Below is the latest list of the top news in the legal industry.
• Four prominent corporate partners from Reed Smith are peeling off for Cooley’s offices in New York and San Francisco. Yvan-Claude Pierre, the chair of Reed Smith’s U.S. capital markets practice and head of the firm’s global corporate and securities group, is leaving the firm with fellow New York-based partners Daniel Goldberg and William Haddad. Garth Osterman, another Reed Smith corporate partner in San Francisco, is also making the move. (American Lawyer)
• Lazard Asset Management has hired Tim Russell to lead its legal and compliance department in the UK, following his departure from Ignis Asset Management, where he headed the legal department for three years. (The Lawyer)
• A federal grand jury Thursday indicted former Fox Rothschild partner Herbert Sudfeld on insider trading charges linked to Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co.’s $760 million acquisition of Harleysville Group Inc. Sudfeld, based in Philadelphia, has been at Curtin & Heefner LLP since 2012. (Law 360)
Legal Market
• Winston & Strawn is to close its five-lawyer office in Geneva, Switzerland, moving its two arbitration partners from the city to its other offices in Europe, effective Sept. 30. The firm said Thursday that it plans to focus its arbitration work in Paris and London. (The American Lawyer)
• A federal judge in Manhattan Wednesday dismissed a suit challenging New York’s ban on outside equity ownership in law firms, rejecting arguments by Jacoby & Meyers that the ban violated the First and 14th amendments and the dormant commerce clause as “entirely without merit.” (ABA Journal)
• The Federal Housing Finance Agency paid law firms Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP and Kasowitz Benson Torres Friedman LLP a total of more than $373 million since 2010 to pursue litigation targeting banks linked to mortgage-backed securities sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the financial crisis, the agency revealed Thursday. (New York Times)
• Mark A. Cohen, Chief Executive Officer, Legalmosaic, says Quinn Emanuel’s recent decision to “gut” its summer associate program is symptomatic of changes in the legal market place. One of the country’s most profitable law firms, Quinn Emanuel–and presumably other firms–no longer sees much value in the summer program, at least not at its present scale, he said. (Big Law Business)
• The CEO of Canadian firm Gowling, Scott Joliffe, says it’s important to maintain good relationships with the firm’s U.S. referral partners, and that means making sure they don’t feel any threat of competition from Gowling on their own turf. Gowling’s recently announced merger with Wragge Lawrence Graham & Co. will form a global firm called Gowling WLG, with 18 offices across Canada, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, but none in the U.S. (The Lawyer)
• UK law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer is among companies considering a move to the northern city of Manchester to escape London’s high rental and property prices. Latham & Watkins, one of the world’s biggest firms, announced plans in January to open a business services office in Manchester, and Berwin Leighton Paisner moved in the last year. (Financial Times)
• Goldman Sachs Group Inc. on Thursday posted a $1.45 billion expense for legal bills in 2015’s second quarter, more than the previous five quarters combined, as the bank continued talks with the U.S. Justice Department over a settlement of an investigation into its sales of mortgage bonds leading up to the financial crisis. (Bloomberg News)
• Several Global 100 law firms this week obtained new work linked to two acquisitions backed by the billionaire Martin Franklin. (The American Lawyer)
• Bill Baer, head of the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust division, who tried to stem questionable practices in the airline industry two years ago, is once again examining the industry for signs of the cozy behavior between airlines. (Big Law Business)
• Michael Solow, managing partner and co-chair of Kaye Scholer’s executive committee, discusses challenges of the lateral market for lawyers, and ways of lessening the impact of partners who leave the firm. (Big Law Business)
Dewey
• An attorney for one of the three ex-Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP leaders on trial in Manhattan criminal court Thursday attempted to poke holes in the testimony of star prosecution witness Frank Canellas, Dewey’s former finance director, who has alleged that the firm took fraudulent action to hide Dewey’s poor financial health from auditors, banks, and investors. Andrew Frisch, representing Dewey’s ex-chief financial officer, Joel Sanders, got Canellas to say that he had unintentionally made inaccurate statements to investigators early in the case. Former Dewey chair Steven Davis, former executive director Stephen DiCarmine and Sanders, are on trial in the case. Canellas is one of seven former Dewey employees who have pleaded guilty in exchange for lighter sentences. (WSJ Law Blog)
At the Big Law Business Summit
• Photo Gallery of the Big Law Business Summit: the morning sessions. (Big Law Business)
Technology
• A Silicon Valley startup company has launched Modria Resolution Center, a software app that uses code to solve minor legal disputes like customer service complaints and divorces without judges, attorneys, courtroom cases, or other traditional expenses. The company also plans to create code to help with more complicated suits. (Legaltech news)
• The practice of filing mass legal actions aimed at getting lucrative settlements from copyright-infringing file sharers is running into growing resistance, as courts countrywide consider issues related to jurisdiction and joinder in cases, and debate grows as to whether such filings abuse the legal system. (Legaltech news)
Legal Education
• At a Thursday public hearing, representatives from the Society of American Law Teachers and the Clinical Legal Education Association argued against a proposed change to ABA law school accreditation standards that would eliminate a ban on law students receiving academic credit for paid externships. (ABA Journal)
Miscellaneous
• California Governor Jerry Brown Thursday appointed 19 trial court judges, including partners from Burke, Williams and Sorensen, Steptoe and Johnson, Irell & Manella, and former University of San Francisco School of Law dean Jeffrey Brand, among others. (The Recorder)
• New U.K. government proposals for criminal sanctions targeting companies deemed to contribute to tax evasion could hit law, accountancy and other advisory firms. (Financial Times)
• The gyrocopter pilot facing felony charges for landing his drone on the U.S. Capitol lawn in an April stunt to call for campaign finance reform wants to hire veteran First Amendment lawyer Mark Goldstone for his criminal defense team, according to court papers filed Thursday. The pilot, Douglas Hughes, already has a court-appointed lawyer, Tony Miles, from the federal public defender’s office, but believes he needs more hire-powered help when his case goes to trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. (The National Law Journal)
• One of the most outposken and prominent jurists in the U.S., Alex Kozinski, who sits on the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, argues eyewitnesses are unreliable, and makes other arguments about the criminal justice system’s failures. (Georgetown Law Journal)