California Pulse

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    MoFo Adds Kirkland Capital Markets Ace In San Diego

    Morrison Foerster LLP is boosting its transactions team, announcing Tuesday that it is bringing in a Kirkland & Ellis LLP capital markets pro as a partner in its San Diego office as part of the firm's plan to increase high-level talent on the West Coast.

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    Share Of New Partners Who Are Women Decreased This Year

    More than 80 major law firms had new partner classes in 2024 made up of at least 50% women, according to an analysis released Tuesday by a think tank focused on diversity and workplace flexibility. However, the analysis also found that the proportion of new U.S.-based partners who are women decreased.

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    Experienced Financial Atty Named Wealth Manager's New GC

    Focus Financial Partners Inc. announced that a longtime attorney at LPL Financial was named the New York-based wealth manager's general counsel as part of a series of leadership appointments.

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    Snell & Wilmer Adds Procopio Corporate Atty In San Diego

    Snell & Wilmer LLP has brought in a Procopio Cory Hargreaves & Savitch LLP capital markets expert as a partner in its San Diego office to expand its bench of corporate attorneys in Southern California.

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    Approach The Bench: Judge Rosenthal Praises Zoom Hearings

    While U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal calls the pandemic a disaster that "discombobulated" the federal courts, she thinks there was also a silver lining to the experience.

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    How Certifications Became Ubiquitous For Privacy Attorneys

    As privacy has become a more prominent and popular practice area, many attorneys have turned to certifications offered by the International Association of Privacy Professionals to market their skills, with those in the field saying that the popularity is the result of privacy's rapid evolution and the ubiquity is unlikely to diminish.

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    The Psychology Of Top Firms' Growing Partner Pay Spreads

    Dan Binstock, a legal recruiter who works with top law firms, recently said to me about partner pay, "You can never please everybody."

  • Calif. High Court Says Judicial DQ Bids Must Be Timely

    The California Supreme Court on Monday held that an appellate court got it wrong by determining a timeliness requirement doesn't apply when a party alleges that a judge is disqualified due to bias, in a case that resulted in a $43.5 million judgment for hundreds of title company employees.

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    3 Factors Attorneys Should Keep In Mind When Using AI

    Attorneys who hope to leverage new artificial intelligence programs in their legal work should stay mindful of three rules of conduct from the American Bar Association dictating attorney competence, client confidentiality and billing procedures, according to a recently published paper from the International Association of Defense Counsel.

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    Simpson Thacher Taps Atty Duo As 1st Banking Team Leaders

    Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP has named two longtime New York City-based partners, including the co-head of its global banking and credit practice, as the first co-leaders of its global investment banking practice, the firm announced Monday.

  • Maynard Nexsen Creates Business Advisory Services Team

    Maynard Nexsen PC has launched a new business advisory service aimed at privately held and family-owned businesses that will help steer clients through succession planning, mergers, risk management and other needs from both a legal and business perspective, according to a Monday announcement.

  • Tesla Atty Faces Sanctions Bid Over Mediation Appearance

    Tesla and an in-house attorney are facing a sanctions bid in California federal court for reportedly appearing at a mediation in a wrongful death case despite lacking settlement authority, causing "delay and unnecessary expense" to the widow of a man who died when his Tesla allegedly ran off the road, crashed and ignited.

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    Telesis Bio's Chief Legal Officer To Leave Post This Week

    Telesis Bio Inc.'s chief legal officer is exiting his role on Thursday and will be receiving a severance payment of $307,500 under a separation agreement, according to a public filing.

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    Cleary Adds Northern Calif. Deputy Criminal Chief As Partner

    The deputy chief of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California has joined Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP's Bay Area office as a partner in the Americas litigation practice, the firm said Monday.

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    Kennedys' New Head Steps Up In 'Evolving' Insurance World

    Meg Catalano, who was named Kennedys’ new global managing partner this week, joined Law360 Pulse to discuss her vision for the role and how the firm looks to stay on top of client needs in a volatile world under her leadership.

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    National Footprints Scramble Partner Pay's Link To Location

    Law firm partners' increasing pay often varies based on where those attorneys are located, a fact reinforced by a new study out Thursday, but experts say the relationship between compensation and location has become more complicated as more firms operate on a national scale. 

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    Insurers Have Long Used AI; Now Litigation Funders Want In

    As State Farm waded into the nascent field of "artificial intelligence" tools in the mid-1980s, its mainframe computers began to overheat under the strain of calculating the values of claims.

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    Mitchell Silberberg Hires Warner Bros. Discovery Attorney

    Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP has hired Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.'s chief employment counsel to help strengthen the firm's national labor and employment practice and its entertainment bench.

  • Polsinelli Real Estate Shareholder Joins Kilpatrick In SF

    Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP announced on Thursday the hiring of a former principal and shareholder at Polsinelli as a counsel in its San Francisco office.

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    No Reason To Open Discovery, X, Musk Say In Severance Fight

    Elon Musk and X Corp. have urged a California federal court not to acquiesce to former executives' request to open discovery in their severance benefits lawsuit, saying the workers can't show they've been harmed by the court's decision to pause discovery until after ruling on a dismissal motion.

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    New Prez Of Black Women Attys Org On Value Of Camaraderie

    As she prepares to steer the Black Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles toward its 50th anniversary next year, Seyfarth Shaw LLP partner Shardé Skahan said the group is particularly special for its sense of community.

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    Kessler Topaz Founding Partner To Retire At End Of Year

    One of the founding partners of Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check LLP announced this week he is retiring from the Radnor, Pennsylvania-based firm after more than two decades of representing clients in securities class actions.

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    MG+M Lands Former Wilson Elser Litigators In LA, Dallas

    Manning Gross & Massenburg LLP said it has expanded its nationwide reach and boosted its status as a litigation firm by bringing in a pair of partners in Dallas and Los Angeles from Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP who also spent decades at boutique DeHay & Elliston LLP.

  • Voir Dire: Law360 Pulse's Weekly Quiz

    The legal industry had another action-packed week as firms prepared for increased lobbying activity in anticipation of the upcoming election, while lawyers nationwide came together to support a nonpartisan initiative focused on protecting the electoral process. Test your legal news savvy here with Law360 Pulse's weekly quiz.

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    Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

    Kemp Jones LLP, Parker Nelson & Associates and Campbell & Williams lead this week's list of Law360 legal lions with back-to-back wins in ongoing litigation against a bankrupt "alkaline water" company.

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Expert Analysis

  • Series

    Talking Mental Health: Life As A Lawyer With OCD Author Photo

    Kelly Hughes at Ogletree discusses what she’s learned in the 14 years since she was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, recounting how the experience shaped her law practice, what the legal industry and general public get wrong about the disorder, and how law firms can better support employees who have OCD.

  • 3 Innovative Ways AI May Be Used In Legal Practice
    Excerpt from Practical Guidance
    Author Photo

    Artificial intelligence tools will increasingly be used by outside counsel to better predict the outcomes of litigation — thus informing legal strategy with greater precision — and by clients to scrutinize invoices and evaluate counsel’s performance, says Ronald Levine at Herrick Feinstein.

  • Roundup

    My Nonpracticing Law Job Author Photo

    Not every law degree leads to a law practice. In this Law360 Pulse series, former practicing attorneys share the stories of how they went from practicing corporate law to using their knowledge and background to carve out a nontraditional career path in the legal industry.

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    My Nonpracticing Law Job: Librarian Author Photo

    Lisa A. Goodman at Texas A&M University shares how she went from a BigLaw associate who liked to hang out in the firm's law library to director of a law library herself in just over a decade, and provides considerations for anyone interested in pursuing a law librarian career.

  • Legal Briefs Can Benefit From Cleaned Up Case Citations Author Photo

    Federal courts have recently been changing the way they quote decisions to omit insignificant details and string cites, and lawyers should consider adopting this practice to enhance the readability of their briefs — as long as accuracy stays top of mind, says Diana Simon at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law.

  • 5 Best Practices For Firms Designing DEI Programs Author Photo

    Nikki Lewis Simon, chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer at Greenberg Traurig, discusses best practices — and some pitfalls to avoid — for law firms looking to build programs aimed at driving inclusion in the workplace.

  • Former Minn. Chief Justice Instructs On Writing Better Briefs Author Photo

    Former Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Lorie Gildea, now at Greenberg Traurig, offers strategies on writing more effective appellate briefs from her time on the bench.

  • Ask A Mentor: How Do I Juggle Billables And Other Activities? Author Photo

    While involvement in internal firm initiatives can be rewarding both personally and professionally, associates' billable time requirements don’t leave much room for other work, meaning they must develop strategies to ensure they’re meeting all of their commitments while remaining balanced, says Melanie Webber at Fisher Phillips.

  • Making Legal Cents: How To Adapt As Clients Tighten Budgets Author Photo

    Amid a dip in corporate legal spending and client pushback on bills, Shireen Hilal at Maior Consultants highlights specific in-house counsel frustrations and explains how firms can provide customized legal advice with costs that are supported by undeniable value.

  • Spartan Arbitration Tactics Against Well-Funded Opponents Author Photo

    Like the ancient Spartans who held off a numerically superior Persian army at the Battle of Thermopylae, trial attorneys and clients faced with arbitration against an opponent with a bigger war chest can take a strategic approach to create a pass to victory, say Kostas Katsiris and Benjamin Argyle at Venable.

  • General Counsel And Legal Ops Must Work Together Author Photo

    It is critical for general counsel to ensure that a legal operations leader is viewed not only as a peer, but as a strategic leader for the organization, and there are several actionable ways general counsel can not only become more involved, but help champion legal operations teams and set them up for success, says Mary O'Carroll at Ironclad.

  • How Generative AI's Growing Memory Affects Lawyers Author Photo

    A new ChatGPT feature that can remember user information across different conversations has broad implications for attorneys, whose most pressing questions for the AI tool are usually based on specific, and large, datasets, says legal tech adviser Eric Wall.

  • A Model For Optimal Legal Tech Investment Strategy Author Photo

    Legal organizations struggling to work out the right technology investment strategy may benefit from using a matrix for legal department efficiency that is based on an understanding of where workloads belong, according to the basic functions and priorities of a corporate legal team, says Sylvain Magdinier at Integreon.

  • Series

    My Nonpracticing Law Job: Recruiter Author Photo

    Self-proclaimed "Lawyer Doula" Danielle Thompson at Major Lindsey shares how she went from Columbia Law School graduate and BigLaw employment associate to a career in legal recruiting — and discovered a passion for advocacy along the way.

  • Series

    Ask A Mentor: How Do I Balance Social Activism With My Job? Author Photo

    Corporate attorneys pursuing social justice causes outside of work should consider eight guidelines for finding equilibrium between their beliefs and their professional duties and reputation, say Diedrick Graham, Debra Friedman and Simeon Brier at Cozen O'Connor.

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