• Two Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer partners say Freshfields has an “extensive European network” and a “full-service corporate platform” that guided their decisions to leave Kirkland & Ellis, which has lost 13 corporate partners in two weeks. (Big Law Business)
• In its first action as a cyber-security enforcer, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced an e-commerce startup agreed to pay a $100,000 fine and submit to risk assessment of its data security practices twice per year. (Big Law Business)
• A large broker-dealer group in New York is splintering off the Texas-based law firm Bracewell, led by partner Julian Rainero, and joining Schulte Roth & Zabel, a law firm in Manhattan known for work on behalf of large hedge funds and investment funds. (Big Law Business)
• Boosted by a New York University School of Law scholarship program, Damaris Hernández recently became Cravath, Swaine & Moore’s first Latina partner. (New York Times)
Legal Market
• UK firm Eversheds, which has been looking for a U.S. merger partner, is reportedly in tie-up talks with Singapore-based firm Harry Elias. (The Lawyer)
• Mayer Brown‘s gross revenue rose a modest 2.8 percent in 2015, while revenue per lawyer ticked up 1.2 percent, and profits per equity partner gained a solid 7.6 percent, as the firm’s lawyer and equity partner headcount expanded slightly. (American Lawyer)
• Baker & Hostetler posted strong financial results in 2015, still earning from its trustee work for Bernard Madoff investors, but also gaining from expansion of its health care group and from a 2014 merger. (American Law Journal)
• Dallas-based Locke Lord saw gross revenue surge 40 percent in 2015 on the strength of a big merger in January 2015. (Texas Lawyer)
• McDermott Will & Emery’s incoming London chief Andrew Verguns plans to focus on a “new phase of growth” as part of the firm’s new global strategy. (The Lawyer)
Laterals and Moves
• The new trial boutique Wilkinson Walsh + Eskovitz, started by two Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison partners earlier this year, has acquired a new partner, Lori Alvino McGill, who was an appellate litigation partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. (American Lawyer)
• Profile: Recently named to lead a team of 21 other lawyers handling the plaintiffs’ cases massive consumer-fraud case against Volkswagen AG, class-action attorney Elizabeth Cabraser showed eloquence and attention to clients that contrasted with many other candidates for the job. (Wall Street Journal)
• Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young has hired a four-partner team away from K&L Gates, with two to go to its new Chicago office and the other two joining its Washington office. (Legal Intelligencer)
• Twitter Inc. has added prominent new members to its legal team in its suit pushing for more transparency in what companies can reveal about surveillance requests in national security investigations. (The Recorder)
Technology
• This week, two New Jersey lawmakers demanded that Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and digital forensics firm Stroz Friedberg reimburse the state for $2.8 million in allegedly over-billed legal fees in the Bridgegate investigation, but the acting attorney general denies the state was overcharged. (Big Law Business)
• As it looks for a way to salvage itself, Yahoo! Inc. is getting advice from Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP, and relying on three banks — Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and PJT Partners Inc. — to explore a sale and a fourth bank, Evercore Partners Inc., to help with an activist defense, according to people familiar with the matter. (Bloomberg News)
• As governments around the world introduce more stringent policies and regulations protecting user privacy on the Internet, law firms must lead the way in implementing these changes, the first step is to embrace privacy by design of web sites, writes a the head of a company that advises law firms on marketing. (Big Law Business)
• Hiring outside counsel to coordinate third-party consultants implementing strategic planning for data privacy and security protocols, and information management technology, can help create a “cone of protection” around attorney-clien communications. (LegalTech news)
• With the number and dollar cost of ransomware attacks exploding, real-time stream analytics firm ExtraHop recently launched a solution to detect and track such attacks and behavior over a company’s network, based on the increasingly prominent “control and contain” method. (LegalTech news)
• Federal investigators have plenty of ways to crack iPhones without forcing Apple Inc. to help them, experts argue. (Wired)
• Wilson Legal Solutions has added Jonathan Blair and Madjid Mouhous to the company’s London-based consulting team for Europe, Middle East and Africa, tasked with providing professional and technical services for the entire life cycle of law firms’ practice management and financial systems software. (LegalTech news
Legal Education
• The University of California Hastings College of Law is holding a competition in which students submit dissents in the “forceful” writing style of the late U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, with the winner to get $500 and a dinner for four with interim dean David Faigman. (National Law Journal)
Miscellaneous
• President Barack Obama looked set Thursday to nominate two new members to fill vacancies on the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, .(Big Law Business/Bloomberg News)
• Big Law Business is seeking freelance journalists and industry contributors to write about the business of law. (Big Law Business)
• Several Asian-American judges have been mentioned as leading candidates to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat of Justice Scalia, and the White House Thursday held a conference call with Asian-American and Pacific Islander leaders to discuss the court. (National Law Journal)
• The Justice Department granted a former State Department and Hillary Clinton campaign employee immunity from prosecution to get him to give investigators information about the former secretary of state’s use of a private email server for government business, people familiar with the case said. (Wall Street Journal)
• “Avoid reporters and the attorney general” advised a guidebook for Trump University staff, among thousands of pages of documents linked to lawsuits targeting education seminars that the Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has cited. (Politico)