Habemus Papam! The white smoke is rising over at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, which just announced who will succeed Ralph Baxter as chairman of the 1,100-attorney, 25-office firm.
So who is Orrick’s new chair, and what do we know about him? For starters, he’s quite young….
Continue reading “Musical Chairs: Orrick Announces Its Next Chairman”
Richard Revesz
Big news in the land of top law schools: NYU Law School Dean Richard Revesz will be stepping down from his position at the end of the academic year. Revesz most recently revamped NYU’s 3L curriculum. He leaves behind one of the best law schools in the nation (and some swanky faculty housing).
As David Lat just put it to me over Gchat, “Revesz has been there for ten years and he has seen it all — the boom and the bust of the legal profession.” As a current NYU student wrote to us, Revesz leaves “big shoes to fill, and I just hope that the next dean is just as successful at keeping our amazing professors here and attracting top-flight talent from other schools. His record on both counts has been superb.”
Despite its overall success, Ricky Revesz’s tenure was not without controversy. Let’s review some highlights (along with some UPDATES), after the jump….
Continue reading “NYU Law Dean To Step Down At The End Of the School Year”
Yesterday, we wrote about Patrick Shields, the Quinn Emanuel partner who mysteriously vanished from the firm’s web site, with, as far as we could discern, nothing more than plans for an extended Irish vacation.
What the heck happened?
Well, it turns out Shields’s story is quite simple and a reflection of something most of us have felt at one time or another. Namely: burnout.
We heard from a tipster familiar with Shields’s situation, who explained to us how burnout led the star IP litigator to do the “coolest thing possible”…
Over the past several months, Quinn Emanuel has been in the news for representing Samsung in its tense — and seemingly never-ending — intellectual property war with Apple. The firm has scored some major victories against Apple overseas, but on the home front, Samsung lost that little jury verdict some of you may remember — to the tune of $1 billion.
Through Quinn, Samsung is currently working through the appeals process. But last week, we also caught wind of another mysterious motion in the case. A QE partner suddenly requested to withdraw as counsel from the case. Judge Lucy Koh approved the motion, and within a few days the partner had disappeared from the firm website.
What’s going on here?
Please note the UPDATE at the end of this post.
Continue reading “Musical Chairs: A Quinn Emanuel Partner’s Mysterious Departure”
Patrick Fitzgerald
When renowned federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald stepped down as U.S. Attorney in Chicago, he reacted skeptically to the suggestion that he join the dark side jump over to private practice and become a defense lawyer. When asked about this at a press conference regarding his departure, he quipped, “Can you see me as a defense attorney?”
Well, pooh-poohing something isn’t the same as rejecting it out of hand. Yesterday brought news that Pat Fitzgerald will be entering private practice after all.
So which Biglaw firm just landed this big fish?
Continue reading “Musical Chairs: Patrick Fitzgerald’s New Home”
Our coverage of lateral partner moves is admittedly somewhat idiosyncratic. To be honest, we tend to be most interested in lateral moves when we can be the ones to break the news, in advance of any official announcement.
(For moves where we aren’t first, we tend to be more discriminating and write up only the most major ones. So if you’d like us to cover some notable partners joining your firm, please email us well before you send out your press release, and give us the scoop.)
Today we bring you news of partner moves from the Lone Star State. Some seven partners are leaving the Dallas office of Haynes and Boone. Who are they, and where are they going?
Continue reading “Musical Chairs: Seven Partners Part Ways With Haynes and Boone”
Peter Kalis
As we head into the weekend, we’re happy to bring you additional commentary from Peter Kalis, the chairman and global managing partner of K&L Gates. Earlier this week, the colorful Kalis was unanimously reelected to his leadership role by the 60 voting members of the Management Committee.
The delightfully opinionated Kalis recently gave an interview to Am Law Daily, in which he shed additional light on the state of K&L Gates. His remarks weren’t as forceful as the beatdown he administered to the firm’s anonymous detractors last week, but they are interesting….
Continue reading “A Peek Behind the K&L Gates: More Comments from Peter Kalis”
Peter Kalis: hail to the chief!
Much like the similarly named Kelis, his milkshake brings all the boys (and girls) to the yard. Peter Kalis, the chairman and global managing partner of K&L Gates, just won a fifth consecutive term at the helm of the global mega-firm. As noted in the firm’s press release, which we received here at Above the Law, the 60 voting members of the Management Committee supported Kalis unanimously.
Kalis assumed leadership of the firm in 1997, back when it was called Kirkpatrick & Lockhart. On Kalis’s watch, the firm conducted eight mergers, including the combination with Preston Gates & Ellis that resulted in the “K&L Gates” moniker. When Kalis took the helm, Kirkpatrick & Lockhart was a regional firm with six offices, all in the Eastern time zone of the United States. Now K&L Gates boasts almost 2,000 lawyers in 41 offices on four continents.
But growth brings with it growing pains. Let’s discuss those, and get some information about partner capital contributions at the firm….
Now this is how you handle negative rumors about your firm.
As we mentioned last night, in the past week or so we’ve seen media reports of possible trouble at K&L Gates. Stories in Law360 and Crain’s Chicago Business speculated about “an alarming rate” of partner departures and “attorneys increasingly los[ing] faith in the firm’s leadership and strict compensation policies.”
The chairman and global managing partner of K&L Gates, Peter J. Kalis, isn’t taking all this sitting down. Very early this morning, the famously outspoken Kalis sent around a firm-wide memo that powerfully refutes some of the claims made about the firm.
If you’re at all involved in law firm management, you should read it. The Kalis email offers a master class in how to thoroughly respond to negative rumors….
Continue reading “Everything Is Great, K&L States: Peter Kalis Comes Out Swinging”
On multiple days over the past week or so, one of the top ten search terms bringing visitors to Above the Law has been K&L Gates. For whatever reason, people seem keenly interested in what’s going on right now at this major international law firm.
(But maybe we shouldn’t read too much into such queries. Also in the top ten search engine terms: “pictures of tacos.”)
So what is going on at K&L Gates? A significant amount of partner attrition, as various news outlets have recently pointed out….
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
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