Departures hit Orrick and Morgan Lewis

The US’s West Coast recruitment machine is in full swing, with Morrison & Foerster (MoFo) scooping a leading Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe antitrust partner and Morgan Lewis & Bockius losing a second former Brobeck Phleger & Harrison partner, this time to Jones Day.

Orrick’s Jesse Markham moved to MoFo’s San Francisco office on Wednesday (2 June) as a partner.

During his time with Orrick’s antitrust group, Markham acted for a slew of technology clients, including Microsoft. The antitrust group at Orrick is part of the firm’s litigation practice, led by Los Angeles-based partner Edwin Woodsome.

Morgan Lewis has suffered a second loss from its haul of Brobeck partners. Litigation expert Roderick McLeod has left for Jones Day’s San Francisco office, where he became a partner last Tuesday (1 June). His move follows that of another former Brobeck lawyer, Larry Engel, who jumped ship to White & Case in April.

Engel, a highly rated bankruptcy and restructuring partner and a member of the firm’s liquidation committee, has been in charge of managing the after-effects of Brobeck’s collapse.

Both Engel and McLeod joined Morgan Lewis in early 2003 as part of a group of 150 lawyers the firm rescued from Brobeck.