Wake Up Call: More Than 100 Firms Sign On To Antisemitism Letter

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

• More than 100 law firms have signed on to the Nov. 1 letter to law school deans decrying the soaring number of antisemitic incidents on their campuses. Hogan Lovells, White & Case, and Goodwin Procter are among the 108 firms that have signed on to the letter, written by Joseph C. Shenker, senior chair of Sullivan & Cromwell, which originally included 24 firms. (Law firm letter)
• Akshay Verma, former legal operations director for Meta Platforms Inc. and Coinbase, joins SpotDraft, which makes contract lifecycle management software, as its chief operating officer. At Coinbase, Verma helped establish the crypto company’s legal operations function, joining in April 2022 as its first director of legal operations. (SpotDraft)
• Boston real estate lawyer Sammy Nabulsi became “the biggest pain in the ass” to US diplomats, as he worked to extract a group of US citizen family friends out of Gaza. His efforts paid off when the family of three, including a one-year-old boy, made it over the Rafah border crossing into Egypt Nov. 1. (New York Magazine)
• A coalition of 19 Big Law firms is helping relaunch a District of Columbia program to guarantee that more DC tenants gain access to a lawyer to represent them throughout their eviction proceedings. Arnold & Porter, Crowell & Moring, and Cleary Gottlieb are among the firms participating, as a “national groundswell of support” grows for guaranteeing lawyers for people facing eviction. (Washington Post)

Laterals, Moves, In-house

• Jeffrey Golds has joined Miller Canfield as part of the corporate and transactions group in Chicago. He served as a manager of the national tax department at EY and as a manager at FGMK.
• Michelle Skrobacz has joined PKF O’Connor Davies as a partner in the private client services group in Boston.