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As legal departments face mounting pressure to manage costs, increases in hourly billing rates from law firms appear to be moderating, with the first few months of 2025 presenting a snapshot of this reality, according to a recent report from Wolters Kluwer's ELM Solutions.
Legal department hires in the last month included high-profile appointments at the Association of Corporate Counsel, GE Vernova, and a California legal legend joining an AI startup named Anthropic. Here, Law360 Pulse looks at some of the top in-house announcements from the past few weeks.
Sullivan & Cromwell LLP has seen at least two of its mergers and acquisitions attorneys depart from its New York office in recent weeks, as the global firm concurrently boosts its standing in London with the announcement this week of two high-profile private capital hires.
Goodwin Procter LLP has tapped a Sidley Austin LLP partner to lead its shareholder activism and takeover defense practice, the firm announced Tuesday.
The top anti-corruption prosecutor for the Republic of Moldova, who supervised the investigation and prosecution of more than 700 anti-corruption matters there, has returned to the U.S. and Jones Day, the firm where she started her legal career nearly a decade ago, Jones Day announced Tuesday.
Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP announced Tuesday that it has continued its boomerang hiring streak with the addition of two partners who began their legal careers at the firm, including another intellectual property lawyer from Latham & Watkins LLP.
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP is continuing the rapid expansion of its international trade team, announcing Tuesday that it has hired a former U.S. Department of Justice attorney who most recently served as the chief of the National Security Division's export control section.
A longtime attorney with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General, who was nominated to be inspector general of the U.S. Department of Commerce by former President Joe Biden, has joined Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, the firm announced Tuesday.
Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP announced Tuesday that it has added a leader for its appellate practice in the Lone Star State, a former Texas assistant solicitor general who arrives from energy law firm Davis Gerald & Cremer PC.
An attorney who spent the first 15 years of his legal career working with National Labor Relations Board has recently moved into private practice and joined Blank Rome LLP's growing labor team.
The co-founder of Pittsburgh's Cohen & Grigsby, which became one of the city's largest law firms when it joined forces with Dentons, died this week.
University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax lost her federal discrimination claims against the school for suspending her over disparaging comments she made about minorities, with a judge finding that she was disciplined for racist speech, not because of her own race.
Emory Healthcare tapped a K&L Gates LLP partner with more than 20 years of experience as a healthcare regulatory attorney as its next chief counsel for health affairs.
Sullivan & Cromwell LLP leads this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the Fifth Circuit vacated a pair of Biden-era regulations aimed at bolstering transparency in the short-selling market.
The number of examinees passing the multistate bar exam in July continued to gain momentum, with near record highs seen this summer over the past 12 years, according to an announcement from the National Conference of Bar Examiners.
Sterlington PLLC announced another addition to its corporate bench Wednesday, this time a longtime transactional attorney who most recently worked for WilmerHale.
Several contract software companies made announcements this week, including one about the appointment of a chief product officer.
A promotion to partner or election to practice group chair means a slew of new responsibilities and also lots of well-deserved recognition. Law360 reveals the list of attorneys whose commitment to legal excellence earned them highly coveted spots in the law firm leadership ranks. Find out if your old legal friends — or rivals — moved up in the second quarter of the year.
Artificial intelligence is no longer just a back-office tool in mergers and acquisitions legal work, but is increasingly embedded in core deal processes that help attorneys manage due diligence, draft agreements and assess risk.
BigLaw firms announced a slew of new hires this week as the legal industry sees August recede in the rearview mirror. Test your legal news savvy here with Law360 Pulse's weekly quiz.
Harvey, which sells a generative artificial intelligence platform for legal professionals and is worth $5 billion, announced Thursday the launch of a law school program that will provide students and faculty with its platform and support the co-creation of AI curricula.
A dispute over the departure of two former Prindle Goetz Barnes & Reinholtz LLP nonequity partners playing out in California state court is putting a spotlight on the validity of partner contracts when a law firm reorganizes and changes its name.
A Manhattan federal judge stayed a $67 million discrimination lawsuit brought by a former Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP partner alleging the firm pushed him out of the aircraft-finance practice group, pressured him to resign and then fired him because of his age, saying there is an arbitration agreement at play.
The rising use of generative artificial intelligence tools that allow attorneys to get work done faster is creating tension with the traditional model of billable hours. Here, six legal leaders give their take on whether AI will eliminate the billable hour.
Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP announced Thursday that it continued its Atlanta growth with the addition of a new healthcare practice group partner from Parker Hudson Rainer & Dobbs LLP.
The legal profession is among the most hesitant to adopt ChatGPT because of its proclivity to provide false information as if it were true, but in a wide variety of situations, lawyers can still be aided by information that is only in the right ballpark, says Robert Plotkin at Blueshift IP.
Series
Ask A Mentor: How Can I Use Social Media Responsibly?Leah Kelman at Herrick Feinstein discusses the importance of reasoned judgment and thoughtful process when it comes to newly admitted attorneys' social media use.
Attorneys should take a cue from U.S. Supreme Court justices and boil their arguments down to three points in their legal briefs and oral advocacy, as the number three is significant in the way we process information, says Diana Simon at University of Arizona.
In order to achieve a robust client data protection posture, law firms should focus on adopting a risk-based approach to security, which can be done by assessing gaps, using that data to gain leadership buy-in for the needed changes, and adopting a dynamic and layered approach, says John Smith at Conversant Group.
Laranda Walker at Susman Godfrey, who was raising two small children and working her way to partner when she suddenly lost her husband, shares what fighting to keep her career on track taught her about accepting help, balancing work and family, and discovering new reserves of inner strength.
Series
Ask A Mentor: How Can I Turn Deferral To My Advantage?Diana Leiden at Winston & Strawn discusses how first-year associates whose law firm start dates have been deferred can use the downtime to hone their skills, help their communities, and focus on returning to BigLaw with valuable contacts and out-of-the-box insights.
To make their first 90 days on the job a success, new legal operations managers should focus on several key objectives, including aligning priorities with leadership and getting to know their team, says Ashlyn Donohue at LinkSquares.
Female attorneys and others who pause their careers for a few years will find that gaps in work history are increasingly acceptable among legal employers, meaning with some networking, retraining and a few other strategies, lawyers can successfully reenter the workforce, says Jill Backer at Ave Maria School of Law.
ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence tools pose significant risks to the integrity of legal work, but the key for law firms is not to ban these tools, but to implement them responsibly and with appropriate safeguards, say Natalie Pierce and Stephanie Goutos at Gunderson Dettmer.
Opinion
We Must Continue DEI Efforts Despite High Court HeadwindsThough the U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down affirmative action in higher education, law firms and their clients must keep up the legal industry’s recent momentum advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the profession in order to help achieve a just and prosperous society for all, says Angela Winfield at the Law School Admission Council.
Law firms that fail to consider their attorneys' online habits away from work are not using their best efforts to protect client information and are simplifying the job of plaintiffs attorneys in the case of a breach, say Mark Hurley and Carmine Cicalese at Digital Privacy and Protection.
Though effective writing is foundational to law, no state requires attorneys to take continuing legal education in this skill — something that must change if today's attorneys are to have the communication abilities they need to fulfill their professional and ethical duties to their clients, colleagues and courts, says Diana Simon at the University of Arizona.
In the most stressful times for attorneys, when several transactions for different partners and clients peak at the same time and the phone won’t stop buzzing, incremental lifestyle changes can truly make a difference, says Lindsey Hughes at Haynes Boone.
Series
Ask A Mentor: How Can I Support Gen Z Attorneys?Meredith Beuchaw at Lowenstein Sandler discusses how senior attorneys can assist the newest generation of attorneys by championing their pursuit of a healthy work-life balance and providing the hands-on mentorship opportunities they missed out on during the pandemic.
A recent data leak at Proskauer via a cloud data storage platform demonstrates key reasons why law firms must pay attention to data safeguarding, including the increasing frequency of cloud-based data breaches and the consequences of breaking client confidentiality, says Robert Kraczek at One Identity.