Wake Up Call: Law School Sends 4,000 Erroneous Acceptance Emails

Welcome to Bloomberg Law’s Wake Up Call, a daily rundown of the top news for lawyers, law firms, and in-house counsel.

• Northeastern University’s School of Law in Boston mistakenly sent out thousands of acceptance letters to applicants, then had to rescind them. The erroneous acceptance email was sent to 205 current applicants and 3,930 from last year’s pool, according to a report. The school blamed the gaff on a technical error. (Boston.com)
• Finnish telecommunications company Nokia Corp. reported Thursday that its chief legal officer Nassib Abou-Khalil is leaving the company to “seek new challenges.” According to his LinkedIn profile, he’s been at the company since 2014, taking the top legal role in August 2019. Nokia said deputy CLO Esa Niinimäki will serve as interim chief legal officer as the company looks for a permanent replacement for Abou-Khalil. (Nasdaq.com)
• Peregrine Sports, which operates Women’s pro soccer team Portland Thorns and Major League Soccer’s Portland Timbers, announced that it appointed its general counsel Heather Davis as interim president and fired two top executives. The news came a day after the team’s owner, Merritt Paulson, and two executives “stepped aside” from decisions involving the Thorns. Their move came after the team was named in a King & Spalding report that revealed abuse in the U.S. National Women’s Soccer League. (Oregon Public Broadcasting)

Lawyers, Law Firms

• Large banks and financial institutions have a reputation for sending their outside legal work to the most elite law firms. It turns out they’re actually sending as much as half of their work to law firms outside the Am Law 200, alternative legal services providers, Big Four accounting firms, and large Asian law firms. They’re also using European firms, a report says. (American Lawyer)
• As the European Union plans to regulation litigation funding, funders operating in Canada and lawyers familiar with how they work say regulatory intervention is not needed in Canada. (Canadian Lawyer)
• The Iowa Supreme Court refused to reinstate the law license of an attorney who was recently hit with an $8 million verdict in a defamation case and held in contempt of court. (Iowa Capital Dispatch)

Laterals, Moves, In-house

• Sports equipment and apparel company Under Armour, Inc. said vice president and deputy general counsel Mehri Shadman will take over on Oct. 24 as chief legal officer and corporate secretary from John Stanton, who is retiring after 16 years in the role. (PR Newswire)
• Stroock added Davis Wright Tremaine financial services litigator Andrew Owens as a partner in New York. (Stroock.com)
• Trial boutique McKool Smith hired four-decade veteran commercial litigator Alan Loewinsohn as principal in Dallas. He arrives from his firm Loewinsohn Deary Simon Ray with principal Kerry Schonwald and associate Jennifer Barall. (McKoolSmith.com)
• Snell & Wilmer added three attorneys in Seattle, getting bankruptcy partner Amit Ranade and counsel Bradley Duncan from Hillis Clark Martin & Peterson. Real estate counsel Travis Thornton joins from SSL Law Firm. (SWLaw.com)
• Haynes and Boone added investment management attorney Arie Heijkoop as a partner in Washington. He joins from Sullivan & Worcester. (HaynesBoone.com)
• Management-side worklaw firm Littler said a former attorney at the firm Adrian Jakibchuk rejoined as a partner Toronto. He arrives from Cassels Brock & Blackwell. (Littler)

Technology

• As the Securities and Exchange Commissions cracks down on the crypto industry, crypto firms expecting to get lighter regulatory treatment from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are making a mistake, lawyers and other insiders warned. (CoinDesk)