Wake Up Call: Quinn Emanuel Bumps UK Junior Lawyers to £180,000

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

• Quinn Emanuel has raised its pay for London-based “newly qualified” lawyers by 18% to 180,000 pounds, “the latest sign that a war for talent among City law firms is heating up again.” The salary changes at Quinn come after UK “magic circle” law firm Freshfields said last week it had increased base pay by 20% to 150,000 pounds. (Financial Times)
• Aliza Shatzman says her Legal Accountability Project’s database, which collects stories from law clerks about bullying, harassment, and gender discrimination, was designed to warn students “before it’s too late.” Despite resistance from some prominent US law schools, she says, “there are far too many judges who are mistreating their clerks and we need to hold them accountable.” (NPR)
• Former Locke Lord partner Jonathan Denton has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for his roll in a pair of frauds that totaled 25 million pounds, in which he accepted millions of pounds from investors with no verifiable returns going back to them. Denton, who worked in the firm’s London office from 2012 to 2015, was an “expert” in financial services compliance regulations, “and presumably irony.” (RollOnFriday)
• Former London-based Clifford Chance lawyer Julian Clark, who died at 60 on April 18, was a maritime attorney and soul singer who “did both with gusto.” Clark was a druid who founded his own law firm in 2010 called C J C, which, on occasion, he would turn into a makeshift music studio to rehearse with his band. (The Telegraph)

Laterals, Moves, In-house

• Trent Bridges has joined Akin‘s Houston office as an energy transactions partner. He joins from Sidley Austin.
• Samuel E. Webb, Brooke L. Sargeant, and Eileen S. Sun, have joined Fox Rothschild as partners in the intellectual property practice group in Seattle. They join from Seed IP.
• Juan Pablo Albán has joined Buchalter as a corporate shareholder in the Los Angeles office.
• Sullivan & Cromwell has announced its artificial intelligence practice.