US big wigs return to roots after time spent politicking

TWO high-profile US lawyers - former vice president Walter Mondale and the former European Bank for Reconstruction general counsel Andre Newburg - have returned to private practice.

Mondale is returning to his old practice Dorsey & Whitney LLP, as one of the senior partners after a stint as US Ambassador to Tokyo.

Peter Kohl, managing partner of the firm's London office, said that Mondale would be an '"ambassador for us, adding prestige and his unique experience of trade negotiations and business workings, especially in Japan".

Mondale's main areas of work for the firm will be in "increasing the international capability and further developing the corporate and capital markets practice", said Kohl.

Newburg has also returned to his former firm, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, having resigned his post at the European Bank for Reconstruction.

He had been a partner in Cleary Gottlieb since the early 1960s, but "withdrew from the firm about five years ago to join the European bank", said Manley Hudson, the senior partner in the London office.

Newburg will be resident in the firm's London office where he will have the title of counsel to the firm.

Newburg has a special interest in Russia and in Eastern Europe, and speaks French, German, Russian and Dutch. Cleary Gottlieb has an established Russian practice and has represented the Russian government in debt negotiations.