Wake Up Call: Shearman Team Says Au Revoir Ahead of Merger Vote

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

• Shearman & Sterling’s Paris head is leaving as part of a four-partner team ahead of the US law firm’s merger with Allen & Overy. Managing partner Xavier Norlain is jumping to rival US firm Proskauer Rose along with three other partners, according to a person familiar with the matter. (Financial News)
• Witness preparation and the “task of delineating what is necessary and proper and what is ethically prohibited” has become “more urgent with the advent of commonly used remote technologies, some of which can be used to surreptitiously ‘coach’ witnesses in new and ethically problematic ways, ” says the American Bar Association in a new formal opinion. Opinion 508 lists several examples of improper attorney behavior, from winking or kicking a deponent under the table to suggesting a witness lie under oath. (ABA)
• Google, facing the greatest litigation threat in its history, hopes the stolid approach of Kent Walker, its top lawyer, will once again prevail. Google and its parent company, Alphabet, are preparing to face off next week in federal court against the Justice Department and a collection of states, which claim the tech giant illegally abused its monopoly power to keep its search engine on top. Since being hired as Google’s general counsel in 2006, Walker has been an architect of the company’s legal strategy, overseeing a victory in a protracted courtroom showdown with rival Oracle and a case that could have held Google liable for users’ social media posts. (The New York Times)

Laterals, Moves, In-house

• Squire Patton Boggs is opening an office in Amsterdam.
• Louise Pentland has been appointed chief counsel for the Disney parks, experiences and products segment of The Walt Disney Company. She joins from PayPal.
• Eduardo C. Robreno, former district judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, has joined McCarter & English as a partner in Philadelphia.
• Todd Beaton has joined McGuireWoods as a partner in the securities enforcement and regulatory counseling group in New York.
• David Curtiss has joined Schulte Roth & Zabel as a partner in the mergers and acquisitions and securities Group in New York.
• Karen Baillie, Terri Imbarlina Patak, and Katrina Clingerman have joined Ogletree Deakins as shareholders. They respectively join from Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis, Jackson Lewis, and the Associate General Counsel for Indiana University Health, Inc.
• Martin De Luca has joined Boies Schiller Flexner as a partner in Miami and New York.
• Linda Clark has joined Morrison Foerster as a partner in the global privacy and data security group. She joins from RELX.
• Jordan Coyle has joined White & Case as a partner in the intellectual property practice and global technology industry group in Washington, D.C.
• Ryan Lawrence has rejoined Mayer Brown as a partner in the corporate and securities practice in Chicago. He joins from Avant.
• Kelly Fitzgerald Canby has joined Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani as a partner in the Carlsbad, Calif., office.
• Joshua M. Altman has joined Katten as a partner in the insolvency and restructuring practice in Chicago. He joins from Kirkland & Ellis.
• Rana Sadek Roumayah has joined Honigman as a partner in Detroit. She joins from the National Labor Relations Board.
• Faisal Delawalla has joined Jones Day as a partner in its corporate practice in Chicago. He joins from Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner.