Wake Up Call: Ex-Kirkland Partner Leads Diversity Consultancy

In today’s column, 118 Big Law firms met certification requirements in the latest round of DiversityLab’s Mansfield rule program; Debevoise & Plimpton is the second big U.S. law firm in London to require employees and visitors to be vaccinated against Covid-19 to enter its offices; Mayer Brown appointed new office managing partners for Washington and Brussels.

• Leading off, after close to two decades at Kirkland & Ellis’ New York office, former restructuring partner Jon Henes is co-founding a consultancy, C Street Advisory Group, that advises corporations and law firms on business strategy and diversity and inclusion goals. (WJS) Henes, a former national campaign finance chair for Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, is serving as CEO for the consultancy, joined by other Harris campaign veterans in the venture. (Axios) Kirkland emeritus chair Jeffrey Hammes is said to be serving on its board of advisers, with other members coming from venture capital, media, and political consulting field. (The American Lawyer)
• DiversityLab said all 118 Big Law firms participating in the latest round of its four-year-old Mansfield Rule program have completed its certification requirements, aimed at increasing historically underrepresented groups’ presence in the firms’ management roles. (American Lawyer)
• Debevoise & Plimpton said that starting Oct. 11, it will require its London employees and visitors to be vaccinated against Covid-19 to enter its offices in the city. It’s the second U.S. firm, after Morrison & Foerster, to implement such a policy in London. (Law.com International)

Lawyers, Law Firms

• Mayer Brown appointed the head of its mobility and migration practice, Liz Espin Stern, as new managing partner for its Washington office. The firm also appointed government & global trade partner Jean-Philippe Montfort as office managing partner for Brussels. (Mayer Brown)
• Technology-focused Texas firm Munck Wilson Mandala merged with seven-lawyer firm Fleckman & McGlynn, which has a big trademark practice. The merger adds to Munck’s heft in Austin and adds a location in Houston. (Texas Lawyer)
• Several prominent entertainment attorneys are launching a new law firm in California. (Deadline)

Laterals, Moves, In-house

• An 11-year veteran of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Daniel Michael, said he’s joining Skadden, Arps. According to his LinkedIn profile, Michael was recently SEC chief of complex financial instruments unit, enforcement division; Morrison & Foerster recruited former Pennsylvania federal prosecutor Katherine (Kate) Driscoll and New York federal prosecutor Nathan Reilly as of counsel in its investigations + white collar defense group, based in New York. (MoFo.com)
• Sidley Austin hired transactional insurance lawyer Michael Devins in New York as a partner. He arrives from Debevoise & Plimpton, where he was a member of the mergers & acquisitions, insurance industry groups; Sidley also recruited energy and infrastructure and M&A lawyer Trent Bridges, former vice president and assistant general counsel at Magellan Midstream Partners, L.P., as a partner in Houston; Eversheds Sutherland added veteran energy industry in-house leader Alex Goldberg as senior counsel; Akin Gump grabbed Nixon Peabody tax equity, infrastructure, project finance lawyer Shariff Barakat as a partner in Washington. (AkinGump.com)
• Morgan Lewis got back a former associate at the firm, Amy Schuh, who returns as a partner in Philadelphia after working most recently as compliance chief at IT consultant Cognizant; Orrick hired away Fox Rothschild emerging companies and venture capital partner Max Cantor as a partner in its technology companies group in New York; Goodwin Procter in Paris poached Dechert intellectual property partner Marie Fillon for its life sciences & technology team; Arnold & Porter’s London office hired data protection and privacy counsel James Castro-Edwards; Fox Rothschild hired patent attorney Aparna Nemlekar as an IP partner in Pittsburgh. She was previously intellectual property counsel at PPG Industries. (FoxRothschild.com)

Technology

• Legal tech company Everlaw said it is moving its federal software as a service platform to Amazon Web Services’ GovCloud, which, it said, meets U.S. government security requirements. Everlaw said the move will allow it to continue to provide collaborative e-discovery and document review tools to federal agencies in the face of growing cybersecurity threats. (PRNewswire.com)