A partner in Jones Day’s Washington practice was this week sworn in as chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission. Antitrust specialist Deborah Platt Majoras, was nominated for the post by President George W. Bush in May and appointed last month. Majoras served as deputy assistant attorney general and principal deputy at the US Department of […]
The parent company of BPP Law School, has announced flat profits in its interim results, despite a strong performance by its law division. Pre-tax profit at the professional education group for the six months ended 30 June was £5.54m, a marginal decrease on the £5.55m recorded over the same period last year. The law division, […]
A leading corporate partner from Kirkland & Ellis has been appointed as president and chief executive of recovering US insurance giant Conseco. William Kirsch, a lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis since 1981, had been serving as executive vice president, general counsel and secretary of Conseco since September last year when the insurance group emerged from […]
Australia’s Arnold Bloch Leibler has appointed the former chairman of the Australian Competition Commission (ACCC) as a consultant to its trade practices group. Allan Fels, who joined the firm earlier this month, will also provide general consultation services, and has expressed an interest in the firm’s public interest law practice. Fels resigned from the ACCC […]
Insurance group Markel International has appointed its first ever head of legal. Penny Whitwell has been promoted from her role as general counsel of the company’s professional liability division to become head of legal for the entire business. Whitwell joined Markel in 1990 as a claims manager, moving to professional liability in 2001. She began […]
Well, that didn’t take long. No sooner had Squire Sanders & Dempsey and Coudert Brothers started conducting due diligence on each other to create their “merger of equals”, than the whole caboodle was, we’re told, dead in the water. Why has this happened? Apparently, after foraging around in each other’s lockers, one of the firms […]
In the write-up of the ‘In-house Lawyer of The Year Award’, reference was made to the case brought by Adam King against the publishers of The Sunday Telegraph. In some references to this case it was suggested that Adam King had lost his claim, when, in fact, he had succeeded in obtaining substantial damages, costs […]
Partnership ballot on second gateway to equity abolished; three-year track rolled out worldwide Clifford Chance salaried partners have scored a victory over their status as the firm prepares to introduce a simplified system for reaching equity. The new process arrives after months of consultation, led by partner John Barnard, following a backlash from salaried partners […]
Robert Schon, the Simmons & Simmons partner suing his own firm for racial discrimination, is one of a tiny number of partners Simmons cannot remove from the equity, The Lawyer can reveal. The majority of equity partners at Simmons can be de-equitised as a last resort if 75 per cent of the partnership vote to […]
DLA has won three Hamburg-based partners and 10 associates from former German ally Görg to launch its own base in the city. Görg and DLA went their separate ways last month after three years as best friends. The split came after DLA pressed for further integration in the wake of its merger talks with US […]
Lovells was gripped by terror last month when news broke of a glass table spontaneously exploding in one of the firm’s Atlantic House meeting rooms. The explosion forced the firm to close off around half a dozen rooms, but happily, they are used only for internal meetings so no clients were harmed in the explosion […]
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Tyco’s streamlining should have DuPont smiling The news that Tyco is revamping its legal department and naming just one law firm for each practice area reveals a serious attempt by the manufacturing conglomerate to out-DuPont the DuPont Legal Model. When Tyco began to emerge from crippling debts […]