Wake Up Call: Giuliani Tests Positive For Covid, Trump Says

In today’s column, the Trump campaign has paid out $2.6 million in legal fees since the presidential election; Reed Smith poached the London-based global co-head of Orrick’s oil & gas practice; and Fox Rothschild is acquiring a 21-lawyer firm in San Francisco that focuses on real estate, corporate, and tax.

• Leading off, President Donald Trump tweeted that his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who has been leading an effort to get results of the Nov. 3 general election thrown out, has tested positive for Covid-19. (Bloomberg News via BLAW) The Times reported that the 76-year-old former New York mayor was admitted to Georgetown University Medical Center on Sunday. (NYT) The Post reports that Giuliani has been meeting, mask-less, with officials around the country. (WaPo) Giuliani today, tweeting thanks to “friends and followers,” said he’s “recovering quickly and keeping up with everything.” (Twitter)
• Giuliani doesn’t appear in new Federal Election Commission data showing that Trump’s reelection campaign has spent close to $2.6 million on legal consulting fees since the Nov. 3 presidential election, this report says. Jones Day, Dechert, Kasowitz Benson Torres, and Husch Blackwell were among law firms paid by the campaign, the report said. (National Law Journal)
• After eliminating Covid pay cuts in October, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner said it now plans to make “supplemental payments” to lawyers and staff to fully restore the compensation they lost to the cuts. BCLP is the latest of several law firms to fully restore employees’ pay that they cut earlier this year to protect their flow cash from the Covid-19 pandemic’s financial hit. (AbovetheLaw.com)
• Kirkland & Ellis is paying Covid appreciation bonuses to administrative staff, with payouts to equal 5% of the employee’s 2020 base salary plus another 1% of base salary paid to their retirement accounts, according to a memo posted by Above the Law. (Above the Law)
• As 2020 nears its end and the pandemic still beating up the U.S. economy, law firms, looking to preserve relationships, are not hounding clients to pay their bills, law firm consultants say. (Reuters)
• Meanwhile, U.S. legal sector employment ticked up by about 5,000 jobs in November, according to new federal data. It’s the sector’s third consecutive month of modest gains in mostly law firm jobs. (BLAW)
• As the pandemic hit legal departments’ budgets, legal operations pros worked to find new ways for in-house lawyers to use old technology to collaborate. (Corporate Counsel)

Biden Transition, Election Litigation

• President-elect Joe Biden picked California’s Democratic attorney general, Xavier Becerra, to be his Health and Human Services secretary. (Bloomberg News via BLAW)
• There’s more than a month left until Biden’s inauguration but Washington-based law firms are already hiring government veterans for their practices. (American Lawyer)

Lawyers, Law Firms

• Philadelphia-based Fox Rothschild said it is expanding in Northern California by combining with San Francisco-based law firm Greene Radovsky Maloney Share & Hennigh, whose 21 lawyers join the firm effective Jan. 1. Fox said the merger adds depth to its practices in real estate, corporate, tax and wealth planning. (FoxRothschild.com)
• There could be several law firm mergers & acquisitions in 2021, a report says. (American Lawyer)
• John M. Pierce, co-founder of troubled law firm Pierce Bainbridge, is dropping off the criminal defense team for Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse. Wisconsin prosecutors had moved to block the lawyer from participating, citing Pierce’s handling of donations for Rittenhouse. (Chicago Tribune)
• Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr launched a podcast, “Don’t Miss a Beet,” where co-chairs of the firm’s food, beverage and agribusiness practice, Jonathan Havens and Kermit Nash, lead discussions about legal, policy and industry developments facing the sector. (Saul.com)

Laterals, Moves, In-house

• Reed Smith poached James Atkin, the global co-head of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe’s oil & gas practice, as a partner in London. Reed Smith said Atkin, who earlier spent 10 years at Vinson & Elkins’ Tokyo office as a partner, focuses on upstream and midstream oil and gas, particularly liquefied natural gas, supporting clients across Asia, Australia, the Middle East, Africa, and North and Latin America. (ReedSmith.com) (Rivieramm.com)
• Hogan Lovells’ Paris office added Latham & Watkins tax lawyer Thomas Claudel as counsel. (HoganLovells.com)
• Polsinelli added two Miami-based intellectual property lawyers to its patent practice, which has seen pandemic-related matters help push up demand 20%. (Daily Business Review)
• Specialty foods retailer The Fresh Market Inc., owned by private equity firm Apollo Global Management Inc., hired in-house veteran Carlos Clark as senior vice president and general counsel to replace its last legal chief, Scott Duggan, who left last year. Clark, a former Goodwin Procter senior associate, has had leading in-house jobs at vacation timeshare company Wyndham Destinations Inc. and SeaWorld Entertainment Inc. (BLAW)
• Bombardier Inc., a Canadian transportation conglomerate that’s streamlining itself to focus on aerospace , has a new top lawyer. It hired former Stornoway Diamond Corp. in-house lawyer and executive Anna Torkia Lagacé as general counsel. She’s had top in-house jobs at large mining and natural resources companies, and earlier was at some of Canada’s biggest law firms. (BLAW)

Technology

• Facebook Inc. was hit by a monopolization lawsuit, filed on behalf of plaintiffs in California federal court by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Keller Lenkner. (BLAW)
• Harvard University is helping Deloitte Legal with its legal tech training program for Spanish lawyers. (Law.com International via Legaltech News)

Legal Education

• The Kentucky Office of Bar Admissions said an administrative error caused 15 Kentucky bar applicants to be incorrectly informed that they passed the October online bar exam, when they actually failed it. (ABAJournal.com)