Wake Up Call: Analytics Gain Traction at Law Firms

Below is the latest list of the top news in the legal industry.

• Steptoe & Johnson said on Monday that it has acquired seven attorneys fromSquire Patton Boggs ,bolstering Steptoe’s financial services practice group. For Squire Patton Boggs, the departures are just the latest in a growing list of partners to leave the firm since Squire Sanders acquired Patton Boggs last summer. (Big Law Business)

• Chris Porrino, chief counsel to NJ Governor Chris Christie , talked to Big Law Business about handling legal fallout linked to the so-called Bridgegate scandal, his previous job managing the New Jersey Attorney General’s Division of Law, and his view that the best lawyers are the most efficient problem solvers. Porrino plans to return to Lowenstein Sandler as co-chair of its national litigation practice in September. (Big Law Business)

• DLA Piper has hired Brian Wheeler as a corporate partner in the firm’s San Francisco and East Palo Alto offices. Wheeler, who has practiced in London and Tokyo, leaves Cooley. He represents public and private companies through mergers and acquisitions and financing transactions, notably advising Move Inc. for its $995 million sale to News Corp. (The Recorder)

• McKool Smith has added intellectual property litigator Robert Allen as a principal in the firm’s Los Angeles office. Allen, who leaves a private solo practice he started four years ago, has worked in litigation and transactional work in the music and entertainment industry. (The Recorder)

• Cleveland-based law firm Benesch has hired four partners to join its litigation practice group, including Joseph A. Castrodale, who becomes the firm’s vice chair, chair of litigation and a member of its executive committee. All four attorneys are leaving Ulmer & Berne LLP. (Beneschlaw.com)

Technology

• Law firms to date have made scant use of data analytics to guide their litigation decisions . But several new software and technology companies, including a few working directly with law firms, are mining vast amounts of data available on litigation trends. Experts believe new analytic tools for the legal industry based on this data could grow sharply in coming years, sparking new competition among law firms. (Big Law Business)

• The legal industry should embrace the best of what technology offers, especially social networking , writes Monica Zent, founder & chief executive officer of Foxwordy, a social media platform for lawyers, and founder of ZentLaw. (Big Law Business)

• Hacker group “The Impact Team” says it has snatched some 37 million records from the parent company of extramarital dating site AshleyMadison.com and will make them public if the site does not shut down operations. The Canada-based parent company, Avid Life Media, called the breach “criminal” and said it has a good idea who’s responsible. (LegalTech news)

Legal Market

• After its losses of several groups of attorneys in the last year, Dickstein Shapiro LLP may be looking for a merger partner to bolster its outlook. (Law360)

• UK-based Irwin Mitchell and DAC Beachcroft are among top law firms cashing in on medical negligence cases against the UK National Health Service that have seen patients awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and costs for alleged harm suffered, with award amounts continuing to rise. (The Lawyer)

• Herbert Smith Freehills and Norton Rose Fulbright have won major roles in an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange in which energy company Menhaden Capital aims to raise 150 million pounds ($234 million). (The Lawyer)

Dewey

Francis Canellas, star prosecution witness in the Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP trial, said during Monday’s cross-examination that he never talked about improper accounting practices with Dewey’s former chairman, Steven Davis, while Canellas was finance director at the now-defunct firm. Davis, former executive director Stephen DiCarmine and ex-CFO Joel Sanders, are on trial in the case. Canellas is one of seven former Dewey employees who have pleaded guilty in exchange for lighter sentences. (WSJ Law Blog)

Legal Education

• Going to law school can be the best decision you’ve ever made, especially if you don’t want to be a lawyer , writes Jake Heller, founder and chief executive officer of Casetext, a San Francisco-based site that offers a public legal research tool and online community. (Above the Law)

• The Tallahassee Police Department last week announced a new $100,000 reward for information leading to arrest and conviction of whoever was responsible for the 2014 murder of Dan Markel, a prominent professor at Florida State University Levin College of Law. The department is already offering a $25,000 reward for anonymous tips in the unsolved case, for which the department has made no arrests or named any suspects. (National Law Journal)

Miscellaneous

• When ruling against the online company Aereo for copyright violation after it had distributed broadcast channels over the Internet, Chief Justice John G. Roberts had owned as much as $500,000 of Time Warner stock. The media company that had filed a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court urging for such a ruling. (DealBook)

• If you want to be a federal judge by the age of 35 , don’t be timid, and always give people credit when it’s warranted and even when it isn’t, says 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski. (ABA Journal)

• Wang Yu was a Chinese commercial lawyer quietly working on patent disputes until she was convicted on “questionable” charges linked to a dispute over a train ticket. The injustices she saw during her two and a half years in prison convinced her to become a human rights lawyer,and she is now one of the 100 lawyers Chinese authorities detained in highly coordinated raids on human rights lawyers across 19 Chinese provinces. (Washington Post)

The Big Law Business Summit

• Judge Shira A. Scheindlin , who serves on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, said technological innovations and electronic discovery have contributed to a “tremendous decline” in trials. While federal judges are catching on to new technologies, “I can tell you that appellate judges know nothing about it,” she said. (Big Law Business)

• Ann Klee, VP of global operations for environment, health & safety at General Electric Company, said outside counsel costs are increasing at a rate exceeding inflation. “If we look at lawyers whose rates are $1,000 an hour ,the number of those lawyers have increased by 75 percent,” Klee said. (Big Law Business)

• Big Law Business is publishing a photo gallery of the day’s events at our inaugural Summit on Wednesday at the Apella in NYC. (Big Law Business)