Wake Up Call: Dentons Splitting From Russia Offices Jan. 1

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

• Dentons said it will complete its separation from its Russian offices effective Jan. 1, 2023, but it plans to keep working with them. The offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg, operating as new, independent firm Nextons, will have a team of 130 lawyers. “The Russian offices will no longer be part of Dentons. However, Nextons will be Dentons’ preferred law firm in Russia, and the two firms will collaborate on matters for international clients, where permitted to do so by sanctions and Dentons policies,” Dentons said. (Dentons)
• US and Bahamian bankruptcy lawyers are vying for control of the $256 million real-estate portfolio of former FTX.com CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. (Business Insider)
• The trustee in the Girardi Keese bankruptcy filed several lawsuits this week to try to recover $428,820.11 in checks that Tom Girardi wrote to others, including three former attorneys and a legal secretary at his Los Angeles law firm and to a former client. (The Recorder)
• Weil hiked its pay for its junior lawyers in London to 165,000 pounds ($201,119). (Roll On Friday)
• Jones Day is billing former associates for their bar study expenses because they did not complete their contractual two-year stay with the firm. (Above The Law)

Lawyers, Law Firms

• Milwaukee-based Quarles & Brady unveiled a new brand name, website, and logo. (Quarles.com)
• New Jersey agreed to pay $400 an hour to attorneys at Montgomery McCracken to conduct an independent review into the state’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic under Governor Phil Murphy’s administration. By comparison, Gibson Dunn got paid $350 an hour by former Governor Chris Christie’s administration for an investigation into the Bridgegate scandal. (NJ.com)
• The alleged murder of a Georgia divorce attorney last week by his client’s ex-husband has some lawyers worried about their safety. (WaPo)
• North Carolina Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn is getting sued for $193,297 in allegedly unpaid legal fees by The Bopp Law firm, which defended him from a now moot challenge to his unsuccessful reelection campaign. (News Observer)

Laterals, Moves, In-house

• Industrial supply company W.W. Grainger hired Eaton Corporation executive and deputy chief legal officer Nancy Berardinelli-Krantz as senior vice president and chief legal officer, effective Jan. 30, 2023. She succeeds John Howard, who is retiring after 23 years. She was earlier in-house at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company and a trial attorney at Jones Day. (Grainger.com)
• Fried Frank grabbed Debevoise & Plimpton M&A and private equity counsel Andrew Rearick as partner in London. (FriedFrank.com)
• Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney added tax attorney and certified public accountant Jared Johnson as a shareholder in Philadelphia. He joins from White & Williams. (BIPC.com)
• Blank Rome hired Big Law legal project and knowledge management veteran Leslie Brown as director of client value, based in New York. She’s a lawyer and joins from Greenberg Traurig, where she served as director of legal process innovation. (BlankRome.com)
• UK-headquartered Holman Fenwick Willan reelected managing partner Jeremy Shebson to a second four-year term, starting April 1, 2023. (HFW)
• Effective Jan. 1, 2023: Wiggin and Dana promoted corporate attorney R.J. Kornhaas and private client services attorney Erin Nicholls to partner; Herrick Feinstein elevated litigator Samuel Bazian to partner; Olshan Frome Wolosky promoted corporate and securities attorney Honghui Yu to partner and shareholder activism attorney Rebecca Van Derlaske to counsel. (OlshanLaw.com)

Technology

• Remote and hybrid work can dramatically expand the talent pool available to employers, but it also raises companies’ challenges and risks, such as information security problems and social isolation. Those are some of the observations in Seyfarth’s latest “future employer” survey report. (Seyfarth.com)

Legal Education

• The American Bar Association posted notice that three law schools are out of compliance with its bar passage rate standard. (ABA Journal)