Wake Up Call: DWT Tie-Up Adds 44 Lawyers, New Chicago Office

In today’s column, a federal judge ordered the state of Louisiana to pay $3.8 million for legal fees to the Center for Reproductive Rights; the DC Bar filed ethics charges against Rudy Giuliani; Kirkland & Ellis has the most corporate attorneys in Houston, according to a new ranking.

• Leading off, Seattle-headquartered Davis Wright Tremaine is adding 44 lawyers through a combination with McGonigle, a financial services boutique. The merger, effective July 1, more than doubles DWT’s banking and financial services practice and gives it its first Chicago office while boosting its presence in Washington and New York. (DWT.com)
• Chicago-founded Kirkland & Ellis tops a new ranking of Houston law firms by corporate lawyer headcount with 168 in the city. Houston-headquartered Vinson & Elkins is second with 133, but it has more local lawyers overall with 267 in Houston compared with Kirkland’s 218. (Houston Business Journal)
• A federal judge ordered the state of Louisiana to pay $3.8 million for legal fees to the Center for Reproductive Rights and law firms that sued the state over its abortion restrictions on doctors. The plaintiff clinics and its lawyers from Morrison & Foerster, O’Melveny & Myers, and New Orleans firm Rittenberg, Samuel & Phillips had sought $8.4 million in fees. (Reuters)

Lawyers, Law Firms

• Eversheds Sutherland expanded its commercial litigation and real estate practice in Ireland through a partnership with Dublin-based boutique firm Kenny Solicitors. (Global Legal Post) UK Big Law firm Osborne Clarke had 19% global revenue growth in 2021. (Law.com International)
• The day before the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots then Vice President Mike Pence’s chief counsel told him that trying to block certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the presidential election, as President Donald J. Trump demanded, would violate U.S. law. (New York Times) Rudy Giuliani was hit by new ethics charges by the DC Bar’s attorney discipline office, which said the former Trump attorney made unsubstantiated fraud accusations about the 2020 election. (CNN)
• Investor lawsuits have come in the wake of the collapse of a 2021 SPAC merger for Parallel Inc., an Atlanta-based cannabis producer then headed by a chewing gum billionaire William “Beau” Wrigley Jr. (Politico)
• Milbank advised lenders for the construction of New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport’s $9.5 billion New Terminal One. (NY.gov)
• The Federal Trade Commission faces exits of “longtime staffers” frustrated with the management style of FTC Chair Lina Khan. (New York Post)

Laterals, Moves, In-house

• Norton Rose Fulbright recruited former Ashurst global managing partner James Collis, an experienced acquisition and leveraged finance lawyer, as a banking and finance partner in London. Collis spent close to 15 years in Paris and London at UK Big Law firm Ashurst, where he was managing partner from May 2012 to June 2016. He arrives recently from Squire Patton Boggs, where he was a partner in London; Ashurst grabbed longtime Clifford Chance corporate lawyer Yan Yuan as a partner in Shanghai, China. He worked for Clifford Chance in both New York and China; Michael Best hired Sidley Austin Chicago managing associate Brett Valentyn, an M&A and private equity attorney, as corporate transactional senior counsel in Madison, Wisconsin. (Michael Best.com)
• Vermont Attorney General T.J. Donovan is resigning June 20 to join online gaming industry company Roblox as director of public policy and US state strategies. (Associated Press) Shaila-Ann Rao, the former general counsel of Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, was appointed interim secretary general for motor sport at the Geneva-based Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile. Her appointment is reportedly causing some concern at the Ferrari Formula One team. (GrandPrix.com)