Wake Up Call: Georgetown Law Ousts Professor Over Race Remarks

In today’s column, Wilson Sonsini’s tech and life sciences focus powered it past $1 billion in revenues in 2020; Cleary is advising Verizon on a $25 billion bond offering to help pay for purchases of 5G spectrum; a trans senior lawyer at a Big Law firm says her transition devastated her practice.

• Leading off, Georgetown Law fired adjunct professor Sandra Sellers after a Zoom video showed her complaining about performance of Black students in her classes. A second adjunct professor in the video, David Batson, was put on leave pending further investigation. The school’s Black Law Students Association had called for Sellers’s firing and demanded Batson publicly apologize for “failing to adequately condemn Sellers’ statements.” (Above the Law) (WaPo)
• Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati rode a tech and life sciences boom during the pandemic in 2020, with its gross revenues jumping 17.5% from 2019 to $1.13 billion, the firm’s first time over a $ 1 billion. The firm’s net income soared 40% and profits per equity partner rose 26.2% to about $3.1 billion. Only fellow tech and life sciences firm Fenwick & West has done as well on profits this year. (The Recorder)
• Trans lawyer Danielle “DJ” Healey, a senior principal at Fish & Richardson in Houston, Tx., said that her typically “seven figure” book of business evaporated in about 12 months after her transition, forcing her to “scrape” for billable hours. Healey commented during a roundtable in which trans lawyers discussed their struggle for acceptance in the legal profession. (Law.com)

Lawyers, Law Firms

• Cleary Gottlieb said via email that it is representing longtime client Verizon Communications Inc. in its $25 billion registered notes offering. The company said it expects to use the proceeds to help finance purchases of 5G airwaves. (Bloomberg News via BLAW)
• Perkins Coie said it launched a new initiative aimed at supporting women inventors and their startups. Under the program, qualifying women inventors and company founders can get reduced legal fees. (PerkinsCoie.com)

Laterals, Moves, In-House

• Goodwin Procter poached Kirkland & Ellis transactional tax partner Dulcie Daly in London. She advises on tax aspects of cross-border private equity and M&A transactions and restructurings, debt finance and capital markets transactions. In Chicago, Mayer Brown got Perkins Coie M&A and private equity lawyer Jason Quintana as a partner. Quintana’s previous experience includes working in-house in M&A positions at Japanese trading giant Mitsui & Co. and The Boeing Company as senior counsel. (MayerBrown.com)
• In New York, a former corporate insurance attorney at Apple Inc., Jillian Raines is now a partner at new insurance recovery boutique Cohen Ziffer Frenchman & McKenna, which was started a few months ago by four former McKool Smith partners. Raines previously worked at McKool and at Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman. (CohenZiffer.com)
• Holland & Knight added health care regulatory and compliance partner Jennifer Rangel from Locke Lord in Austin, Texas; Alston & Bird expanded its “bipartisan” health care policy and regulatory practice in Washington, recruiting James “JP” Paluskiewicz, a former Republican chief health counsel for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, as a senior policy adviser, and establishing a “strategic alliance” with Neleen Rubin, a former Democratic member of the Senate Finance Committee health policy team. (Alston.com)
• Fuselage maker Spirit AeroSystems, a supplier to Boeing Co., promoted interim general counsel Mindy McPheeters to senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary. She replaces Stacy Cozad who left in January to join chemicals maker Ingevity Inc.; MicroVision, Inc., a maker of interactive display technology, announced that general counsel David Westgor is retiring. (Globenewsire.com)

Technology

• UK-based legal tech startup Legl got $7 million in funding for its platform that provides law firms digital tools for business processes such as customer onboarding, due diligence, and payments. Legl was founded about a year ago by Big Law veteran Julia Salasky, who previously founded the public interest legal crowdsourcing campaign platform, CrowdJustice. (TechCrunch)