Wake Up Call: JetBlue’s New President Joanna Geraghty is Ex-BigLaw Partner

• JetBlue Airways Corp. named former Holland & Knight partner Joanna Geraghty as its number two executive, making her the highest ranking woman at a large U.S. airline. According to herLinkedin page, Geraghty joined New York-based JetBlue in 2005 as its director for litigation and regulation and served as its vice president and associate general counsel for four years. ( Bloomberg via BLB )

• British Parliament members harshly criticized elite London-based law firm Linklaters over its work on deals involving Russian companies linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin. ( Financial Times )

• Perkins Coie said it landed two veteran China experts from Sheppard Mullin’s recently closed Beijing office as partners for its own office in the city, along with a team of associates, paralegals and support staff. James Zimmerman, a former Beijing managing partner at Sheppard Mullin, joins Perkin Coie’s business practice while Scott Palmer joins its intellectual property practice. ( PerkinsCoie.com )

• Results for California’s February bar exam set a new record low, with only 27.3 percent of test takers getting a passing score, according to new data. The state’s Supreme Court recently decided against lowering California’s passing score, the second toughest in the U.S. ( The Recorder )

• A Ropes & Gray team led by senior counsel Jerome Katz won a $15 million decision in a Manhattan case in which investor plaintiffs accused a fund manager of refusing to sell a profitable company he used as a “cash machine” for his own benefit. ( New York Law Journal )

• Northern California judge Aaron Persky is facing a June 5 recall vote over his sentencing of Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner to six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. Persky called the vote “fundamentally unfair” and a threat to “the rule of law.” ( Associated Press via Bloomberg )

• A bipartisan push in Congress looks likely to produce legislation that will strengthen national security reviews of transactions between U.S. and foreign companies. That could affect a lot of transactions, including pending deals such as a proposed merger between Sprint Corp. and T-Mobile Inc., and Walmart Inc.’s plans to buy a 77 percent stake in the Indian e-commerce company Flipkart Online Services. ( Bloomberg Law )

• Law firm partnerships don’t like to disclose what they pay their principals, but when their lawyers go into the government they are typically required to disclose their compensations and client lists, to identify potential conflicts. A recent look at nearly two dozen partners who joined the Trump administration since 2017 yielded some interesting observations. ( Bloomberg Law via BLB )

• Law firm revenues rose 4.2 percent in 2018’s first quarter overall, fueled by higher billing rates and client demand. On the down side, expenses outpaced revenue growth mainly because of higher compensation for top talent. ( Bloomberg law via BLB )

• Chambers and Partners, the UK-based organization that ranks corporate lawyers and litigators worldwide, published its first-ever guide to litigation funding, with a rankings of six firms. ( Bloomberg law via BLB )

Lawyers, Law Firms, Laterals

• Health-care law is a thriving field for women, for all kinds of reasons. ( Bloomberg Law via BLB )

• JAMS, the alternative dispute resolution services provider, announced two new panel members in Atlanta: longtime IP litigator JoyceKlemmer, who was most recently a partner at Smith, Gambrell & Russel; and L. Joseph Loveland, who spent four decades at King & Spalding as a trial and appellate litigator. ( JAMSadr )

• Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft hired Simpson Thacher & Bartlett counsel Mark Chorazak as a partner for its financial services group in New York. ( American Lawyer )

Legal Actions

• A whistleblower who helped the U.S. reveal an especially egregious case of health-care fraud has sued the government to get what he says he’s owed. ( Bloomberg Law )

Regulators and Enforcement

• Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said the agency hasn’t yet determined when it will resume reviewing Sinclair Broadcast Group’s $3.9 billion acquisition of Tribune Media. ( Bloomberg Law )

Legal Education

• White law school applicants are significantly more likely to be admitted to law school than members of other races or ethnicity, according to recent data. That “restricted pipeline” is hampering the legal profession’s efforts to improve diversity and inclusion, said James O’Neal, founder and executive director of Legal Outreach. ( Bloomberg Law via BLB )

Compiled by Rick Mitchell and edited by Tom Taylor.