Wake Up Call: Philly Lawyer to Defend Trump Org in Criminal Case

In today’s column, a new California early retirement law aims to address burnout of state judges; the University of Idaho’s top lawyer said the school should stop offering birth control to students because of the state’s anti-abortion law; and Richmond University Law is dropping from its name an early donor said to have owned slaves.

• Leading off, Philadelphia-based lawyer Michael van der Veen, who defended Donald Trump in the former president’s second impeachment trial, has signed on to represent the Trump Organization in a criminal case led by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. (Philadelphia Inquirer)
• A new California law will give state judges an option for early retirement. Yolo County Superior Court Judge David Rosenberg, who is president of the California Judges Association, said the law is aimed at addressing burnout of judges. (The Recorder)
• Hundreds of women jurists plan to gather in Washington next week in a “Sisters in Law” event to celebrate US Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s first day on the job. (Daily Report Online)

Lawyers, Law Firms

• Squire Patton Boggs beat an unfair dismissal claim by a former associate who was laid off in 2020 after work levels declined in the firm’s disputes team. (The Lawyer)
• Stewart Rhodes, once a a promising Yale Law School graduate with a clerkship at Arizona’s Supreme Court, went on to found the far-right anti-government militia group Oath Keepers which stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Associated Press)
• A retired jurist working as a reserve judge in Milwaukee held in contempt a public defender who accused the judge of insulting him six years earlier. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
• The University of Idaho’s general counsel issued guidance last week alerting faculty and staff that the school should no longer offer birth control for students because of the state’s law prohibiting abortion. (WaPo)

Laterals, Moves, In-house

• Latham & Watkins said veteran employment litigator and trial lawyer Oswald Cousins, who was an associate at the firm earlier in his career, rejoined as a partner in the firm’s San Francisco Bay Area offices. According to his LinkedIn profile, Cousins has been a partner at several Big Law firms and was recently counsel at Morrison & Foerster; management-side worklaw firm Littler hired litigator Walter Pfeffer in San Francisco as a shareholder in its unfair competition and trade secrets practice group. He was previously a partner with Singer Cashman. Littler also hired Ogletree Deakins e-discovery counsel Traer Cundiff as a shareholder in Kansas City. (Littler)
• Womble Bond Dickinson added patent and trial attorney Jeffrey B. McIntyre as a partner in Washington. He arrives after close to 26 years at Alexandria, Virginia-based intellectual property firm Oblon; White & Case picked up two real estate attorneys from Paul Hastings as partners. Jennifer Iacono joined in New York, while Jason McCoy, a Georgia-qualified lawyer, joined in Houston; Mayer Brown snagged Paul Weiss M&A attorney Camila Panama in New York as a partner; Eversheds Sutherland added three finance attorneys. Former Citigroup in-house attorney Rossina Petrova joined as transactional counsel in New York, arriving from Chapman and Cutler. Restructuring and insolvency attorney Erin Broderick joined in Chicago as counsel from Honigman, where she was a partner. She’s previously been at Kirkland & Ellis and Baker McKenzie. Nathan T. DeLoatch joined from Troutman Pepper in Atlanta as an associate focused on bankruptcy and reorganizations. (Eversheds Sutherland)
• Milla Rahmani, executive and top lawyer at legal tech company Litera Microsystems, jumped to Edifecs, Inc., a health information technology solutions company, as general counsel; New York-based advertising tech company TripleLift hired Yahoo! in-house lawyer James Evans as chief privacy officer and vice president of legal. (PR Newswire)

Legal Education

• The University of Richmond Law School is reportedly dropping an early donor from its official name after it came out that he owned slaves. (Reuters)