Wake Up Call: Why Women Leave Big Law to Start Their Own Firms

• In a story package published on Big Law Business, reporter Stephanie Russell-Kraft interviewed more than 20 women who departed their jobs at large law firms to start their own firms, more than half of whom became partner before departing Big Law. There were significant commonalities in their stories, chief among them frustration — with what they perceived to be inequitable pay compared to male counterparts, the slow grind of what they saw as implicit sexism, and the structural barriers to their advancement embedded within the Big Law ‘boys’ club as some called it. ( BLB )

• BLB also spoke with law firm leaders — including Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp, Greenberg Traurig president Hilarie Bass and Ballard Spahr chair Mark Stewart — about how firms are making an effort to bridge the gender gap in Big Law. Bass, the Greenberg Traurig president, is also the president of the American Bar Association, and shared with BLB plans to research the legal profession’s gender problem in hopes of finding a resolution. ( BLB )

• BLB reporter Stephanie Russell-Kraft and Nicole Galli, a former Big Law partner who now has her own small firm, explore why many women lawyers are leaving Big Law in a two-part podcast. ( BLB Part 1 ) ( BLB Part 2 )

• To offer their experiences directly, BLB rounded up 10 separate accounts of women who left Big Law to start their own firms. ( BLB )

• Elsewhere in the legal profession, the Democratic Attorneys General Association committed to ensuring women account for at least half of the party’s state attorney general posts in five years. There are five today. ( New York Times )

Legal News

• Chicago-based litigation funder Longford Capital Management LP said it has raised $500 million, in the latest sign of investors’ growing interest in the industry. ( Am Law Daily )

• A new Washington, D.C., nonprofit law firm, Whistleblower Aid, says it aims to help government employees and military personnel who want to report governmental wrongdoing, including people who want to contact special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. The firm, launched by former State Department whistle-blower John N. Tye and national security lawyer Mark Zaid, said it will use digital tools like SecureDrop to protect communications with clients. ( Washington Post , Ars Technica )

• Equifax Inc. is said to have learned about a major breach of its computer systems in March, almost five months before it publicly disclosed a hack. The new information could impact a U.S. criminal investigation into whether top Equifax officials violated insider-trading laws by selling stock before the company revealed the hack. ( Bloomberg ) Among 70-plus class actions filed over the breach so far, several investor complaints allege the credit- reporting agency broke securities laws. ( New York Law Journal ) A look at Phyllis Sumner, the King & Spalding partner Equifax hired to defend it against the class actions. ( BLB )

• Duane Morris LLP said its chairman and CEO, John J. Soroko, is stepping down after 10 years to become chairman emeritus and return full-time to his litigation, appellate and mediation practice. Taking his place in January will be Matthew A. Taylor, currently vice chairman and head of the firm’s trial practice group. ( BLB )

Mueller’s “Shock and Awe” Tactics

• Mueller and his team of prosecutors are using “shock and awe” tactics as they investigate Russia’s attempts to disrupt last year’s election. ( New York Times )

• What’s up with President Donald Trump’s lawyers? ( Washington Post ) His lawyers talked about the Russia investigation at a busy Washington, D.C., restaurant, loudly at an outdoor table. ( Slate )

• The family of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has set up a fundraising operation to help cover legal costs linked to Russia-related investigations by Mueller and Congress. ( Bloomberg )

• A report says federal authorities were wiretapping former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort as early as 2014. ( CBS News )

Law Firm Business

• Hogan Lovells announced it will transfer or remove 90 of its legal support and business administration jobs out of its office in London to branches of the firm in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Birmingham, England. ( BLB )

• Law firm mergers are rapidly changing the growth strategy of law firms. ( Above The Law )

• When law firms renovate older buildings and office space, they have to follow state and federal rules on handling asbestos. ( Buffalo Law Journal )

Legal Market

• Debt-laden Toys “R” Us Inc. filed for bankruptcy Monday after hiring lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis last week to help it restructure. ( Bloomberg ) As struggling retail companies across the U.S. file for bankruptcy, several are doing so for the second time, in a spate of so-called Chapter 22’s. ( Bloomberg )

• BuzzFeed hired prominent Miami lawyer Roy Black in a shakeup of the legal team defending the site against a Russian technology executive’s defamation lawsuit linked to its publishing of the controversial Trump-Russia dossier. ( Daily Business Review )

• Ted Boutrous, the Los Angeles-based global co-chairman of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP’s litigation group, filed suit over Trump’s proposal to end a program that protects so-called Dreamers — children who were brought to the U.S. by undocumented immigrants. ( Bloomberg ) Lawyers have an “ethical obligation” to help immigrants, said New York State’s Chief Judge Janet DiFiore. ( Times Union )

• The creator of Pepe the Frog has hired a WilmerHale lawyer as he gets more aggressive in his legal campaign against websites, books and phone apps that he says use the cartoon figure to espouse hate. ( Bloomberg )

• A federal panel hired law firm Kobre & Kim LLP to conduct a probe of Puerto Rico’s financial disclosures related to its $74 billion debt crisis. ( Bloomberg )

• Of seven so-called biosimilar drugs the FDA has cleared since the first approval of one of the drugs in 2015, only three are available for sale. The rest are tied up in legal disputes that can block the cheaper versions for years. ( Bloomberg )

Legal Actions

• A small California law firm asked a federal district court on Friday to declare that its use of the name “Fish IP Law” doesn’t infringe the trademark rights of the much larger Boston-based Fish & Richardson PC. ( Bloomberg BNA via BLB )

• “Please don’t make us have to call your mom,” an IP lawyer for Netflix wrote in a letter asking organizers to shut down their bar pop-up, for which they used props inspired by Netflix series “The Upside Down” without permission. ( Eater Chicago )

• Uber Technologies Inc. rarely goes on the offensive in court but it is suing an advertising company for $40 million in federal court over alleged “click fraud.” ( Bloomberg )

• A little-known Wall Street lender with a background financing dump trucks and helicopters is bankrolling a trade case that’s threatening the $29 billion U.S. solar industry. ( Bloomberg )

Regulators and Enforcement

• Attorneys general from 37 states wrote Monday to urge members of the health insurance industry’s main trade group to rethink coverage policies that may be contributing to the opioid crisis. ( ProPublica )

• The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed its proposed settlement with owners of Wall Street’s worst student debt in Delaware federal court. The agreement, which still requires a judge’s approval, calls for an audit that consumer lawyers have called unprecedented. ( Bloomberg )

The Trump Administration

• Management-side attorney Keith Sonderling has joined the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division as a senior policy adviser. Sonderling, who was a Gunster Law Firm shareholder, is the department’s first political hire under the Trump administration. ( Bloomberg, Bloomberg BNA via BLB )

• Donald Trump Jr. gave up Secret Service protection. ( Daily Beast )

• Republicans’ latest effort to repeal Obamacare is gaining steam in the Senate. ( Politico )

Happening in SCOTUS and Other Courts

• Federal prosecutors and Gibson Dunn lawyers for Martin Shkreli’s ex-attorney, former Kaye Scholer partner Evan Greebel, have been exchanging verbal pot shots in motions, ahead of the mid-October start of Greebel’s trial on wire and securities fraud charges. ( New York Law Journal )

Technology

• Avis Budget Group Inc. is taking a “holistic view” of its legal department as it uses metrics to evaluate the real impact of its inhouse lawyers and outside counsel, said the company’s top lawyer. ( Bloomberg BNA )

• Wilkinson Barker Knauer said Jennifer Tatel, former acting general counsel at the FCC, has joined the Washington, D.C.-based firm as a partner, focusing on media, privacy and the internet. ( Broadcasting & Cable )

• Two artificial intelligence networks were able to guess 25 percent of passwords used on a website in a recent study. ( MIT Technology Review )

• A group of Canadian researchers have come up with software that can determine when drivers are texting or otherwise distracted. That could be an important step toward halting the habit, which is the leading cause of traffic accidents. ( Wired )

Compiled by Rick Mitchell and edited by Casey Sullivan.