Baker McKenzie Hires Morgan Lewis Lawyers for New Team

Baker McKenzie has hired four new partners for its newly formed financial regulation and enforcement group, including three from fellow Big Law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.

Joining the three is another new partner, the former general counsel of the North American Securities Administrators Association, an organization of state securities administrators dedicated to protecting investors.

The new team includes former Morgan Lewis partners Amy J. Greer, who is based in New York and Washington; Jennifer L. Klass, who is based in New York; and Peter K.M. Chan, who is based in Chicago. Former NASAA general counsel A. Valerie Mirko is based in Washington.

Greer and Klass will co-chair the new financial regulation and enforcement group, which will be part of the firm’s North America litigation and government enforcement practice.

“Amy and Jen complement each other perfectly in their practices and in serving clients,” Peter Tomczak, chair of that practice, said in a statement. “Amy is a leading SEC enforcement litigator and Jen is a recognized and respected advisor on complex regulations and innovative advice.”

Tomczak said the new hires were part of a larger push by Baker McKenzie to expand its securities and financial services practices.

Earlier this month, the firm hired a team of five securities litigators in its Los Angeles office, including the former co-chair of DLA Piper’s securities litigation practice.

The seeds of the new financial regulation and enforcement group were planted more than five years ago, when Greer and Klass first worked together on a Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement action while at Morgan Lewis. Klass brought the regulatory expertise while Greer brought inside knowledge of the commission’s work, as a former SEC trial attorney.

After that, the two found that they often turned to each other for counsel in their otherwise unrelated day-to-day work.

“I am much stronger as an enforcement lawyer when I have a regulatory expert sitting next to me,” Greer said. “And Jen would find that it was valuable to consult with me on regulatory issues and ask me, well what do you think enforcement would think of that?”

The two lawyers decided to formalize this working relationship in their move to Baker McKenzie.

“They completely understood the thesis of our practice, and the idea that it’s a stronger practice if you have an integrated enforcement and regulatory piece,” Klass said.

Greer said she and Klass plan to further expand the new practice once they are settled in. “We are really just the start here,” she said.

Greer’s work focuses on securities enforcement and litigation with an emphasis on clients in finance. She advises on matters including insider trading, whistleblower concerns, and Dodd-Frank Act and Sarbanes-Oxley Act issues.

Klass, former vice president and associate general counsel at Goldman Sachs, advises firms on a range of regulatory, compliance and examination matters including investment adviser registration and interpretive guidance, fiduciary duty and conflicts of interest, and disclosure and internal controls.

Chan previously spent two decades at the SEC’s Chicago regional office and was one of the original architects of the commission’s Financial Reporting and Auditing Task Force.

Mirko previously worked in private practice after holding legal and compliance roles at Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. and Merrill Lynch.