New Partner Season Starts, But What’s a Partner Anymore?

The New Year means one thing in Big Law: New partner announcements. But new partner season is more confusing than ever as law firms continue to tinker with the definition of partnership in their efforts to be more profitable.

Changes: Honigman, a Detroit-based law firm, recently created a third tier of partners that are told they have no shot at actually taking home a portion of the firm’s profits—which used to be the definition of a partnership.

Attitude Adjustments: “You really need to have a partnership that is as profitable as possible,” Honigman’s CEO, David Foltyn, said. Roy Strom writes about how that will require adjustments for young lawyers in his latest Big Law Business column.

DAILY BRIEF

Law Firms

King & Spalding Lands Ex-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein
King & Spalding has landed former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to be a partner in the firm’s government investigations team, after a rocky tenure as the Justice Department’s second-in-command.

Trump Picks Covington Lawyer for FCC Inspector General
President Donald Trump has tapped a Covington & Burling LLP attorney to serve as inspector general of the Federal Communications Commission.

Latham & Watkins Becomes Target of Ghosn’s Wrath
Latham & Watkins LLP, one of the world’s largest legal firms, was singled out by fugitive auto titan Carlos Ghosn as one of the actors responsible for his arrest and prosecution in Japan.

Holland & Knight Adds Leading Chicago U.S. Attorney
Holland & Knight has hired Brian Hayes, a former FBI special agent who headed the criminal division of Chicago’s U.S. attorney’s office.

In-House

Payments Startup Brings Aboard McGuireWoods Fintech Leader
A Silicon Valley-based payments company facing claims of racial discrimination and retaliation has recruited a Big Law partner to become its first in-house legal chief.

Business of Law

Jones Day Women ‘Rebuke’ Sanctions Bid, Say Firm Hides Pay Data
Six women suing Jones Day for systemic discrimination against female associates have “good reason to believe” the bias extends to pay. The firm’s motion seeking sanctions that argues otherwise is based on “cherry-picked” facts and “misleading caricatures,” they told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Ethics

Proposal Would Protect Confidentiality of Attorney-Inmate Emails
Federal inmates would be able to send emails to their attorneys without concern that prison officials might turn them over to prosecutors under bipartisan legislation reintroduced in Congress.

Judiciary

Trump Court Pick Would Ax Tweets on Clintons, Obama if Confirmed
A Trump judicial nominee who disparaged the Clintons and mocked Barack Obama on Twitter said he’d probably disable his account if confirmed to a federal district court seat but didn’t commit to taking down the posts before then.

Leonard Leo to Keep Judicial Advocacy Focus in New Venture
A multi-million-dollar campaign touting President Donald Trump’s judicial appointments ahead of the 2020 election cycle will be among the first projects for a new conservative advisory group headed by the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo.

WAKE-UP CALL

Dentons’ New Dublin Office Targets Finance, Tech & Aircraft
In today’s column, Carlos Ghosn says he fled Tokyo because he had “zero chance” of a fair trial. King & Spalding hired former Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, and in California, litigation finance startup Legalist says cases it has funded have recovered $500 million for plaintiffs.

PRACTITIONER INSIGHTS

INSIGHT: Industry Groups Seek to Cleanup a Challenging Interpretation of CERCLA
A major CERCLA case before the U.S. Supreme Court will determine whether landowners have the right to bring a lawsuit in state court while the EPA is overseeing remediation of a Superfund site. The Montana Supreme Court ruled for the landowners, and without a reversal, the business community will be loathe to willingly participate in the federal scheme that has functioned for decades, Morgan Lewis attorneys explain.

INSIGHT: ITC ALJs Rule Quickly on IP Rights—Attorneys Risk Sanctions for Not Cooperating
A recent International Trade Commission ALJ ruling offers important lessons to anyone involved in the battles over U.S. intellectual property rights, Perkins Coie IP attorneys say. The ALJ sanctioned the complainant’s attorneys twice— for producing 160,000 pages of documents late, and for dropping four claims the day before an evidentiary hearing. And they almost got sanctioned a third time.

INSIGHT: Step Act—Earned Time Credits on the Horizon
The First Step Act will enable some prisoners to earn time credits that can be used for pre-release custody options, like entering a halfway house or home confinement. But federal sentencing and prison experts Alan Ellis, Mark Allenbaugh, and Nellie Torres Klein explain that impediments still exist to full implementation by 2022 for the recidivism reduction program.

WORKFLOWS

Steptoe & Johnson said that Dennis Raglin has joined the Los Angeles office as a partner | Armstrong Teasdale has named partner Aubyn Krulish managing attorney of the Denver, CO office | BakerHostetler has added Morgan Holtman as a partner on its international tax team in Washington from KPMG | Katten announced that Mitchel C. Pahl has joined its Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation practice as a partner in New York from Orrick | Carlton Fields added Christina M. Gagnier as a shareholder in the Cybersecurity and Privacy Practice in Los Angeles | Fragomen has appointed Rodney Malpert as managing partner of its Northern California practice, and Nadine Goldfoot as managing partner of the U.K. practice | Morrison & Foerster said that David Fertig has joined as a partner in its Commercial Litigation Group in New York | Perkins Coie has appointed Seattle-based partner Kathleen M. O’Sullivan as chair of the firm’s Executive Committee | Bradley Arant Boult Cummings hired Richard E. Graves as an associate in the Real Estate Practice Group in Nashville | Jackson Lewis added principals Alexandra LaCombe and Aimee Guthat to the Immigration Practice in Detroit; both arrive from Fragomen | Ballard Spahr added patent attorneys Dr. Kenneth H. Sonnenfeld and Dr. Margaret Bolce Brivanlou to the IP Team in New York | Morgan Lewis hired Heather Sears as of counsel in Washington.