Wake Up Call: Dentons Finalizes McKenna Merger

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

• Dentons on Wednesday finalized its merger with McKenna Long & Aldridge in a deal that adds 475 lawyers, professionals, paralegals and trainees into its ever-expanding fold, and underscores the importance of the U.S. market for legal services. (Big Law Business)

• Goodwin Procter has bolstered its private equity practice in London, hiring James Barrett and Edward Amer from Locke Lord LLP and Simon Fulbrook from King & Wood Mallesons. Including the new hires, Goodwin’s private equity group’s headcount has grown by 20 percent in the past 12 months. (WSJ)

• DLA Piper on July 1 is absorbing a dozen-lawyer team from Hardy Bowen, a Perth-Australia-based firm which is soon to close operations. As per agreement between the two firms,DLA Piper will take all but one of Hardy Bowen’s lawyers, to join its existing Perth staff of 51 lawyers , which has 10 partners. DLA Piper Australia’s managing partner John Weber said the hires add clout to the firm’s corporate and mining offering in Australia. (American Lawyer)

•Latham & Watkins has lost Graeme Sloan, its global co-chair for M&A practice and a private equity partner, to Morrison & Foerster ,where he becomes the firm’s London corporate head and co-chair of global M&A. Leaving Latham after nine years, Sloan goes to Morrison & Foerster as part of that firm’s continuing expansion in Europe, since it launched in 2013 by taking over Hogan Lovells’ Berlin office. (The Lawyer)

•Olswang continues to bleed management staff amidst rumored strife at its highest levels . The firm’s head of strategic development, Nigel Rea, left in May to take a management position at Lexis Nexis, one of several departures to hit the firm amidst reports of clashes between partners and former CEO David Stewart’s team. Olswang has said its business development and marketing director, Michelle Elstein, is leaving to join Morrison & Foerster’s London office. It lost general counsel Simon Callendar to Addleshaw Goddard in May. (The Lawyer)

• Jones Day has hired a five-strong team of lawyers from Gide Loyrette Nouel to join the Paris office’s Technology Media and Telecom practice and help it develop its Africa practices . (The Lawyer)

• The Singapore Attorney General’s Chambers has approved an alliance between Holman Fenwick Willan and the Singaporean firm AsiaLegal , which was established in 2002 and focuses on shipping litigation, marine insurance, general insurance and reinsurance matters, and litigation and arbitration. Effective July 1, the new firm operates under the name HFW AsiaLegal and enables Holman to extend its capabilities to encompass dispute resolution, transactions and regulatory expertise. (The Lawyer)

Dewey coverage.

• At the trial of three former Dewey & LeBoeuf executives, the now-defunct firm’s ex-financial controller, Ilya Alter, testified June 30 that he helped cook accounting entries for three years as part of a futile effort to fend off Dewey’s collapse in May 2012. Former Dewey chair Steven Davis, former executive director Stephen DiCarmine and ex-CFO Joel Sanders, are on trial in the case. Alter is one of seven former Dewey employees who have pleaded guilty in exchange for lighter sentences. (The American Lawyer)

Miscellaneous.

• “In a scathing ruling, the Fourth District Court of Appeal said a 2013 suit filed by Finton Construction Inc. against the Newport Beach law firm Bidna & Keys was an abuse of the court system and called the tactics of lawyers led by Alston & Bird partner James Evans Jr. ‘ conduct that brings disrepute to the entire legal profession .’” Finton sued Bidna & Keys for not returning a hard drive that had potential evidence in a trade secrets case, even though a trial court permitted the firm to hold the evidence. (The Recorder)

Technology.

• U.S. courts increasingly are allowing lawyers to use new technology during eDiscovery that can drastically reduce the number of documents that need review by humans. The result is that more and more of the work once handled by contract attorneys is being conducted by data scientists who use a machine learning technology, known as predictive coding . (Big Law Business)

• Bring-your-own-device policies can reduce some IT costs for companies and add convenience for employees, but they also raise complicated challenges for data protection and e-discovery , among other things. An e-discovery expert and consultant discusses possible solutions to these challenges. (Legaltech News)

• As software continues to eat away at law firms’ inventory and artificial intelligence gets smarter every year, the individual lawyer will evolve towards a more proportionate role in the law firm machinery: if not completely replaceable, then certainly not irreplaceable, argues consultant Jordan Furlong . (Big Law Business)