Wake Up Call: Tyson Foods Promotes Compliance Head to Top Lawyer

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

• Food industry giant Tyson Foods Inc. promoted senior vice president and head of law and compliance Adam Deckinger to general counsel and secretary. He’s a former Boeing litigation counsel and Boies Schiller Flexner attorney. Deckinger will succeed another Boeing veteran, Amy Tu, Tyson’s chief legal officer and secretary. She was named Tysons’ president, international & chief administrative officer in September. Earlier this month, poultry producer Butterball LLC poached Tyson chief counsel Brett Worlow for general counsel. Butterball and Tyson have been co-defendants in price-fixing litigation against major turkey suppliers. (TysonFoods.com)
• Chicago US Attorney John Lausch plans to leave the Justice Department “in early 2023” to return to the private sector, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday. Lausch, a former Kirkland & Ellis partner, was appointed by Trump in 2017. (NBCChicago.com) Earlier this week, Garland asked Lausch to review classified documents found in a former office of President Joe Biden. Garland appointed Gibson Dunn partner Robert Hur, also a Trump DOJ veteran, as special counsel in that probe yesterday. (BLAW)
• Stanford Law tax professor Joseph Bankman has reportedly hired Kaplan Hecker & Fink partner Sean Hecker to advise him as federal prosecutors probe alleged cryptocurrency fraud by Bankman’s son, former FTX.com CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. (Reuters)

Lawyers, Law Firms

• US law firms made progress on boosting diversity of their associates in 2022 but progress on partner diversity lagged “far behind,” according to a new report from the National Association for Law Placement. The full report is 45 pages. (NALP.org)
• The California state bar launched a program to recognize law firms’ efforts to boost their diversity. (The Recorder)
• Atlanta law firms are taking different approaches to getting attorneys back into office post-pandemic. (Daily Report Online)
• Mayer Brown appointed partners Tim Keeler and Nikolay Mizulin as co-leaders of its international trade practice. It named partner Howard Waltzman to co-leader of its public policy, regulatory and government affairs practice, joining partner Phil Recht in that role; Norton Rose Fulbright appointed Hamburg, Germany-based partner Stefan Feuerriegel as global head of real estate; Scarinci Hollenbeck brought in veteran worklaw attorney Lester Aron as deputy managing partner. He was at Sills Cummis & Gross as partner and co-chaired the firm’s education and labor & employment practice groups and served as counsel for large intuitions and New Jersey’s governor’s office; Womble Bond Dickinson named former intellectual property litigation chair John Morrow office managing partner in Winston-Salem and Greensboro, North Carolina. (WombleBondDickinson.com)

Laterals, Moves, In-house

• Norton Rose Fulbright brought back Houston-based energy transactions attorney Mark Jones, who was at the firm earlier in his career and returns from BakerHostetler as partner in the corporate, M&A and securities practice. (NortonRoseFulbright.com)
• Loeb & Loeb said corporate partner Henry Yin will join the firm in Hong Kong and Beijing as chair of Asia M&A and technology transactions. He arrives from Cooley LLP where he was partner and corporate practice head in Beijing and was earlier at Kirkland & Ellis. (Loeb.com)
• Finnegan said trademark attorney Lisa London returned to the firm as of counsel. (Finnegan.com)
• Dentons partner Andrew Cheung announced on LinkedIn that he took a job at UK firm Pinsent Masons as global general counsel. (LinkedIn.com)
• Amerisure Insurance promoted corporate litigation leader Stephanie Haas to vice president, general counsel & corporate secretary. (PR Web)

Promotions Effective Jan. 1

• Reed Smith promoted 37 associates to partner and 34 to counsel; Norton Rose Fulbright promoted 36 attorneys to partner worldwide, evenly split between men and women; Wilson Elser promoted 28 to partner; Duane Morris promoted 13 to partner; Snell & Wilmer promoted 13 attorneys to partner effective March 1 and six to counsel, effective Jan. 1; Spencer Fane elected 11 attorneys to partner. (SpencerFane.com)

Programming Note

• Wake Up Call won’t publish Monday, Jan. 16 due to the holiday. We’ll resume our regular weekday publication schedule on Tuesday, Jan. 17.