Wake Up Call: Quinn Exits Ex-Apollo CEO’s RICO Lawsuit

In today’s column, President Biden made six nominations for U.S. attorney; Winston is the latest Big Law firm matching Milbank associate salary hikes; a lawyer can refile his lawsuit against LinkedIn, which cut off his pro account access because he was promoting himself too much.

• Leading off, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan is reportedly withdrawing as counsel for former Apollo Global Management Inc. CEO Leon Black in his complicated lawsuit against a former model who accused him of rape. Black dropped employment law firm Wigdor as a defendant in related racketeering claims, but he’s suing that firm for defamation. Black also added an Apollo co-founder and public relations executive as defendants. (Reuters)
• Winston & Strawn is the latest Big Law firm to match the Milbank scale for associate salary hikes. (Above The Law) So far at least 10 firms have matched scale, which starts at $215,000 for first years and runs up to $385,000 for associates who started in 2014 or earlier. Meanwhile, many firms are waiting to see what Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Davis Polk & Wardwell do. (American Lawyer)
• Some midsize firms’ flexible working arrangements gave them a recruiting edge before the pandemic. But now, as the talent war pushes up associate compensation, those firms worry they’re losing ground to bigger firms that pay more and are now also going hybrid. (Legal Intelligencer)
• Soaring tech and life sciences deals helped Northern California-based Gunderson Dettmer expand its headcount by about one-third in 2021. The firm said it now has 422 lawyers including 110 partners. (The Recorder)

Lawyers, Law Firms

• A union representing 6,300 federal criminal prosecutors and civil attorneys wants the Justice Department to address pay discrepancies it says hurt recruitment and retention of assistant U.S. attorneys. (Federal News Network)
• President Biden made six nominations for U.S. attorney. He nominated Stoel Rives partner S. Lane Tucker, a former federal prosecutor and Perkins Coie of counsel, to be U.S. attorney for Alaska. Biden nominated former U.S. trial attorney and McCarter & English litigator Vanessa R. Avery, now Connecticut state associate attorney general and enforcement chief, to be U.S. attorney for Connecticut. She would be the first Black woman to have that role. (WhiteHouse.gov)

Laterals, Moves, In-house

• Quinn Emanuel recruited Saudi Arabia dispute resolution lawyer Nasser Alrubayyi as a partner to open an associated Riyadh office. (Global Legal Post) Willkie Farr & Gallagher grabbed DLA Piper insurance attorney David Luce as a partner in its insurance transactional and regulatory practice in New York; Perkins Coie added fund management attorney Sandhya Ganapathy from hedge fund Bridgewater Associates. She joins as senior counsel in New York; Greenberg Traurig hired Latin America-focused corporate attorney Geiza Vargas-Vargas as a shareholder in Miami. She arrives from Nelson Mullins after starting her legal career at Skadden Arps. (GTLaw.com)
• Brown Rudnick added emerging company and venture capital attorney Benjamin (Ben) Hron as a corporate partner in Boston. He arrives after about 11 years at McCarter & English; Hogan Lovells recruited Food and Drug Administration investigator and senior policy adviser Chris Middendorf as a director in Washington in its global regulatory practice; Stoel Rives grabbed Dorsey & Whitney patent attorney Jennifer Spaith as intellectual property partner in Seattle. (Stoel.com)
• NIKE, Inc. said its compliance officer Ann Miller, a 14-year Nike veteran with more than two decades of legal experience, will become executive vice president & general counsel, effective Feb. 17; crypto exchange Coinbase hired former Securities and Exchange Commission counsel Thaya Knight as senior public policy manager; cryptocurrency cash exchange company Coinme hired former IBM executive Tom Davis as its first general counsel and corporate secretary. (Corporate Counsel)

Technology

• An appeals ruling cleared the way for a lawyer to refile his consumer fraud suit against LinkedIn, which booted him for posting too many articles on his premier account. (New Jersey Law Journal)

Legal Education

• Students in a Boston-based Suffolk Law School intellectual property clinic helped a storied family-owned music equipment company in Nashville, Tenn., win a trademark battle with an international corporation. (The National Jurist)