Kirkland Grabs Gibson Dunn Trio With Investigations Experience

Kirkland & Ellis is adding three lawyers from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher to help build its capabilities in the areas of antitrust, data privacy, and consumer protection.

Olivia Adendorff and Richard Cunningham, formerly of Gibson Dunn, have joined Kirkland already. Sean Royall, the longtime co-chair of Gibson Dunn’s antitrust and competition practice group, continues as a partner at Gibson Dunn pending his transition to Kirkland.

All three lawyers have experience handling major federal government investigations, including inquiries involving merger clearance, advertising and marketing compliance, privacy, and data security. Each of the three also has handled high-exposure government, private party and class action lawsuits for clients across industries including tech and pharmaceuticals.

The trio of attorneys will expand Kirkland’s litigation and government investigations practice.

“This group of lawyers brings strong experience and reputations for achieving results for their clients during internal investigations, before the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice, in litigation and at trial,” said Jeffrey Hammes, chairman of Kirkland’s global management executive committee, in a statement. “They will be a tremendous asset to our clients across the country who face an increasingly complex regulatory and litigation landscape.”

Privacy and antitrust are growing issues, particularly in the tech space, where government agencies have announced probes of major companies over their policies and practices.

Investigation Chops

Royall, who also was a founding co-chair of Gibson Dunn’s privacy, cybersecurity and consumer protection practice group, will bring significant firsthand experience with these probes.

He was the lead lawyer for Facebook in a privacy-related FTC investigation, in which a publicly announced settlement is pending judicial approval.

Last year, he was counsel for AT&T in connection with its acquisition of Time Warner and a member of the trial team that successfully defended that transaction against a DOJ-led court challenge.

Earlier in his career, he was deputy director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition. He will split his time between Kirkland’s Washington and Dallas offices.

Adendorff, who will also work out of Kirkland’s Dallas office, played a key role in the Facebook FTC investigation as well. Her litigation experience includes successfully defending Sanofi-Aventis in an antitrust-based False Claims Act suit brought by Amphastar Pharmaceuticals.

Cunningham will be based in Washington. He spent more than eight years as a staff attorney and senior trial counsel in the FTC’s Bureau of Competition. He was involved in many prominent enforcement actions, including against ProMedica Health System and Whole Foods.

In private practice, he secured unconditional clearance for Tenet Healthcare’s $2.1 billion joint venture with USPI, which created the nation’s largest operator of ambulatory surgery centers, and represented Allergan in competitor and consumer class action litigation.

Kirkland separately announced that it has picked up another partner in Dallas, Jeremy Fielding, a trial lawyer who last worked at boutique firm Lynn, Pinker, Cox & Hurst. Fielding has extensive experience in complex commercial cases including those in the energy sector.