Mullen Coughlin, a cyber-focused law firm, announced it will expand its team and geographic reach with the addition of Greg Bautista and several other members from the Wilson Elser data privacy team.

The move expands Mullen Coughlin’s practice to over 50 attorneys practicing in California, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Texas. In addition to Bautista, former co-chair of Wilson Elser’s data privacy team, two partners and several associates will join Mullen Coughlin.

John Mullen, founder of the firm, told Advisen that they were seeking senior cyber attorneys to join the practice and the new additions make sense from talent and geographical perspectives.

“Some insureds prefer to have a lawyer located close to them, even if they never meet them,” said Mullen. “Although we’ve always serviced the entire country, this new team will add to the comfort level of those insureds.”

Mullen Coughlin focuses solely on data privacy, providing pre-event services, incident response, compliance, litigation, and regulatory defense. The firm’s lawyers handled over 3,000 events in 2019.

The firm’s expansion comes at a time of increasing cyber threats, particularly ransomware. Ransom amounts have skyrocketed, and attacks have become more complex and more frequent.

“It’s a three-part monster on ransomware,” Mullen said. Entities of all sizes also continue to face traditional hacks, business email compromises, vendor risk, and other perennial cyber threats.

“There’s a reason more and more entities are buying cyber insurance,” he said. Mullen predicted “double and then triple” growth for the cyber insurance industry in the coming years. Market consensus suggests that take-up rates will increase beyond the Fortune 5000, the majority of whom have bought cyber coverage for several years.

The vast majority of Mullen Coughlin’s business comes in via its insurer partners. The insurers have “figured it out,” according to Mullen.

“The insurance industry and the vendors they use lead the market in its ability to respond to these events. All the big insurers have dealt with thousands of these breaches,” he said. “They know what the process should look like. They figured out how to best and most efficiently deal with breaches.”

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