Wake Up Call: Davis Wright’s New Office Targets Streaming Clients

Welcome to Bloomberg Law’s Wake Up Call, a daily rundown of the top news for lawyers, law firms, and in-house counsel.

• Davis Wright Tremaine said it expanded its Los Angeles presence with a new seven-partner office in Culver City, California, which it said is home to major streaming company clients including Amazon Studios, Apple TV, and HBO. The firm plans to add more lawyers to the office, whose partner-in-charge is Camilo Echavarria. (DWT.com)
• Shearman & Sterling said a deal team led by mergers & acquisitions partner Michael Dorf advised electric vehicle charging and media company Volta Inc. in an agreement to be acquired by Shell USA Inc. in an all-cash transaction valued at around $169 million. (Businesswire.com)
• Clifford Chance paid its highest earning partner 4.9 million pounds ($6.04 million) in its most recent fiscal year, 50% more than in the previous year. (Financial Times)
• The National Football League’s Detroit Lions recruited NFL in-house veteran Maggy Carlyle as senior vice president of legal affairs and general counsel. Carlyle arrives from the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Pac-12 Conference where she was general counsel and SVP. She has earlier been in-house at pro hockey team San Jose Sharks, the NFL League Office, and NFL teams San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs. (DetroitLions.com)

Lawyers, Law Firms

• Willkie Farr & Gallagher said partner Jared Bartie, chair of the firm’s sports transactions practice, led a team advising the National Basketball Association’s Utah Jazz on a long-term naming rights agreement and sponsorship deal with Delta Airlines. (Delta.com)
• The Manhattan district attorney’s office warned a publishing company that a soon-to-be released book by a former top prosecutor could compromise its continuing investigation of former President Donald Trump. (WSJ)
• The Justice Department’s top antitrust lawyer Jonathan Kanter is taking on tech giants but he may be overstretching his lawyers. (Politico)
• South Carolina lawmakers look likely to replace outgoing state Supreme Court Justice Kaye Hearn with a man, Judge Gary Hill, after two female candidates for the job dropped out of the running. If Hill is confirmed, the court will be all male for the first time in 35 years. (Associated Press)
• Soaring premiums for professional indemnity insurance pushed dozens of British law firms into bankruptcy in 2022, according to a report. (City A.M.)

Laterals, Moves, In-house

• Goodwin Proctor recruited health-care attorney Gregory Demske, former chief counsel to the inspector general in the US Department of Health and Human Services, as a partner in Washington. (GoodwinLaw.com)
• Weil Gotshal said capital markets partners Andy Hagan from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Gilles Teerlinck from White & Case will join the firm as partners in London. (Weil.com)
• McDermott Will & Emery hired Nicolette Kost de Sèvres as a partner in its Paris and Washington offices and co-head of the firm’s global investigations & compliance group, with London-based co-head Simon Airey. Kost de Sèvres joins from Mayer Brown, where she was head of compliance and investigations in Paris. (MWE.com)
• Deloitte Legal hired former Freshfields financial services attorney and legal innovation chief Isabel Parker as a partner in London. (Deloitte.com)
• Greenberg Traurig added restaurant company in-house attorney Toni N. Brown as corporate of counsel in Atlanta. (GTLaw.com)
• Epstein Becker Green added health-care industry and data security veteran Lisa Pierce Reisz in Columbus, Ohio, as a member in its health care and life sciences practice. She arrives from Vorys Sater Seymour and Pease. (EBGLaw.com)
• EverQuote, Inc., a Nasdaq-listed online insurance marketplace, recruited former Polsinelli shareholder Julia Brncic as general counsel and corporate secretary. She’s a biotech industry in-house veteran, arriving from health care and insurance giant Cigna where she was SVP, chief counsel, and corporate secretary. (Globe Newswire)