Wake Up Call: A Dozen Law Firms Say 90% of Employees Vaccinated

In today’s column, Greenberg Traurig is Florida’s first Big Law firm to require vaccinations for personnel; the pandemic knocked the top earning Fortune 1000 legal department chief in 2019 down to No. 72 in 2020, new data show; Skadden is offering retention bonuses to associates in certain practice areas.

• Leading off, 11 large law firms in a recent survey said at least 90% of their personnel are vaccinated, while most firms didn’t disclose their vaccination rates. (American Lawyer); Vaccination rates are a new way to rank law firms, a legal blog said. (Above The Law)
• Greenberg Traurig is requiring lawyers and staff to be vaccinated against Covid-19 to enter its 30 U.S. offices. It’s the first Florida-based Big Law firm to join the lengthening list of firms adding vaccine mandates. (Daily Business Review)
• With dozens of firms announcing return-to-office plans and vaccine mandates, many firms are dealing with requests for exceptions to the rules. (American Lawyer)
• As a surge in Delta-variant Covid-19 cases deflates courts’ hopes of reducing litigation backlogs, judges are pushing harder for civil litigants to reach pretrial settlements; Delaware courts are bringing back a mask requirement, effective Aug. 16, and unvaccinated court employees will have to get weekly Covid testing starting in September. (Delaware Law Weekly); Meanwhile, district courts in Texas and Illinois, among others, have announced policies requiring staff to be vaccinated or to get frequent testing. (National Law Journal)

Lawyers, Law Firms

• Fox Corporation’s chief legal & policy officer Viet D. Dinh jumped two places to No. 1 in ALM Intelligence’s latest general counsel compensation rankings for 2020, with about $6.76 million in total compensation, including about $2.53 million in salary and $4.24 million in bonus plus nonequity incentives. Last year’s No. 1, Walt Disney’s Alan Braverman, fell to No. 72. on the chart, with about $1.58 million in salary and no bonus. The analysis is based on Fortune 1000 companies’ 2020 Securities and Exchange Commission filings and compensation data. (Corporate Counsel)
• Skadden, Arps is quietly offering retention bonuses to associates, but only those in M&A and capital markets in the New York office, a report says. (Above The Law); A Proskauer Rose partner working for The New York Times accidentally emailed a strategy memo to the paper’s adversaries in a unionization dispute with technology and product staffers, a report says. (Daily Beast)
• The Biden administration in its first six months has recruited far fewer Big Law attorneys for top agencies than the Trump administration did in its first half year. (National Law Journal); An independent Michigan election redistricting group Thursday sparked controversy by hiring as its litigation counsel law firm BakerHostetler and its partner E. Mark Braden, a former chief counsel to the Republican party. (Bridge Michigan)

Laterals, Moves, In-house

• Squire Patton Boggs appointed two new practice leaders: Cip Beredo, a member of the firm’s 12-person global board, becomes head of its global corporate practice, while partner Kevin McCart, a former army prosecutor and civil litigation attorney, will lead the firm’s government investigations & white collar practice; Kaufman Dolowich & Voluck said litigator Aimee Hamoy, a former deputy district attorney in Contra Costa County, Calif., joined the firm as a litigation partner, working for San Francisco Bay Area clients from her Oakland home office; Nicolaides Fink Thorpe Michaelides Sullivan added insurance coverage litigator Dawn Hove as a partner in San Diego. (Nicolaidesllp.com)
• Hinckley Allen added trusts & estates attorney Joseph Enriquez as a partner in Providence, R.I.; former New York federal prosecutor Michael Robotti, who worked on the prosecution of Mexican drug kingpin “El Chapo,” is joining Ballard Spahr in New York; Moses & Singer recruited veteran intellectual property litigator Milton Springut as partner in New York, while his colleague Caroline Boehm joins as of counsel. (MosesSinger.com)

Technology

• Womble Bond Dickinson announced a partnership with legal tech company Everlaw, which is helping the U.K.-founded law firm streamline its e-discovery. (PR Newswire); Robins Kaplan launched a suite of litigation-aligned professional services, include e-discovery, science and engineering advice, and patent analytics, among others. (RobinsKaplan.com)

Legal Education

• Steptoe & Johnson LLP said the first three college graduates in its inaugural two-year, pre-law fellowship program have entered the firm as full-time employees. (Steptoe.com)