Wake Up Call: Perkins Coie Axes 58 Staff Citing Economy, Costs

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

• Perkins Coie said it’s laying off 58 business professionals, the latest Big Law firm to shrink its workforce in response to the uncertain economy and sagging demand for legal services. Firmwide Managing Partner Bill Malley blamed the cuts on market conditions, higher costs, and technology taking over certain manual tasks. (Above The Law) (American Lawyer) Perkins Coie earlier this month raised the number of hours associates need to get full bonuses. (BLAW)
• Cravath Swaine & Moore is launching an English law practice in London with a finance team poached from Shearman & Sterling, led by partners Korey Fevzi and Philip Stopford, according to reports. (Law.com International) (The Lawyer)
• Big Law firms offered about 2% fewer places in their upcoming summer programs to second-year law students compared to last year, and that could bode poorly for the class of 2024’s job prospects, according to the National Association for Law Placement’s latest report on law school recruiting. (NALP.org)
• A lawyer accused of so-called quiet quitting and fired by her former firm, New York-based plaintiffs litigation firm Napoli Shkolnik, is counter-suing with allegations of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. (New York Law Journal) (Above The Law)

Lawyers, Law Firms

• Sanford Heisler said it’s expanding its San Francisco-based Asian-American litigation and finance practice group in response to a “skyrocketing” number of cases of Asian Americans alleging race bias. (National Law Journal)
• Akerman launched an economic sanctions and export controls practice led by Miami-based Pedro Freyre, chair of the firm’s international practice. (Akerman.com)
• In-house legal departments expect a burst of post-Covid litigation to contribute to high outside counsel costs. (Legal Dive)
• A Florida county sheriff announced the arrest of a personal injury attorney accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars of clients’ settlement funds to spend on pornography and drugs. (Tampa Business Journal)

Laterals, Moves, In-house

• Cleary Gottlieb recruited two broker-dealer and exchange regulatory attorneys from Willkie Farr & Gallagher as partners in its Washington financial services practice. James Burns is a former deputy director of the Securities and Exchange commission’s division of trading and markets. Brant Brown is a former associate general counsel at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. (ClearyGottlieb.com)
• DLA Piper added former SEC attorney and legal branch chief and acting assistant director Era Anagnosti as an SEC and capital markets partner in Washington. She was a DLA associate earlier in her career and arrives recently from White & Case, where she was a partner. (DLAPiper.com)
• Sullivan & Worcester snagged Morgan Lewis investment management attorney Abigail Bertumen as counsel in Washington. She’s a former general counsel at exchange traded fund adviser Exchange Traded Concepts, LLC. (SullivanLaw.com)
• Carlton Fields hired financial services regulatory attorney Mederic Daigneault as shareholder in Hartford, Connecticut. He’s a former consulting services senior director at National Regulatory Services. (CarltonFields.com)
• Proskauer Rose hired former Dechert LLP fund finance lawyer Matt Kerfoot, recently managing director at French bank Société Générale, as a partner in New York. (Proskauer.com)
• Xponential Fitness, Inc., California-based franchiser of boutique fitness brands, hired former MGM Resorts International in-house leader Andrew Hagopian as chief legal officer effective March 1. A Gibson Dunn associate early in his career, Hagopian later served as general counsel of online sports betting site BetMGM and was recently GC at Newlight Technologies, Inc. (Businesswire)
• Oregon-based Roseburg Forest Products promoted assistant general counsel and corporate secretary Matt Lawless, a former Jones Day associate, to vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary, effective March 1. (Woodworking Network)
• Toronto-based response-management software startup Loopio hired tech in-house veteran Neetu Toor as its first general counsel. (Newswire.com)

Promotions

• Baker Botts promoted 12 lawyers to partner effective March 1. (BakerBotts.com)