• Gross revenue at AmLaw 100 firms grew 4.1 percent during 2015’s first six months, but demand only rose 1.7 percent, suggesting that revenue growth came from rate increases rather than new work, according to a survey by Wells Fargo Private Bank’s legal specialty group. The survey found revenue grew only 2.1 percent at firms where profits per partner exceeded $2 million, raising questions on whether those rate increases are sustainable. (American Lawyer)
• A company’s legal department is far more likely than any of its other departments to fall for an email phishing scam, according to Verizon’s new 2015 Data Breach Investigations Report. The report said 23 percent of recipients open phishing messages, while 11 percent actually click on the fatal attachments. (Lexology)
• Companies are looking for lawyers to fill corporate counsel positions, especially in practice areas including compliance, contracts, generalists, and cybersecurity and data privacy, according to several recent surveys. However, average salaries that companies pay to corporate counsel rose a modest 3 percent in 2014, similar to the national average for all positions, according to the data. (Bloomberg BNA)
• Three former partners at Fenwick & West have launched patent litigation boutique Tyz Marton Schumann in San Francisco, with the aim of sharply undercutting their former firm on rates in a bid to take away clients. Patent litigator Ryan Tyz, who left Fenwick eight months ago after 10 years at the firm, is joined by Ryan Marton and David Schumann, who both left Fenwick on Friday. (The Recorder)
Legal Market
• Slaughter and May and Pinsent Masons have held on to their top positions in UK corporate client rankings, while Norton Rose Fulbright has nudged Linklaters out of the top five firms based on total stock market clients, according to new data published by Adviser Rankings. (The Lawyer)
Laterals and Moves
• Sidley Austin LLP announced Monday that it had hired Vijay S. Sekhon, the sixth partner to join the firm in Southern California this year. Sekhon, a former senior counsel in the Office of the General Counsel of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, will work in Sidley’s mergers & acquisitions and private equity practices, with a focus on handling transactions for public and private companies, and private equity firms. He leaves Klee, Tuchin, Bogdanoff & Stern, where he led the corporate practice. (Law360)
• Littler Mendelson has hired Zev Eigen as its first national director of data analytics, as the firm seeks to leverage its growing body of so-called big data to distinguish itself among rival labor and employment firms, the firm announced Monday. Eigen, a former Littler associate and senior counsel at Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. who has a PhD in behavioral and policy sciences from MIT, will be based in Littler’s Century City Office. (Big Law Business)
• Google Inc. has added Cooley partner Heidi Keefe to its legal team in its fight against patent infringement claims over video technology, in a case filed in the Northern District of California by Max Sound Corp. Keefe joins a team that already includes lawyers from Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. (The Recorder)
Technology
• Law firms are rapidly migrating to the cloud, according to a new survey released Monday by legal content-management software provider iManage. The company released the report for the start of the annual legal tech conference, ILTACon in Las Vegas. (Big Law Business)
• Russia has postponed implementing a law that has created a showdown with Google, Facebook and other U.S. internet companies that would have required them to store Russian user data on servers located on Russian soil. It hands U.S. companies a small victory but illustrates the mounting pressures abroad. (WSJ)
Legal Education
• In an Aug. 27 filing to U.S. District Court for Arizona, a former graduate and employee of Arizona Summit Law School argued she has adequate grounds to sue for discrimination and fraud, rejecting the school’s contentions that her lawsuit is meritless. Plaintiff Paula Lorona alleges, among other things, that the school misrepresented its students’ academic credentials and overstated their bar exam scores. (National Law Journal)
Miscellaneous
• The New York state legislature is considering a bill that would establish the nation’s first independent commission to investigate and discipline prosecutors for misconduct, similar to the kind it already has for judges. Such a body is needed to rein in behavior by some prosecutors, who today are virtually exempt from outside oversight or accountability, writes Bennett Gershman, a professor at Pace Law School. (The Daily Beast)
• Law firms advising clients on marijuana businesses could arguably be considered a co-conspirator in a felony, observes Mark Silow, firmwide managing partner of Fox Rothschild. In the third part of a Big Law Business series of video interviews with Silow, he discusses the state of marijuana law, how his firm began practicing in the space, and his concerns about the industry. (Big Law Business)
• A U.S. appeals court has canceled the $15,000 incentive award that class action attorney Adam Levitt received as a lead plaintiff in litigation over Southwest Airlines Co. drink coupons. The court found that Levitt, who heads Grant & Eisenhofer’s consumer practice group in Chicago, failed to disclose he was co-counsel in a separate case with his own lawyer, Joseph Siprut, founding partner of Siprut P.C. in Chicago. Finding a potential conflict of interest, the court also cut Siprut’s fees by $15,000. (National Law Journal)
• Hausfeld, an international law firm with links to companies affected by Google Inc.’s activities in Europe, and Avisa, a European public affairs company that has represented complainants in the EU’s antitrust case against Google, plans to announce Tuesday that they have launched an online platform to help companies sue Google for financial damages in European courts. (New York Times)
• A federal judge Monday acquitted a prominent Chicago lawyer of charges that he coached clients and witnesses to lie, asserting that some practices that prosecutors had questioned in the case were actually good legal work. (Washington Post)