• BakerHostelter’s partners voted unanimously Thursday to drop the firm’s two-tiered partnership structure, instead adopting a so-called unified partnership model, which ties each partner’s compensation at least partly to firm-wide profits. The 930-lawyer firm is now in a small group of firms to have abandoned a model of two strictly separate partnership tiers, in which partners are either all equity or all nonequity. (The American Lawyer)
• Dialogue around sexism in the law profession continued after a female attorney faced criticism last week for using Twitter to publicly call out an older male lawyer who sent what she called an offensive comment about her photo on LinkedIn. The female attorney also contacted his international law firm, Brown Rudnick, to demand an apology. (Financial Times)
• Seyfarth Shaw has formed a global privacy & security team of 35 lawyers, it said on Friday. The team will aim to help the firm’s clients manage risks linked to an increasingly complex maze of laws, regulations and enforcement actions related to data privacy and security, as the Federal Trade Commission widens privacy enforcement and the EU prepares to impose new data privacy rules. (LegalTech news)
• The most amazing thing about the Justice Department’s new guidelines on prosecuting corporate crime is that the DOJ effectively acknowledged there was a big problem with how it did things before. (Bloomberg News)
Legal Market
• New data on office space and costs for the UK’s 200 biggest law firms show signs of major changes at UK legal offices, as firms look for real estate strategies to take off financial pressure of soaring rents, promote flexible working and attract high-quality staff and clients. (The Lawyer)
• UK law firm Pinsent Masons has launched a new bonus arrangement as part of its strategy to increase the number of transactional mandates by focusing on client relationships. The scheme could give lawyers an extra £10,000 ($15,440) on top of their existing bonus package. (The Lawyer)
• Big Law firms could face shake outs when the recent merger & acquisition boom tails off, and in that context the key to survival will probably be to develop a strong brand specialization, with an expertise in a particular area, said David Lat, managing editor of Above the Law. Lat, who formerly practiced law at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Lat talked to Big Law Business at our Summit this summer. (Big Law Business)
• The new acting head of the UK Financial Conduct Authority, Tracey McDermott, faces a particularly challenging beginning, coming in as morale is low among the regulator’s workforce, and needing to balance regulating financial companies with a need to avoid decisions that hurt consumers, says a writer and two London law firm partners. (Financial Times)
• Law firms that are successfully dealing with the retirement issue are beginning the “dirty conversation” about this difficult subject early, when attorneys are age 55 or 60, according to a legal consultant who looks at best practices in the area. (Legal Business)`
Laterals and Moves
• UK Life insurance group Prudential Financial said it has promoted its US general counsel, Timothy Harris, to take over as global general counsel on Oct. 1. Before joining the company in 1988, Harris was a lawyer at Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft in New York. He will take over from Susan Blount, who is retiring after 10 years in the job and 30 years at Prudential Financial. (The Lawyer)
• Recent comings and goings: Morvillo LLP, a white-collar defense and litigation boutique with offices in New York and Washington, has hired Daniel Nathan, a former partner at Morrison & Foerster, and a former enforcement official at the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Also, recent moves at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler; Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher; Steptoe & Johnson, among others. (Big Law Business)
• Gibson Dunn & Crutcher picked up Herbert Smith Freehills’ global head of capital markets Steve Thierbach, and his partner Chris Haynes, both in London. US-qualified Thierbach advises on complex and cross-border capital markets transactions, “counting Rio Tinto as one of his main clients, as well as Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank.” (The Lawyer)
Technology
• Social data analysis tools can enable a company to monitor social networking sites for comments about itself and its products, making it possible to head off public relations problems and protect the corporate brand, or to measure effectiveness of social media strategy, among other things. In the second of a four-part series, two partners and an associate from BakerHostetler summarize what they call four advanced methods for analyzing social data to target specific audiences. (Big Law Business)
Dewey
• In closing arguments Friday in the trial of three former Dewey & LeBoeuf executives for criminal fraud, prosecutors told the jury that the firm’s top executives concocted the alleged criminal scheme to defraud the fallen firm’s banks and investors and got lower-level employees to do the dirty work. (American Lawyer)
Miscellaneous
• In a recent interview with The National Law Journal, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer discussed his new book, his thoughts about retirement, and issues facing the court. (National Law Journal)
• William Uchimoto, who formerly headed the China practice groups for Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney and Stevens & Lee, expressed “shock” at news that the Securities and Exchange Commission had charged him with civil securities fraud on Sept. 10. (The Legal Intelligencer)
• A federal judge Friday granted attorneys for former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert two additional weeks to file pre-trial motions in the criminal case Hastert faces for allegedly violating federal banking laws to pay millions of dollars to cover up claims of sexual misconduct. (NY Times/AP)
• The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al-Hussein Monday expressed concern about China’s recent detention and interrogation of more than 100 lawyers in connection with their professional activities. (NY Times/AP)
• Uber Technologies Inc. has strengthened its lobbying team in the California Capitol by hiring Covington & Burling and a former congressman. (The Recorder)