Wake Up Call: Kirkland & Ellis PE Partner Ballis in Line to Become Chairman in 2020

• Kirkland & Ellis is in the news for several reasons over the last few days. First, the Chicago-based firm said in an internal memo that current chief Jeffrey Hammes will step down on Feb. 1, 2020, after three terms as chairman, to be replaced by partner Jon Ballis, a corporate partner who has become one of the firm’s best-known private equity lawyers. Under Hammes’ watch, Kirkland has doubled its revenue to more than $3.2 billion and recently passed Latham & Watkins to become the world’s biggest by gross revenue in 2017. (Bloomberg Law via BLB)

• Kirkland & Ellis also dropped mandatory arbitration agreements for non-attorney staff members, several weeks after eliminating them in employment contracts for associates. (Bloomberg Law via BLB)

• And the man President Donald Trump said he wants as his new attorney general is Kirkland & Ellis partner William Barr, who was AG under President George H.W. Bush. Barr, among other things, helped torpedo criminal prosecutions in the Iran-Contra affair by successfully advocating for Bush to issue a wave of pardons before leaving office. (Bloomberg via BLB)

• The United Kingdom can unilaterally reverse Brexit any time before it’s slated to leave the European Union on March 29, the EU’s top court said. (Bloomberg.com)

• Williams & Connolly trial partner Joseph G. Petrosinelli will take over as chair of the Washington-based firm after current chair Dane Butswinkas was hired as general counsel by electric-car company Tesla. (Bloomberg Law via BLB) Butswinkas’s move to replace Todd Maron as Tesla GC comes as the company recently settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in September after being investigated for securities fraud centered around founder and CEO Elon Musk’s tweets. (Bloomberg Law via BLB)

• Winston & Strawn is suing developer Mid-Atlantic Arena LLC in New York federal court for $833,790 in attorney fees and costs linked to the developer’s failed effort to build an oceanside sports arena in Virginia Beach. (American Lawyer)

• The National Football League won’t get to present oral argument in a federal appeals court case that alleges the league violated antitrust law by colluding with teams to suppress cheerleaders’ wages, because the cheerleaders’ lawyer may be subject to professional discipline in another matter. (Bloomberg Law via BLB)

• The CEO of Feld Entertainment, which long operated Ringling Brothers Circus, is trying to force his homeowner’s insurer to fully cover Fulbright & Jaworski LLP’s $4.5 million legal bill for defending him from a lawsuit. Fulbright & Jaworski in 2013 became Norton Rose Fulbright, which is representing the CEO. Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr is representing the insurer. (Bloomberg Law via BLB)

• Hogan Lovells hired SEC mergers & acquisition attorney Tiffany Posil as a Washington-based counsel in its M&A and securities practices. The firm said Posil spent four years as special counsel in the SEC’s Office of Mergers and Acquisitions. (LawFuel)

• Class actions bring “more equality to our adversarial system,” so reforms should focus on improving their efficiency, not restricting them, David Boies, chairman of Boies Shiller Flexner, told a recent legal conference at the University of Miami. (Daily Business Review)

Lawyers, Law Firms, Laterals

• A “litigation warrior” winning complex corporate lawsuits: the Houston Chronicle profiled Tonja De Sloover, a former Fulbright & Jaworski partner now associate general counsel and head of litigation at Dallas-based Energy Transfer, a natural gas and propane pipeline transport company. (HoustonChronicle.com)

• Workplace law firm Jackson Lewis P.C. said litigator Andrea F. Oxman joined the firm’s L.A. office as a principal. She arrives from Klinedinst PC, where she focused on employment litigation and class actions. (JacksonLewis.com)

• Klinedinst said eDiscovery attorney Sidra Zaheer joined the firm as counsel in San Diego. (Klinedinst.com)

• Newmeyer & Dillion said transactional attorney and business litigator James J. Ficenec joined as a partner in the firm’s Walnut Creek, California, office, arriving from Archer Norris. (NewmeyerandDillion.com)

• Texas firm Jackson Walker grabbed trial lawyer Dawn Johnson as a partner in Houston, getting her from Steptoe & Johnson PLLC. (Texas Lawyer)

Legal Actions

• A former in-house lawyer at Turner Broadcasting who tried to market the idea of a fantasy football game for the Georgia Lottery is on trial in Atlanta on federal wire and tax fraud charges. (Daily Report)

Technology

• A recent Columbia University MBA course took as its subject legal tech startup Evisort, which uses artificial intelligence to scan documents, extract data, and generate instant reports based on the data and other tasks. (Legaltech News)