Wake Up Call: McDermott Bills Voyager Creditors $16.4 Million

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

• McDermott Will & Emery recently submitted a $5.1 million bill for its work from March to May 2023 for the committee of unsecured creditors of bankrupt crypto firm Voyager Digital Ltd, at a $1,026.76 hourly rate. The latest bill brings McDermott’s total billing to the committee to $16.4 million, according to reports citing a July 3 filing. Big Law bankruptcy lawyers have been some of the biggest winners from the crypto sector’s problems. (The Crypto Times) (CoinTelegraph) (CoinJournal)
• Completed law firm mergers remain below their historical average, but they will likely pick up speed in the year’s second half and into 2024, according to a report. (Fairfax Associates)
• Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders chair Steve Lewis is reportedly stepping down and will be replaced by the firm’s current managing partner, Tom Cole. (Legal Intelligencer)
• Latham & Watkins is defending KPMG in a class action suit brought by Credit Suisse Shareholders. (New York Law Journal)

Lawyers, Law Firms

• Suspended Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won’t testify at his impeachment trial in the state Senate, according to a report. (Associated Press)
• Morgan Lewis said it’s opening an office in Shenzhen, China, after getting approval from the Chinese government. The new office, its fourth in China and eighth in Asia, will advise technology and life sciences companies in the region. It will have intellectual property litigation partner Shaobin Zhu as office managing partner, the firm said in an email. (MorganLewis.com)
• Washington-based boutique Consovoy McCarthy has been collecting wins at the conservative US Supreme Court, but a co-founder of the firm said the court’s recent ruling striking down race-based college admissions policies was “bittersweet.” (Reuters)
• A Georgia judge threw out a $1.5 million personal injury verdict after finding among other things that a plaintiffs attorney’s social media posts potentially “tainted” the jury. (Law.com)
• Skadden represented American Financial Group on its recently completed acquisition, for $240 million, of multi-peril crop insurer Crop Risk Services from American International Group, Inc., advised by Sidley Austin. (Reinsurance News)
• Former Mintz PC Chair Robert Popeo died at age 85. He established the firm’s litigation practice and white-collar defense and government investigations practice. (American Lawyer) (Boston Globe)

Laterals, Moves, In-house

• Cleary Gottlieb recruited antitrust and litigation attorney Ryan Shores, a former US associate deputy attorney general and senior adviser for technology industries in the US Justice Department, as partner in Washington. He arrives from Shearman & Sterling, where he was partner. (ClearyGottlieb.com)
• Norton Rose Fulbright hired Eversheds Sutherland leveraged finance attorney Christopher Akinrele as partner in London on its leveraged and acquisition finance team. (NortonRoseFulbright.com)
• Indiana-based Finward Bancorp and its subsidiary Peoples Bank said Peoples Bank chief wealth management officer David Kwait will replace the retiring Leane Cerven as senior vice president, general counsel, corporate secretary, and chief risk officer of both entities. (Yahoo! Finance)

Technology

• A New Jersey county Superior Court judge is facing an ethics complaint over videos he posted on TikTok. (New Jersey Law Journal)
• A job candidate accused CVS Health of failing to give appropriate notice of its use of an artificial intelligence powered lie detector test. (Law.com)
• OpenAI, creator of chatbot ChatGPT, announced it’s temporarily turning off the artificial intelligence engine’s ‘Browse with Bing’ feature because of legal issues. (Search Engine Journal)