The National Law Review staff uses this space to explore and recognize law firm changes, including new law firm hires. Additionally, we like to highlight law firm awards and individual attorney achievements, as well as explore technology and software developments that make legal research and law firm management easier and more efficient.
Law Firm Additions, Promotions and Hires
Bracewell LLP announced they added two public finance partners, Bill Mahomes and E. Steve Bolden II. The men have been practicing together for the past ten years, and they both have extensive experience in public finance projects. Bracewell Managing Partner, Gregory M. Bopp says, “Bill and Steve are exceptional public finance lawyers. They have a strong public finance practice in Dallas and across Texas that will deepen the capabilities of our nationally-recognized team.”
Mahomes has experience in public infrastructure projects and P3s, and has served on the board of directors of the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and the Texas Turnpike Authority, giving his advice the heft of on the ground experience. Bolden, along with his public finance work, also practices in corporate and securities law; specifically, experience in mergers and acquisitions in public and private companies. In terms of his public finance practice, he focuses on bond counsel, disclosure counsel and underwriters’ counsel matters.
Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp announced that Alan M. Brunswick will join the firm as a partner in the Los Angeles office. Brunswick has established a practice representing clients in labor relations matters, specifically in the media and entertainment industry. His experience spans wrongful termination, employment discrimination, wage and hour as well as ERISA disputes in union and non-union settings. Before moving to law firms, Brunswick was the former Vice President and in-house counsel for the Association of Motion Picture & Television Producers. Kevin Gaut, chairman of MSK, praises Brunswick’s reputation for creativity and intelligence, and he says, “Adding Alan to our team of sophisticated entertainment industry labor attorneys only strengthens MSK’s standing as a go-to firm for companies facing tough negotiations.”
Perkins Coie announced their Labor & Employment practice added three new partners—Richard B. Hankins and Brennan W. Bolt to their Dallas office, and Seth H. Borden to the Washington DC office. All three bring experience in labor relations advising, and have experience working with corporations and in working with the NLRB.
Hankins has over twenty years of experience working with companies on a wide range of labor relations issues; with specific emphasis on working with companies on labor relations strategies during acquisitions and divestitures, as well as plant reorganizations. Additionally, Hankins has experience before the NLRB and the US Circuit Courts of Appeals, arguing cases in over 15 regions of the NLRB. Borden has built his career on helping organizations navigate labor relations strategies, including helping to negotiate collective bargaining agreements and labor arbitrations. He has specific expertise in social media and other communications technologies and how they integrate into labor law. Brennan works with employers, providing counsel on unfair labor practice proceedings, collective bargaining, strikes and boycotts. He has litigated on the employer side on Title VII, the ADA, FMLA, FLSA, trade secrets and non-compete claims. Ann Marie Painter, Chair of the Perkins Coie Labor & Employment practice calls the addition of the attorneys a “valuable resource.” She says, “When it comes to the labor and employment space, this group has a stellar and nationally recognized reputation as the go-to team for some of the world’s largest companies. They have successfully handled large-scale ‘bet-the-company’ labor cases, but can also nimbly aid employers of all sizes with their day-to-day labor issues.”
Additionally, Perkins Coie announced that Joydeep Dasmunshi has joined the Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) practice as a partner in the Chicago office. Dasmunshi has focused on middle-market M&A transactions, and his record includes a $4.25 billion airline acquisition, a $1.75 billion sale of a global valuation, corporate finance and governance-related advisor company to a private equity firm two years ago, and work with various middle-market portfolio companies in technology, media, financial services and healthcare.
Pallavi Banerjee, Ph.D. joins Womble Bond Dickinson as a Science Advisor in the firm’s Boston office. A former fellow with Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Banerjee’s background in cell biology, cancer biology and immunology assists life sciences clients develop their patent portfolios. She has experience working with biotech companies and universities on IP due diligence and drafting and prosecution of patent applications with the USPTO. Her research on cellular and molecular mechanisms of diseases and how to identify therapeutic targets using in vitro and in vivo mechanisms have been published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Cancer Research, Cancer Letters, and International Immunology.
Venable recently announced that Paul C. Levin has joined the firm as a partner in the Real Estate Practice. Levin has experience at all levels of the real estate transaction process, and he has worked on some of the most recognizable projects in the Bay Area. Levin is a LEED Green Associate and is a member of the U.S. Green Building Council, Northern California chapter. Additionally, he has experience with P3 projects. He will be working in Venable’s Baltimore and San Francisco offices. Levin is excited about his bicoastal work with Venable, saying, “The firm’s deep practice and stellar reputation will allow me to continue to grow as a deal lawyer. I am thankful to have the opportunity to continue to build my Bay Area practice while returning to my hometown to expand my East Coast deal flow.”
Law Firm Recognition and Accolades
John Allen, of Varnum, was recently appointed to the Ethics and Professionalism Standing Committee of the Tort Trial and Insurances Practice Section of the American Bar Association. Allen, who focuses his practice on business and commercial litigation, has served this committee devoted to consideration and understanding of issues on attorneys maintaining professional independence, at several points throughout his career. Along with being certified as a civil trial advocate by the National Board of Trial Advocacy, he is also a certified arbitrator and mediator.
Labor and Employment Attorney Carmen Cole, with Polsinelli, was recently appointed to the Board of Directors of Public Counsel. Public Counsel is a non-profit dedicated to providing legal services to individuals, families, veterans and immigrants who live below the poverty level and do not have access to legal representation. In order to address civil rights and systemic issues facing this population, the group works with volunteers from major law firms and corporations.
Cole, a Principal in Polsinelli’s LA and SF office, says, “Public Counsel plays a critical role ensuring that individuals in underserved communities within the Los Angeles area have access to quality legal representation,” said Cole. “I am honored and humbled to be a part of this mission. As someone from an environment where statistically it would have been more likely for me to have become a client of Public Counsel rather than a member of its Board of Directors, this appointment will provide an opportunity to pay it forward. This is a great way to give back to the Los Angeles community.”
Cole has a long list of community volunteer and leadership roles. She has been active with the California Minority Counsel Program; she has worked hard to make the legal industry more accessible to women and minorities. Cole has also contributed her time in raising awareness and funds for the African American Chamber of Commerce’s (GLAAC) Education Fund & Foundation program.
For the sixth year in a row, Davis Wright Tremaine was named one of the country’s Best Law Firms for Women by Working Mother magazine in conjunction with the ABA Journal. This accolade recognizes the firm’s success in retaining and recruiting women attorneys, the firm’s family-friendly policies and the resulting high number of women in leadership roles. Women comprise 27% of the equity partners at Davis Wright Tremaine. The magazine highlighted the firm’s Mentoring Circles program, which was recently revamped and now helps support over 100 women attorneys at all levels in the firm.
Labor and Employment law firm, Jackson Lewis was also one of the 60 firms recognized by Working Mother magazine as a “Best Law Firm for Women.” Firm Co-Chairs Kevin G. Lauri and William J. Anthony say they are pleased with the firm’s designation by the magazine, and they “consider it to be a direct result of the firm’s inclusive culture together with our commitment to fostering the promotion of women throughout every level of the firm.”
Meredith Borgas, editor-in-chief of Working Mother, says she hopes the magazine’s accolade highlights best practices for law firms and encourages others in the industry to follow suit. She says, “It’s heartening to see the progress women lawyers are making at firms committed to fully utilizing these attorneys’ abilities. The war for talent is increasing incentives for law firms to invest in retaining women lawyers, which is why we’re seeing more women’s initiatives and parental-support groups.”
Dan Wolf, an Associate with Gilbert LLP, was recently honored with the Making Justice Real Pro Bono Award by the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia. Wolf has an outstanding record in pro bono achievement, having worked with clients referred from Legal Aid and leading pro bono efforts at his firm; which he has done since he joined Gilbert in 2012. Wolf has worked with pro bono clients on consumer law matters, rental housing and public benefits, and he has recruited colleagues to take on these matters as well. Scott Gilbert, the founder and Chairman of Gilbert LLP, says Wolf “sets an example for the firm. We are both very proud and quite fortunate to have Dan as a colleague.”
Legal Industry Tech, Tools &
Thomson Reuters recently announced Westlaw Edge Quick Check, designed to harness AI technology to streamline and supercharge legal research. Quick Check allows Westlaw users to go over documents with citations to ensure everything is covered and no major points were missed. By uploading a document into Quick Check, users can have the text analyzed and Quick Check will identify the legal issues at hand, offering recommendations of relevant to the issues in the document that are not cited. Users can filter results based on previous reviews, and additional indicators are assigned based on established categories. Quick check is integrated with KeyCite to catch cases that are bad law, to ensure the results are accurate. Additionally, QuickCheck can be used to identify weakness in briefs, highlighting citations that are invalidated or overturned, and can find citations that were passed over but are relevant.
Khalid Al-Kofahi, vice president of Research & Development at Thomson Reuters says:
We’ve built Westlaw Edge Quick Check to be very sophisticated in terms of selecting which language and citations to extract from motions and briefs, and it executes several search strategies, sifts through primary and secondary law results, follows citation networks, and finds and filters by Key Numbers, courts and other data attributes. In doing so, it often considers hundreds of thousands of possibilities – far more than any researcher could go through, even if he or she had all day to do it – yet it returns a concise report of relevant material that might have been missed in a traditional research process.
Wilson Allen, a software and technical services provider for professional services law firms, and ClearlyRated, a client satisfaction, service quality research provider, have teamed up to help law firms take client experience data to distill actionable insights for business development. Norm Mullock, Vice President of Strategy at Wilson Allen, says, “After experiencing the ClearlyRated client survey program first-hand, it became clear that real-time insight into client experience would be a pivotal improvement for the firms that we work with.”
This partnership will allow law firms to maximize the data available in both client feedback and business analytics to provide the tools needed for data-driven decision making. The companies have launched an API Integration that pairs the ClearlyRated Client’s Service program with business intelligence tools in order to ensure those data points are available for business planning. Eric Gregg, ClearlyRated’s CEO, says, “The client experience is important to all professional services businesses, but it is also a prime opportunity for law firms to differentiate from the competition. Our partnership with Wilson Allen will ensure that the law firms we serve have access to measurable insight on the client experience in a way that supplements business intelligence and informs strategies for growth.”
With the need for efficiency ever-present in legal operations, LawLytics, the leading website platform for small law firms, and PracticePanther, the cloud-based practice management system, have partnered to provide customers of both forms with native integration between their platforms. By simply embedding some code, a law firm’s web leads and client forms can be linked to their PracticePanther account, simplifying the process of integrating new clients, setting up billing and matter management. Instructions, with screenshots, are available and this process can be implemented with just a few clicks.
