for 12 years. She went a different direction and left in 2022. Three years later, she decided her skill sets were most effective in a collaborative team environment with deep bench strength. With propitious timing, Meredith returned in September 2025 where she is Director of the California partner placement division.
Her hobbies include singing, collecting antiques, foreign travel, cooking and yoga.
September 2025.
Esquire, Inc. adheres to the principles of the National Association of Legal Search Consultants Code of Ethics and has either led or participated in several NALSC leadership seminars since 2001.
Email: meredith@esquiresearch.com