Wake Up Call: Freshfields London PE Lawyers Get Extra Bonuses

In today’s column, Sidley’s revenues and profits surged in 2021 fueled by deals and strong demand; Big Law firms are again delaying office returns because of the spread of omicron-variant Covid-19; EY Law hired a legal services entrepreneur to expand its services in Canada.

• Leading off, U.K. elite firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer paid extra bonuses of around 50,000 pounds ($67,100) to its London-based private equity lawyers last year to keep them from leaving for deep-pocketed U.S. rivals. according to a report. (Financial Times)
• Sidley Austin’s revenues swelled 13.5% to $2.795 billion in 2021 and profits per equity partner rose 20.1% to around $3.718 million, according to this report based on early data. It says the firm added close to 2,000 new clients as litigation and regulatory practices and deal work powered growth. The firm added 584 lawyers, but that was mostly offset by a large number of exits. (American Lawyer)
• Two Big Law firms, Morrison & Foerster and Paul, Weiss, said they will again delay their office reopenings, this time because of omicron-variant Covid-19. Sheppard Mullin followed some other firms in indefinitely delaying its office return. (Reuters)

Lawyers, Law Firms

• EY Law hired Canadian legal tech entrepreneur Peter Carayiannis, founder of alternative legal service provider firm Conduit Law, as a partner to expand its services in Canada. EY Canada also recently named Shara Roy as its new chief legal counsel. She’ll also be executive managing partner of EY Law, which offers business law, tax law, and immigration law services. (Law.com International)
• Big London-headquartered firm HFW elected the head of its global aerospace practice, Giles Kavanagh, to be its new global senior partner, effective April 1. (HFW.com)
• When Justice Stephen Breyer retires, the Supreme Court will lose its “driving force” on intellectual property law. (National Law Journal)

Laterals, Moves, In-house

• Polsinelli picked up two corporate and transaction lawyers as shareholders in its private equity practice in Chicago. M&A attorney Evan Knobloch, a former Kirkland & Ellis partner, and in-house veteran Tracy Jacobson, a former chief legal and compliance officer at private equity-backed Elite Dental Partners, both join from HMB Legal Counsel; Norton Rose Fulbright said New York partner Robin Adelstein, its global and U.S. head of antitrust and competition, is adding U.S. co-head of commercial litigation to her roles; Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp brought in labor and employment attorney Christie Del Rey-Cone, a former Seyfarth Shaw partner, as a partner in New York; Epstein Becker Green added health care and corporate attorney Glenn Prives as a member in Newark, N.J. (EBGLaw.com)
• Milbank added South Korea focused corporate and M&A attorney David Cho as partner. He’s temporarily based in Los Angeles and will soon move to Seoul, where he will be office managing partner. Cho was previously at Dechert as a partner, Hong Kong office chief and Asia co-managing partner; Fenwick & West hired two technology transactions counsel in San Francisco in its IP practice. Susanne Petersen joins from Morrison & Foerster and Cara Ann Rydbeck from PricewaterHouseCoopers; Fox Rothschild hired clean energy litigator R. Taylor Speer as counsel in its Greenville, S.C., office; Alston & Bird recruited a former associate chief counsel at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Alexandra Marzelli, as counsel in Washington and Baltimore in the firm’s health care and FDA/food, drug & device groups. (Alston.com)
• The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission named acting general counsel Rob Schwartz to permanent GC. Schwartz, a former Arnold & Porter litigator, was appointed the commission’s acting GC in January 2021; New York-based blockchain infrastructure company Paxos hired Ben Gray as general counsel. He was recently deputy GC at San Francisco-based Block, which was led by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. (Corporate Counsel)

Promotions

• Wilson Elser promoted 19 attorneys to partner; Sullivan & Worcester elected four partners in Boston and New York; Dykema elected 11 new members. (Dykema)

Technology

• Reed Smith launched a mobile app that can help calculate the costs of arbitration based on location around the world. (Artificial Lawyer)