Steptoe's Office Comes to Life; McDermott Group Resigns; Fish & Richardson Blasts Off
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Washington Wrap is a weekly roundup of Big Law hires and other Washington, D.C., legal industry news. Readthepreviousedition here. Send tips and lateral moves to Katelyn Polantz atkpolantz@alm.com.
A wall made of ferns and peace lilies! A self-adjusting white noise machine! A lifesize George Washington-esque sculpture made of wood, playing chess against a disembodied arm! Steptoe & Johnson LLP s renovated office has got it all.
Among the recent upgrades to D.C. law firm offices--and there vebeenmany--Steptoe s features perhaps the most doodads and special spaces. A tour of the almost-completed building, which is scheduled to finish by January, starts in what used to be a one-story lobby with lots of thick 80s-style columns. Steptoe realized 18 of the columns were fake, so they knocked them out, then blew holes through the ceiling and floor for staircases up to the second floor reception and down to the basement.
Three living walls, covered with tiny pots of oft-tended plants under growth-encouraging lighting, stretch from the lobby to the next floor.
Once at the firm s main reception space on floor two, several large modern art installations flank the inevitable seating and espresso bar areas.
Through the door to the south is a space for the entire tax practice and firm management. It s more-or-less an open room, with furniture creating divides between each lawyer s space. The concept is modeled after the no-office approach taken by Michael Bloomberg at his eponymous news and data headquarters, to symbolize openness.
This way I can see trouble coming, so I can duck, Philip Malet, Steptoe s vice chair, joked. He and firm chair Philip West share the back wall, separated by a divider. When colleagues approach, they knock on a cabinet. A dynamic machine in the ceiling pipes in white noise that matches the volume of those talking in the room. Malet is still figuring out how to hang his dozens of family pictures and art.
But it has all paid off. It s really changed most of our outlook on the office. It s more open. It s more light, Malet said.
Two story living plant wall on the new main lobby entrance of Steptoe & Johnson's offices in Washington, D.C.
The firm s creativity to make the place cooler and cozier extends further. Some Steptoe partners are quick to admit that staying during the renovation, instead of moving to a new building, was quite the headache. But now the firm has a yoga room in its fitness center, complete with ballet bars. The basement level isn t done yet, but Malet promised it ll have a podcast studio too someday.
A full-service cafeteria on the ninth floor is an upgrade as well--the firm used to not have a kitchen with cooktops. The cafe seating looks onto a roof deck complete with a bocce court (watch out, Venable!).
The only thing Malet wishes were different is the placement of one wall divider in the cafeteria. Walls are a frequent target of Malet s attention.
He s especially proud now of the clear interior office walls that line the firm s hallways. One floor early in the renovation tested working out of attorney offices with glass walls filmed over, but a consensus prefered full transparency. Every floor is peeling off the film now.
The week s lateral moves:
The Trump administration picked several in-house counsel for top agency lawyer jobs. James Byrne, associate general counsel and chief privacy officer at Lockheed Martin Corp., is nominated as general counsel of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Brendan Carr, general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission, is nominated to join the commission as a member. My colleague Sue Reisinger rounded up these and other recent nominees.
Ten McDermott, Will & Emery labor and employment partners, including practice head David Rogers in Washington, are moving to Winston & Strawn, Bloomberg Business of Law first reported on Friday. Rogers was a member of the firm s management and executive committees.
Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck hired Milan Dalal from the office of Sen. Mark Warner, Bloomberg News reported. Dalal has been Warner s counsel on financial policy for more than four years.
Peter Morreale left Goldman Sachs to become a Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft partner in Washington this week. He joins the capital markets group and previously specialized in Goldman s mortgages group. He also formerly worked at McKee Nelson--now part of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius--and at mortgage lender Fannie Mae. He was the second lateral moving from Goldman to a firm in the week.
Jacqueline Cooney left Booz Allen Hamilton to join Paul Hastings as a senior privacy adviser in privacy and cybersecurity. She ll base in Washington.
For the second week in a row, Fairfax, Virginia s Blankingship & King added a lawyer. The firm hired Michael Kim as counsel from Stites & Harbison. Kim will practice in the firm s civil litigation, education, legal malpractice and trusts and estates groups.
Three new attorneys joined Robert Mueller III s special investigation: Brandon Van Grack, Ruth Atkinson and Zainab Ahmad. The Washington Post walked through Mueller s entire 13-lawyer team.
The Office of Government Ethics head Walter Shaub resigned from working with the Trump administration on Thursday. His resignation letter is here. Shaub will join the Campaign Legal Center.
In other D.C.-area industry news:
We re going to Space Camp! Or rather, Fish & Richardson is going to Space Camp and taking three Washington, D.C., middle school students with them. The students, Nayor McFowler, Kelton Price, and Angel Silvers, will enjoy six days at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, as part of a long-running firm scholarship program that sends kids interested in STEM fields and their teacher chaperones into the mission control and zero gravity simulation nirvana.
Influential Virginia environmental lawyer George Freeman Jr. died on June 26 at the age of 88, Hunton & Williams announced in a memorial to his career. Freeman joined Hunton in 1957, and then started the firm s nuclear licensing practice and its environmental law team. One firm partner noted how Freeman was one of the first U.S. lawyers to license a privately owned nuclear reactor.
Let s hope Dentons clients are getting a deal when Newt Gingrich helps with their legal and political work. He charges East Coasters $60,000 per speech and Midwesterners and West Coasters $75,000, according to this Buzzfeed story.
Yolanda Young, who once sued Covington & Burling for discrimination, says in this San Francisco Chronicle op-ed that Eric Holder Jr. s report on Uber s workplace harassment and discrimination missed the mark.
David Kendall, the Williams & Connolly lawyer who represents the Clintons, published a Washington Post op-ed about how nuts it would be for Trump to fire Mueller.
When the Justice Department s independent ethics and compliance counsel Hui Chen resigned recently, she explained why in this letter on LinkedIn.
The New York Times looked into the relationship between Michael Cohen, a personal lawyer to businessman-era Trump, and the president. The Times profile says Cohen is positioned to be a sort of rainmaker for Squire Patton Boggs.
Jonathan Mahler penned a closer look at a species that is rapidly proliferating in Washington: the Trump Lawyer for The New York Times Magazine. It boils down to this: Trump Lawyers don t anticipate problems or take precautions at all. Trump Lawyers fight occasionally in courtrooms, but mostly on TV.
We mapped and analyzed every lawyer at work for Trump, for his associates or against them in the Russia investigation. It s quite the network.
It appears Trump may add more lawyers to his white-collar defense team. Ty Cobb of Hogan Lovells was being considered, Reuters reported, as was Daniel Levin of White & Case. Reuters said that William Burck of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Emmet Flood of Williams & Connolly turned down the job.
As those lawyers consider the opportunity, they might find useful advice in Christine Simmons story this week on how to handle difficult clients.
The actor George Clooney and activist John Prendergast called on Squire Patton Boggs to quit representing the government of Sudan in this article for Time. A sampling: Squire Patton Boggs is a big firm and it s entirely possible that [Squire affiliates] John Boehner, Trent Lott and John Breaux simply don t know that their firm has taken on this account. It s also possible they don t know that the government of Sudan continues to use starvation as a weapon of war on its own people, still funds militias that murder its own innocent civilians, and continues to loot the country of its natural resources and funnel the wealth of Sudan into the hands of regime leaders through massive corruption.
Apparently James Comey has a lot of homies who still visit the Justice Department.
After quite the end-of-term hullaballoo, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy still may retire in the next two years. He told clerk applicants for the term beginning October 2018 that he is considering as much, Nina Totenberg of NPR reported.
Chief Justice John Roberts spoke at his son s ninth grade graduation. His remarks quickly went viral. A transcript of Roberts full speech is here.
The hit play The Originalist, about Antonin Scalia, is back at Arena Stage until July 30. Tony Mauro spoke with Edward Gero, who embodies the late Nino on stage.
My colleague Cogan Schneier taped this podcast with Latham & Watkins Alice Fisher and Leslie Caldwell about how they ve led other lawyers.
Shout out to this town s chicken shit enthusiasts and those whose names (and firms!) are listed in this index. Reporter Jesse Eisinger s book on waning white collar enforcement, especially after the financial crisis, is now available.
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Fahrenthold of The Washington Post is trying to get in touch with Baker & Hostetler.
Update: Baker & Hostetler responded late Friday, with a no comment.
