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Law firms ended 2021 on a high note, but it might not be all rainbows and sunshine this year, the latest Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor Index warns.
Demand, rates and productivity all climbed in the fourth quarter of 2021, but skyrocketing expenses could put large and midsized law firms in a tenuous position should the market cool off in 2022.
Today, many major firms are paying new associates $205,000 and a small but growing cohort have followed Milbank in raising base pay to $215,000. A year ago, the going rate for a starting associate was $190,000.
Demand for corporate work was up nearly 8% in the fourth quarter of 2021 compared to the previous year, while M&A was up 4% and tax grew nearly 3%, the Peer Monitor data shows. On the flip side, litigation saw lackluster year-over-year demand growth of just 2.5%.
A Seattle judge dodged a sanction for appearing on a bus ad promoting his community college alma mater.
In the ad promoting enrollment at the nonprofit community college, a photo of King County Superior Court Judge David Keenan appeared next to the words, "A Superior Court Judge, David Keenan got into law in part to advocate for marginalized communities."
A Washington judicial commission said in a 2019 ruling that Keenan could be seen in the ad as favoring marginalized communities, therefore undermining "public confidence in the judiciary." The Washington Supreme Court on Feb. 10 said the ad simply "promotes respect for marginalized communities," per the ruling, and that an "objective, reasonable" person would not infer a bias on the judge's part.
?The ruling said:
“(Legal professionals may promote) nonprofit educational institutions that they credit for their success.”
Last December, a district judge in California, approved a final round of agreements with defendants in an antitrust class action by lithium ion battery purchaser, awarding about $40.5 million in fees and expenses to class counsel from Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein; Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro; and Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy. The judge also granted $220,000 in fees to the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, headed by Ted Frank.
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The Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute has appealed the fee award to class counsel. Lieff, Cotchett and Hagens Berman, in turn, have appealed the award to Frank’s group. It’s fair to say that there is no love lost between these factions.
But Frank's appeal wasn't the only snag for class counsel. A pro se objector named Christopher Andrews also appealed final approval of the lithium ion battery settlement to the 9th Circuit.
Since Andrews' appeal was prolonging a case that has been in court since 2017, class counsel agreed to a $25,000 side deal to make him go away. However, Ted Frank was not having any of this. Frank’s group filed a brief this week opposing the deal.
Frank said in a phone interview:
"If you say we’re going to pay $25,000 to every [objector] who files a frivolous appeal, you’re going to get lots more frivolous appeals."
Columnist Alison Frankel has more.
Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz is advising Mr. Cooper Group Inc, a large U.S. home loan servicer, on the sale of IP rights for its mortgage servicing technology platform to fintech software company Sagent M&C, which was represented by Kirkland & Ellis.
Wachtell corporate partners David Shapiro and Mark Veblen are working with Dallas-headquartered Mr. Cooper. They're joined by antitrust partner Damian Didden, executive compensation and benefits partner David Kahan and tax partner Joshua Holmes.
Sagent has turned to a Kirkland team led by corporate partner Keri Schick Norton. M&A partner Jai Agrawal, and technology & IP transactions partners Adam Petravicius and Jeffrey Seroogy also pitched in for Kirkland.
Kirkland has done several large M&A deals in fintech recently.
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