Wake Up Call: DLA Piper Elects LGBT Leader as Global Co-Chair

In today’s column, Shearman & Sterling came back from a tough 2020 to post a 58% rise in profits; a big year for deals powered Greenberg Traurig over $2 billion in revenues for the first time; President Biden appointed a Crowell partner to a top Treasury post.

• Leading off, DLA Piper elected London-based corporate partner Jon Hayes to a four-year term as senior partner for DLA’s international, non-U.S. branch, and global co-chair of the overall firm, which has about 4,300 lawyers. Hayes, who takes over from Andrew Darwin May 1, is a former member of DLA’s international board and current lead sponsor of its LGBT+ network, Iris. He’s also a member of its diversity and inclusion council and the advisory board of its pro bono affiliate, New Perimeter. New York-based litigator Frank Ryan, elected in January 2021, is DLA senior partner for the Americas, and the firm’s second global co-chair. (DLA Piper)
• London-based Fieldfisher is among big U.K. law firms shedding Russian clients as sanctions pile on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. (WSJ) Investment banks are also under pressure to get out of Russia. (Financial News) Ukraine lawyers are helping fight Russia. Says one, “now is not the time to talk about commercial stuff.” (Law.com International via National Law Journal)

Lawyers, Law Firms

• Shearman & Sterling bounced back from double-digit revenue and profit drops in pandemic-stricken 2020 to have a big 2021. The New York-headquartered firm said leveraged finance, disputes, compensation and benefits, and antitrust work catapulted gross revenues up 17.5% to $1.012 billion, its first time over $1 billion. Its average profits per equity partner soared 58.4% to $3.005 million. (American Lawyer)
• Booming deal work added 15.8% to Greenberg Traurig’s 2021 revenues, which topped $2 billion for the first time. The Miami-based firm’s average PEP rose 19% to $2.3 million. (Daily Business Review) In 2021, Washington-headquartered Venable continued more than a decade of consistent growth. Total revenue grew about 5% to $717 million. Average PEP edged up 2.57% to $1.23 million. (American Lawyer) Gross revenues at transatlantic firm Womble Bond Dickinson gained 9.3% to $520.5 million in 2021. PEP increased 12.8%, to $810,000. (Daily Report)
• Sheppard Mullin, Kramer Levin, Winston & Strawn, Mayer Brown, Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Proskauer, and Linklaters matched the Cravath scale for associate pay. (Above The Law)
• The FBI has joined the search for a Big Law associate in Indianapolis missing for two weeks; federal prosecutors accused a Las Vegas attorney shot by FBI agents last week of running a $300 million Ponzi scheme. (Las Vegas Review Journal)

Laterals, Moves, In-house

• President Joe Biden nominated Crowell & Moring cybersecurity and government investigations partner Paul Rosen, the firm’s national security co-chair, to assistant secretary of investment security in the Treasury Department. (WhiteHouse.gov)
• Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner got real estate finance partner Heidi Azulay in Chicago. She arrives after 17 years at DLA Piper, where she was U.S. co-leader of the global proptech practice; Haynes Boone hired insurance recovery lawyer Robert Shulman as a partner working out of its Washington and New York offices. According to his LinkedIn profile, he was briefly at Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman after four years at Paley Rothman; Foley & Lardner got a team of four finance, transactions, and real estate lawyers from Greenberg Traurig in Orlando, Florida, including two partners.
• Sheppard Mullin added a five-attorney health care real estate team in Los Angeles led by former Polsinelli partner Timothy Reimers, who helped open Polsinell’s L.A. office; Lathrop GPM named Minneapolis-St. Paul-based trial partner Loren Hansen leader of the firm’s intellectual property litigation practice group;

Technology

• Reynen Court Inc., a legal technology platform backed by 20 law firms, raised $4.3 million in new funding, including additional money from existing backers Latham & Watkins and Clifford Chance. (Legalit Insider) E-discovery platform Everlaw said it added an audio and video redactions feature to handle multimedia evidence. (PR Newswire)