Weekly Update - 17th June 2024
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Partner Search for Professional Services & In-House Legal, Co-Sec and Compliance, Financial Crime and Privacy Search
Moves:
UK & Ireland
Ludovic Ghesquiere, who previously led Alphabet's EMEA regulatory response, investigations, and compliance, will be based in London and California.
Two people with knowledge of the move say that real estate finance partner Duncan Hubbard is leaving the company to join rival Greenberg Traurig in the United States. Over the course of his 25-year career, he has worked with investors, financial institutions, and global funds.
Joel Grossmark becomes a partner and contributes to the expansion of Travers Smith's retailization business.
Belfast-based Neil Logan has been hired by MKB Law as a consultant in the corporate, banking, and commercial sectors of the company.
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EMEA
Brad Sandford, whose LinkedIn profile states that he was most recently a senior associate at Ashurst, has joined the firm as a partner in the projects, energy, and infrastructure (PEI) division.
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APAC
This year, Dentons has hired two partners in Hong Kong: Stephen Chan. After parting ways with Dacheng Law Offices in China last year, the company now manages its business in Greater China out of Hong Kong alone.
Daniel Abercromby was formerly a partner at Kirkland & Ellis and Weil Gotshal & Manges.
Following Daniel Abercromby, a finance partner, who departed for Gibson Dunn & Crutcher in Hong Kong, Jiang is the second partner to depart White & Case in Greater China this week.
Firms including, JunHe, Adnan Sundra, JSA and MinterEllison have all added new partners recently across China, India, Malaysia and Australia.
Australian firm HWL Ebsworth sends Richard Johnson to the firm's restructuring and exceptional situations department, while Australian firm Johnson Winter Slattery sends Kirsten Scott to the employment team as an investigations partner.
Two senior appointments have strengthened Tokyo International Law Office's roster: in-house counsel Yuri Aihara from Fujifilm and disputes lawyer Victor Sai from Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch in San Diego.
The Indian legal firm Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co (SAM) has announced its second hire in as many days following the addition of JSA partner Anjana Jamalamadaka Potti, an expert in projects and infrastructure.
Indian law firm JSA has re-welcomed banking and finance expert Divyanshu Pandey from S&R Associates as an equity partner, as the firm continues an aggressive lateral hiring spree.
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The Americas
Thomas Giotto, chair of the L&E department said that Sandi Dubin's addition will help Cozen address "a substantial increase in organizing activities" taking place in higher education and nonprofits across the country".
"We see the biggest growth opportunity in life sciences," according to Mick Bain, chair of the transactional department.
Attorneys at Rothman Gordon have announced that Maria V. Rossi has joined the firm.
With roughly 72 attorneys in New York, Polisinelli serves a number of major corporate and healthcare customers who are constantly increasing their real estate holdings.??????
Silvano Parducci said he sees great opportunity as executive director of Austin-founded McGinnis Lochridge, because the Texas market is a 'hotbed' right now.
Prior to this, Michael Katz oversaw the legal division of the cryptocurrency venture capital firm Digital Currency Group.
According to Sidley, Shane Goudey has established more than 1,000 funds, spanning from multibillion-dollar venture capital and leveraged buyout funds to early stage and pledge funds.
After sitting on the other side of negotiations from her new colleagues representing fund managers and investors, Leonora Shalet claimed she received a call from Morgan Lewis.
Over the past ten years, Josh has gained substantial experience in high-profile mergers and acquisitions with both strategic and private equity clients. Apart from his emphasis on mergers and acquisitions, he also counsel’s companies and their directors on problems pertaining to corporate governance and activist defense.
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In house
Courtney Adair, Excelon's assistant general counsel is set to be taking the lead on legal matters.
Since January 1st, the company has added 12 partners, including Devika Kewalramani. Prior to that, 128 partners, including its previous general counsel, left to create Pierson Ferdinand, one of the biggest law firm spinoffs ever.
The third IT company where Jim Lee has held a senior legal position is the massive data storage company.
Skadden said Annemarie Crouch "will lead all aspects of the firm's people strategy for lawyers and business professionals".
Jeffrey Taylor is joining the oil and gas behemoth after failing to secure the position of chief legal officer at Fox when it became available last year.
Brad Jacobs, a serial entrepreneur, has appointed Christopher Signorello as QXO's chief legal officer. QXO wants to grow to be a $50 billion company in the building supplies distribution market.
The GC leaves after just over a year in the role following its takeover by fellow French app developer Voodoo.
Craig Morford, who will retire at the beginning of July, will be replaced by Jeff Taylor.
Kate Schuelke, who joined Credo Technology in January, will be replaced by Jim Lee.
Susan will start working there in June and will answer to the CEOs of LME and LME Clear. She comes from J.P. Morgan's Corporate and Investment Bank (CIB), London, where she was previously the head of the EMEA Markets Practice Group and the Deputy General Counsel for the CIB in EMEA.
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Team Moves
The 13-attorney IP and litigation group that ArentFox Schiff hired from Burns & Levinson has joined its Boston office, becoming the most recent group to leave the Boston-based firm this year.
As part of its new German strategy, Willkie Farr & Gallagher has brought in counsel Jan-Philipp Pra? and a group of seven associates, as well as former Latham bankruptcy and restructuring attorneys J?rn Kowalewski, Ulrich Klockenbrink, and Hendrik Hauke.
The increased emphasis on financial work is driving the move, according to several with knowledge of the plans.
With the growing number of public company customers seeking assistance on increasingly comprehensive compensation and benefits matters, Cooley expands its team by adding partners in San Diego and Washington, D.C.
While Laura Perlov and Jeff Ziesman have been with the team for more than ten years, new partners Jeff Kalinowski and Eric Martin have collaborated for almost twenty-five years. The others are located in St. Louis, but Perlov is based in Denver.
Two former colleagues joined three partners who had come from Akin to Rimon in London and Washington during April and May.
The appointments follow the addition of seven lawyers to the Italian firm's Milan office in the previous month.
Former real estate transactions practice heads Magnus Lidman and Anna Eriksson take with them five associates to Gernandt & Danielsson
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Diversity & Inclusion:
Diversity Lab's "Moments to Movements Hackathon" assembles more than 100 law firm partners, in-house leaders and others to address leading issues in diversity, equity and inclusion.
These alerts, while prioritizing safety, evoke painful memories of past attacks and heighten anxieties about the ongoing threats faced by LGBTQ+ individuals.
Law.com International has released its first list of 10 outstanding Black lawyers under 40 who practice law in the UK.
An increasing number of law firms are beginning to embrace corporate allyship, but what are the tangible actions behind the rainbow marketing?
Carey Olsen, an offshore legal practice, has put in place a number of programs to encourage inclusion and diversity, with a focus on gender diversity.
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Financials:
The basic salary difference between corporate lawyers who are male, and female is still made present by the results of the annual report, but it has narrowed somewhat from the previous year.
A review of LLP accounts shows that the top five operational profit margin-achieving corporations in the UK Top 50 are still the same five.
Prior to COVID, the company recorded sales of €200 million; by 2022, that amount had dropped to €177 million.
In recent weeks, A&O Shearman, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Clifford Chance, and Linklaters have all decided to raise their own wages to ￡150,000.
Paul Hodkinson, editor-in-chief of Law.com International, describes how the biggest corporations' fundamental health has gotten worse.
The Chicago-based company is increasing its prices to ￡175,000 from ￡166,500, which it established only a few months before in January, according to an individual with knowledge of the situation.
Ruth Ann Keene, who spent 11 years at the software maker before departing in 2016 for a legal chief post elsewhere, returned in 2022 when her former boss retired.
The planned changes coincide with a fierce pay war among elite US law firms that has driven top partners' salary packages above $20 million.
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Promotions & Appointments:
Barley Snyder declared that attorney Caitlin M. Long has been appointed to the board of directors of the Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) of Berks County, and attorney Zachary D. Griffith has been elected vice president.
Zachary Reiland and Christopher Kenworthy are joining the group after more than 30 years of private practice experience between them, and BBB promoted two lawyers internally (Kenneth Krayeske and Megan Boorsma) to partner in recognizing its "commitment to the firm and its clients."
Steve D'Amore has employed a small management team that includes four other partners to handle areas such as talent, branding and overall strategy.
Next April, Karen Gidwani will take over as head of the UK construction and energy boutique, replacing seasoned leader Simon Tolson.
In addition to Henrietta Jackson-Stops, Loukas Mistelis and Jonathan Cary will chair London International Disputes Week.
Nicola Boyle is set to become Hausfeld’s new Managing Partner in London. In addition, Lucy Pert and Ned Beale will become Co-Heads of the Commercial Disputes Team.
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Mergers & Alliances:
It is unreasonable to separate the private equity sector's relative performance from the M&A markets as a whole.
Together with the 11-attorney health care law boutique CCBLaw, the Buffalo-based mid-size firm Lippes Mathias has expanded into the Syracuse region, adding a 15th legal market to its ever-expanding nationwide reach.
The company has added a restructuring partner in Hong Kong and opened an insolvency business in Australia.
France's Vinci Airports has been expanding its holdings; it recently acquired airports in Scotland and Mexico.
Attorneys claim that businesses should have considered the extra obstacle that the new regulations may present to the completion of M&A transactions.
The second significant bank acquisition in the nation this year is the purchase of Canadian Western Bank by National Bank of Canada.
Burns & Levinson, a Boston-based firm that lost 17 employees to ArentFox Schiff, is considering merging with another company in the future or bolstering its staff. According to a statement from Burns & Levinson, "We are exploring several growth options." Among them is "bolstering our team via senior lateral hires or a merger with another company that supports our dedication to an entrepreneurial and cooperative culture."
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Office Openings & Closing:
After many years at its current central London site, Cravath Swaine & Moore are moving to a new location in London.
Through its Partners, Adam Yowell and Rob Phillips, FisherBroyles will first offer IP and patent litigation services to clients located in Nevada. In the upcoming months, the firm will expand its coverage to include all of its practice areas.
In the midst of an increasing number of mainland Chinese legal practices in the city, Beijing-based DOCVIT Law Firm has increased its reach by opening a new office in Hong Kong, making it the firm's ninth branch nationwide.
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Technology & Innovation:
According to Alexi, the company will use the funding to expand its workforce and keep creating new solutions for the legal firm industry.
Over the course of the last year, Google's parent firm Gradient Ventures has shown interest in at least three legal tech startups, including CaseMark.
Our day is one of advanced technology. Artificial Intelligence can help individuals in all aspect of their lives by utilizing a vast reservoir of knowledge. What if the "expert" child custody assessor uses artificial intelligence (AI) to compile their findings?
An ongoing collection of the ways that generative AI tools—from GPT technologies to art creation tools and beyond—are continuing to influence the legal landscape.
The GPT-4o model from OpenAI powers the new tool, which provides over 500 carefully selected provisions to speed up the creation of understandable and practical ADR agreements for a variety of industry uses.
After a few months of a commercial preview program and the announcement earlier this month of Lexis+ AI's equivalent availability in Australia, Lexis formally expanded the generative AI platform to the U.K.
Robin AI promises to reduce the expense of outside counsel contract reviews for businesses with this new tool.
The company is touting unlimited document storage at a lower cost in order to present its new DMS solution as a rival to established providers iManage and NetDocuments.
Draftwise announced Markup and added that it will now use Claude 3 Opus, one of Anthropic's most current generative AI models, noting its broader context window and better memory capabilities.
A number of well-known legal firms and corporations have become clients of Harvey, the legal tech startup supported by OpenAI. This is how a few of them are utilizing the tech.
According to Carlos Pauling, executive director of Major, Lindsey & Africa's partner practice group, firms need to consider who should be in charge of the development and application of generative AI within their organizations.
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Market Commentary:
According to The Global Lawyer, social media has provided young people with a voice and the ability to dictate the political (and moral) agenda, and legal companies are finding it difficult to keep up.
According to one recruiter getting a title suggests "that the partner, and by extension his or her clients, could be prioritized and important to the firm".
Jessica Seah outlines why competitors are expected to overtake the nation's well-established top legal firms in this week's edition of Asia Legal Briefing.
The plan may cause more international legal firms to create offices in Saudi Arabia with less restrictions than those that have been in place recently.