Wake Up Call: Big Firms Advise in $60 Billion Deals Over Weekend

In today’s column, Dentons is the latest firm to partly roll back pay cuts it made early in the Covid-19 crisis; police in Illinois charged a man with abducting two University of Chicago Law School students and allegedly sexually assaulting one of them, among other charges; McDonald’s hired former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and other Paul Weiss attorneys to defend it in a federal discrimination lawsuit filed by Black franchise owners; Eversheds Sutherland legal tech offshoot Konexo is partnering with a board data governance platform in a partly Covid motivated move.

• Leading off, Latham & Watkins is advising U.S. chipmaker Nvidia on its approximately $40 billion deal to acquire U.K.-headquartered chip designer Arm Ltd. from SoftBank Group Corp., in one of the biggest chip deals ever. Morrison & Foerster is advising Softbank, while Hogan Lovells is advising Arm, on the deal which could take as long as 18 months to clear regulators and may see antitrust challenges. Morrison & Foerster (Bloomberg News)

• In the weekend’s other big deal, Davis Polk is advising biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, Inc. in its acquisition of Immunomedics, Inc., maker of a promising breast-cancer therapy called Trodelvy. Goodwin Procter advised Centerview Partners, financial adviser to Immunomedics, while Watchell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz advised Immunomedics. The deal, valued at around $21 billion, is expected to close in 2020’s fourth quarter. (Businesswire.com) (Bloomberg News)

• The world’s biggest law firm by headcount Dentons, Friday became the latest Big Law firm to walk back austerity measures it made in the early days of the pandemic to protect its finances. Dentons said it is partially reversing pay cuts it made in April. Echoing other firms, Dentons’s U.S. CEO Mike McNamara said that the firm’s financial performance this year has been better than expected, but he warned that economic uncertainty still exists. (American Lawyer) The firm also sketched out a voluntary retirement program for staff and paralegals who turn 62 by year’s end, in a plan aimed at reducing its headcount. (Above the Law)

• David Polk’s move away from a strict lockstep compensation model last week shows the talent war in Big Law is still hot. Meanwhile, the gap between the richest law firms and the rest has gotten bigger in the pandemic. (BLAW)

• U.K.-Australian firm Herbert Smith Freehills said it will allow all of its people, including partners, to work remotely up to 40% of the time, as Big Law firms continue to expand their remote working policy during the pandemic. (Law.com International via Legaltech News)

• When pharmaceutical companies move to pause clinical trials for safety reasons, as AstraZeneca did for its Covid-19 vaccine trial last week, they often seek advice from their in-house, and sometimes outside, counsel on how to proceed. (American Lawyer)

• A Texas county judge who helped organize what might have been the first U.S. jury proceeding over Zoom counters critics of online proceedings. In a recent interview, she said dozens of judges in her court are providing public access to court proceedings via the internet. They are “getting over the old way of doing it because the values are so important to us.” Podcast. (Law.com)

• New York’s court system scheduled a Sept. 21 public hearing to assess civil legal needs of state residents who have low incomes, particularly in the Covid-19 pandemic. (New York Law Journal)

Lawyers, Law Firms

• McDonald’s hired former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and other Paul Weiss attorneys to defend it in a federal lawsuit alleging the corporation discriminated against Black franchise owners. Riley Safer managing partner Patricia Brown Holmes and of counsel Amy Andrews are also defending the fast food chain. (National Law Journal)

• Former Obama-era U.S. solicitor general Donald Verilli Jr., now a Munger, Tolles & Olson partner, is set to again defend the Affordable Care Act at the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court term. (National Law Journal)

• Some major U.S. law firms have been pulling back from China recently, but big Japanese law firms are expanding operations in the country, which replaced the U.S. as Japan’s biggest trading partner about a decade ago. (Nikkei Asian Review)

• San Diego-headquartered insurance-defense firm Tyson & Mendes said it has opened its 11th office, in Nashville, Tennessee. (TysonMendes.com)

• Withers announced the release of the fifth edition of “Art Law, The Guide for Collectors, Investors, Dealers & Artists,” written by current and former lawyers in the firm’s global art law practice. (Practicing Law Institute)

• Wrongfully imprisoned for almost a decade, Jarrett Adams is now a criminal defense lawyer who has dedicated his career to bringing justice to those who are underserved, says a report. (CNN)

Laterals, Moves

• The National Football League’s Tennessee Titans new legal chief, Adolpho Birch III, is back home in Nashville after 23 years working at the league’s New York headquarters. (BLAW)

• London-based Woodsford Litigation Funding, which is marking its 10-year anniversary, said former Big Law intellectual property litigation partner Nagendra (Nick) Setty joined its investment advisory panel as a member based in in San Francisco. Woodsford also said it hired former Weil litigation associate Dan Kesack as an investment officer, based in New York. (WoodsfordLitigationFunding.com)

• Newmeyer Dillion said litigator Louis “Dutch” Schotemeyer, a former in-house attorney in the home building and development industry, rejoined the firm as a partner in Newport Beach, California. He advises companies that don’t have dedicated in-house legal counsel, as well as companies within the real estate and construction sectors. (NewmeyerDillion.com)

Technology

• Eversheds Sutherland legal tech offshoot Konexo is partnering with board and legal entity management platform Diligent, in a deal motivated by the pandemic. (Artificial Lawyer)

• After the pandemic forced law firms to shift much of their work to virtual, they can benefit from the post-Covid world if they make the right investments in technology, writes a legal consultant for an IT and network security company. (Law.com)

• New court reporting technologies are either a potential source of gains or a job threat, depending on whether you are a legal tech investor or a human court reporter. (Legaltech News)

Legal Education

• Cook County prosecutors charged a Chicago man with breaking into the apartment of two University of Chicago Law School students, kidnapping and physically assaulting them, one of them sexually. (Chicago Sun Times) (AbovetheLaw.com)