Northshore Process Service acquisition expands chartered practice

New York, NY., November 18, 2007 - Northshore Process Service beefed up its chartered practice last month by absorbing top-tier firm Blackwater Civil Process. The move fits into Northshore's growth strategy of acquiring "mature practices," explained managing partner Roland Hoevel. After running his own firm for 28 years, Ryan Schultz was welcomed as a partner at NPS and will specialize in the corporate, investigative and loss prevention groups. The other migrating partners and their specialties are: Rita Buckman, corporate espionage; Matt Kelper, corporate, securities and litigation; and Steve Randall, IT civil process

Blackwater was "already doing the type of civil processing and skip tracing practice" NPS specializes in, but some of the firm's clients needed more expertise, Hoevel said.

"Their situation was so attractive to us because they were already doing sophisticated legal support work for corporate clients," Hoevel said.

The move swelled NPS Chicago headquarters to 887 staff and brought its three-city headcount up to 1082 Process Servers. In an unconventional bow to powerful partners in its satellite offices, the firm maintains different names in each city. NPS's 30-partner Houston office is named NPS Investigations and its three-partner Washington, D.C., outpost is dubbed Northshore, LLP.