Wake Up Call: Recording Academy Hires First In-House Lawyer

In today’s column, as law firms struggle to hire associates, a Freshfields program aims to bring back lawyers who’ve been out of the profession for a while; Covid-related absences at a California court caused case delays; and Arnold & Porter said it got certification for its plan for achieving equality at work for Black lawyers and business professionals.

• Leading off, the Recording Academy, the organization that runs the Grammy Awards, hired its longtime outside counsel, Proskauer Rose intellectual property counsel Jennifer Jones, as executive vice president of legal affairs. (Grammy.com)
• Lacking an in-house legal department, the academy had faced criticism for paying “exorbitant fees” to outside counsel, particularly from Greenberg Traurig and Proskauer. It had been in the market for its first in-house counsel after settling a dispute involving its former CEO Deborah Dugan. Dugan made headlines two years ago by accusing the academy’s then-outside general counsel, now former Greenberg Traurig partner Joel Katz, of sexual harassment. Katz, who denied the accusations, later left the firm and is now senior counsel at Barnes & Thornburg. (BLAW)
• Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer is trying something new to bring in talent. The firm is starting a recruitment program for lawyers eying a return to the legal profession. The program, initially offered at the firm’s new Silicon Valley office, is open to lawyers who’ve been away for at least two years for such reasons as caregiving. (The Recorder)
• Covid-19-related absences of 20% to 25% of judges and staff have caused procedural delays at San Bernardino County Superior Court in California. (The Recorder)

Lawyers, Law Firms

• Arnold & Porter said its plan for achieving equality at work for Black lawyers and business professionals got approved by nonprofit training and certification organization Management Leadership for Tomorrow. (ArnoldPorter.com)
• A New York state judge threw out a lawsuit by former Universal Music Group executive Charlie Walk accusing litigator Marc Kasowitz of malpractice. (New York Post) An Iranian-American aviation tycoon is accusing a retired Dechert partner in London of organizing the theft and leaking of his emails. (Reuters via Business Insurance)

Laterals, Moves, In-house

• Akerman picked up Katten Muchin bankruptcy and reorganization attorney Paul Musser as a partner in Chicago; King & Spalding hired structured finance and securitization attorney David Ridenour as a partner in Washington. He arrives from from DLA Piper; Faegre Drinker poached Prior Cashman real estate partner Joseph Brasile in New York. (FaegreDrinker.com)
• Seyfarth Shaw added four partners: Foley & Lardner management-side worklaw attorney Kamran Mirrafati joined in Los Angeles; construction and litigation partners Meghan Douris and Ashley Sherwood came from Oles Morrison Rinker & Baker in Seattle; and corporate and commercial attorney Paul Haswell arrived from Pinsent Masons in Hong Kong; Duane Morris brought in trial attorneys Harold E. “Ed” Patricoff and Jake Baccari as partners in Miami. They arrive from Shutts & Bowen, where Patricoff was co-chair of the international dispute resolution practice group; Squire Patton Boggs recruited Kentucky’s first ever solicitor general, Chad Meredith, as of counsel in Cincinnati; Squire also grabbed veteran Perkins Coie patent litigator Victoria Smith as a partner in Palo Alto, California. (SquirePattonBoggs.com)
• Contract legal services provider Latitude Legal hired former Big Law and veteran in-house leader Michelle Culligan to lead a new office in Minneapolis. (Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal) Reston, Virginia-based IT infrastructure monitoring software company ScienceLogic hired ex-Womble Bond partner Todd Harris as its first chief legal officer and general counsel; Datadog, Inc., a monitoring and security platform for cloud applications, promoted its chief corporate counsel, former Morrison Foerster corporate lawyer Kerry Acocella, to general counsel, replacing Laszlo Kopits who is retiring; Vancouver, Washington-based marketing data company ZoomInfo Technologies Inc., expanding into London, recruited former U.K. data-protection regulatory official Simon McDougall as its first chief compliance officer; autonomous driving company Robotic Research hired tech-industry in-house veteran Donald Walther to be its first chief legal officer. He’s also corporate secretary. (Businesswire)

Legal Education

• Indianapolis-headquartered Ice Miller launched a “racial justice” scholarship program for minority law students. (The Indiana Lawyer)