Tulkinghorn: Enforcer to be reckoned with
Tulkinghorn has always aspired to have a title or nickname that accurately reflects his standing and reputation.
For that reason he has nothing but envy for Dewey & LeBoeuf chairman Steven Davis, whom insiders at the firm have labelled the ‘Sicilian Enforcer’.
It’s not quite clear how he earned the moniker, but it’s little wonder that no one dared to challenge him in the firm’s elections last September.
Leite’s very important datesHave pity on Baker & McKenzie executive committee chair Eduardo Leite, who took the role 18 months ago and has since spent every second of every day aspiring to visit all 69 of the firm’s offices.
Not too much pity, mind. Leite recently told one of Tulkinghorn’s scribes that he’s been taking his wife with him everywhere he goes, so it’s basically been like a backpacker’s travels – a statement that chimes with reports that he came back from the firm’s Thailand offices wearing hokey bracelets and an undeserved sense of worldliness.
Put that in your Piper
DLA Piper’s City office appeared to stick two fingers up to The Lawyer’s UK associates survey (where the firm came bottom of UK associates’ wish list of firms to work for) last week by making four lateral hires in just one day. But given that three of these laterals came from Dewey & LeBoeuf – whose recent troubles have been laid bare in the business pages – perhaps it wasn’t such a coup after all.
That said, the firm still managed to poach restructuring partner Justin Conway from Goldman Sachs, where there is no suggestion of things going sour. So it’s still
two fingers up… well, maybe just a pinkie.
Musco fights
Allen & Overy (A&O) sent a press release out a couple of weeks ago trumpeting how it had contributed to Russian legal history. The firm had sponsored Moscow State University’s mooting team to take part in the Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition in Washington DC. The team became the first from Russia to triumph.
However, this was not the only Russo-US advocacy victory linked to A&O of late. In March former A&O Moscow lawyer and poet Deirdre Clark (who was sacked
after refusing to stop writing her racy online novel) won the right to pursue her $35m (£22m) wrongful termination and sexual discrimination claim against her former firm in New York. Nurturing persuasive litigators can be a rouble-edged sword, it seems.
