Wolfram & Hart Los Angeles branch

The Los Angeles branch of Wolfram & Hart is founded in 1791 over holy ground de-consecrated through a ritual employing the

File:Angel4.jpg

Wesley, Gunn, Angel, Fred and Lorne in the Wolfram and Hart L.A office branch

blood of serial murderer Matthias Pavayne, who is able to survive as a spirit in the building for over 200 years. The branch is notable because it operates in the same city as Angel, who becomes the focus of many W&H projects.

In 2003, the Los Angeles branch of Wolfram & Hart is destroyed by The Beast after it launched a brutal assault on their offices and then slaughtered almost everyone else in the city who worked for the company. The building is quickly rebuilt (and somehow managed to replace the staff extremely quickly), and Angel is offered stewardship of the branch, ostensibly as a reward for preventing world peace. In reality, the Senior Partners hope to turn Angel to their side, and keep him from realizing that the firm's apocalypse is already in progress. Angel accepts the offer on one condition: in exchange, Wolfram & Hart agrees to alter his son's memories- Connor having been driven to the point of insanity due to his warped upbringing by Holtz in Quor'toth and the recent confrontation with Jasmine- and place him with a loving family. The remaining members of Angel Investigations also join Wolfram & Hart, assuming control of various departments.

Angel struggles with the moral ambiguities of his position as branch manager. While he is able to make some changes to the business, such as firing the more evil employees and instituting a zero tolerance policy on killing humans among the firm's vampire employees, he must keep the business profitable in order to maintain control of the branch. As a result Angel must keep his often immoral clientèle happy through creative solutions to their problems that best fit his understanding of doing good, such as arranging for a client to get out of a trial despite knowing that the client was guilty while making sure that the legal complications that result will prevent the client doing anything else illegal for a while, or participating in negotiations with various demon factions. After running the branch for months, Angel and the others disrupt the Senior Partners' plans by killing all of the members of the Circle of the Black Thorn, the Partners' major representatives on Earth, effectively destroying their influence and stalling the plans of the Partners. Next, during a battle between Angel and Liaison to the Senior Partners Marcus Hamilton, the Los Angeles branch collapses, prompting the Partners to send Los Angeles to Hell and turn Angel into a human for his defiance. However, after Angel is able to trick the Partners into turning back time to restore Los Angeles to Earth, the branch has seemingly ceased to have existed in the first place, with only an empty lot in its place and no trace of building permits to indicate that the firm was ever present, apparently due to the power that the Senior Partners had to sacrifice to save Angel.

See Also

• Wolfram and Hart
• Wolfram & Hart (Rome Branch)