Wake Up Call: Lawyer Outsourcing Company Shutters Arizona Firm

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

• Attorney outsourcing company Axiom Global is closing its affiliated Arizona-based law firm, three years after it became one of the largest companies to take advantage of relaxed law firm ownership rules in the US state. Axiom launched the law firm in January 2023, a few years after Arizona became the first state to eliminate a rule that barred people who are not lawyers from having an economic interest in law firms. (Reuters)
• Attorneys say that AI often gives clients unrealistic expectations, without grasping the full legal context, applicable law, or case history as they deal with clients who arrive armed with often-flawed chatbot advice. (Axios)
• A North Miami-Dade lawyer was suspended for 90 days after state regulators found he bullied and intimidated a low-income, self-represented individual during a 2024 garnishment case. Noam Cohen aggressively pressed the unrepresented garnishee while offering no evidence to counter the person’s claims and later accusing the judge of bias when he lost. (Miami Herald)

Laterals, Moves, In-House

• Exclusive: Sanya Sukduang and Jonathan Davies joined Norton Rose Fulbright as partners in its patent litigation practice. They join from Cooley.
• Regina Pearson joined Baker Botts as a partner in Austin. She joins from Greenberg Traurig.
• Jacob Rambeau joined Honigman as a partner in its intellectual property litigation practice group in Bloomfield Hills. He joins from Kirkland & Ellis.
• Stephen Amdur joined Fried Frank as a mergers and acquisitions and private equity partner in New York. He joins from Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman.
• R. Colgate Selden joined Baker Donelson as a shareholder in its financial services litigation and compliance group in Washington. He joins from SeldenLindeke.