By: Rebecca Cohen, The Recorder

Richard Hsu, a popular podcaster and intellectual property partner at Shearman & Sterling in Silicon Valley, has left the Am Law 100 firm to become a managing director at Major, Lindsey & Africa in San Francisco.

The move by Hsu, who served as global head of IP transactions at Shearman & Sterling, as well as co-chair of the firm’s privacy and data protection team, will now see him focus on partner recruitment.

“I’ve been a practicing lawyer for all of my career, 25 years,” Hsu said Tuesday. “I’ve been in management. I’ve been a practice group leader. A lot of the things I’ve been doing have involved building relationships. I thought legal recruiting would be a great way to leverage that.”

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By: Alyse Kalish, The Muse

Whether we’re dealing with an unhappy client, or assigned a last-minute project to complete by the end of the day, or just going through the everyday trials and tribulations of our job, we all experience stress. And there’s no denying it—it stinks.

Luckily, there are easy ways to combat it without sacrificing your whole day (and making yourself even more overwhelmed).

Need some suggestions? I’ve got 12 that’ll do the trick in no time at all.

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By: Meghan Tribe, The Am Law Daily

As law firms brainstorm more and more ways to reach and retain their younger lawyers, legal consulting giant Major, Lindsey & Africa announced Monday the launch of a new talent management consulting group specifically geared towards helping law firms and general counsel coach and manage their teams.

The endeavor, led by Major Lindsey partner and vice president Miriam Frank and managing partner Barrett Avigdor, came after two years of discussions with their clients about how to address law firm and in-house legal teams’ specific needs related to the development and growth of their lawyers, extending beyond the legal consultancy’s traditional role in placement.

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By By Katherine A. Mazzaferri, Amy Bess and Patricia Wald, Bloomberg Law

While the ratio of men and women entering law school is now equal, there is still a major discrepancy when looking at lawyers in leadership roles. According to a 2017 report by the ABA, less than 30 percent of partners of law firms in the U.S. are women.

Here are a few things young women lawyers can keep in mind as they work their way through and upward in the legal profession.

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By: Scott Flaherty,The Am Law Daily

Former Grant & Eisenhofer director and practice leader Adam Levitt is leaving to lead a newly formed plaintiffs firm, along with a pair of lawyers formerly of Cleveland's DiCello Law Firm.

The new firm, DiCello Levitt & Casey, announced its launch Monday morning and will be helmed by founding partners Levitt, Mark DiCello and James Casey. The plaintiffs firm will start with 11 lawyers, a full support staff and offices in Chicago and Cleveland.

Beyond the founders, the new firm will also count as partners John Tangren, formerly of Grant & Eisenhofer, Amy Keller, formerly of Wexler Wallace, and Robert DiCello, who comes from DiCello Law and is Mark DiCello's brother.

Levitt, who left Grant & Eisenhofer's Chicago office after serving as head of the firm's consumer protection and product liability group, said in an interview that he felt the time was right to branch off.

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By: Olga Mack and Katia Bloom, Above the Law

As long-term dwellers of Silicon Valley, we often-times feel like we are members of the disrupt generation. It’s hard to go grab coffee with a friend, or attend any type of event without the word “disrupt” making a solid appearance. This got us thinking: what do we think will disrupt the legal industry in the short term? Below are the four trends that we think are going to change the practice of law, and how we can all be ready for them.

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By Elizabeth Olson, New York Times

Harvard Law School, expanding a pilot program for Harvard undergraduates, said Wednesday that it would allow juniors accepted from any college to defer admission as long as they finish college and spend at least two years working, studying or pursuing research or fellowships.

The expanded program will be open to students applying starting this fall. The existing pilot program, for Harvard juniors, was started in 2014 to encourage students to gain work experience before entering law school and to encourage those studying science, technology, engineering or math to pursue the legal profession.

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LEAH THORNTON

By: Daniella Isaacson, Esq., Legal Intelligence

At this rate, women equity partners will reach 30 percent—by 2081. Without extraordinary new efforts, parity remains a distant possibility[1]

It is no secret that a lack of gender diversity is a long suffering issue for most industries, resulting in women facing greater risk of disenfranchisement by implicit bias within predominantly male organizations and in a lack of women in top leadership roles.

Big Law, in particular, is at a crossroads when it comes to gender diversity. In fact, the number of female lawyers in the Am Law 200 has flat-lined for the past five years at slightly over 30% of the workforce.  There is no disputing that this is an embarrassing statistic.  As enforcers of equal opportunity, lawyers are at the forefront of the push for equality as a legal matter. At the same time, the law is consistently ranked as one of the worst industries for hiring and retaining a diverse workforce and has failed to improve the bottom line despite efforts to change.

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By: Elizabeth Olson, New York Times

W. Neil Eggleston, a former White House counsel to President Barack Obama, is returning to the law firm Kirkland & Ellis as a partner in its government, regulatory and internal investigations practice in Washington.

Mr. Eggleston, 63, was a partner at Kirkland, a 1,900-lawyer corporate law firm, in 2014 when Mr. Obama named him to the White House post. In that job, he advised the president on legal and constitutional issues involving foreign policy and domestic matters, including congressional investigations, the judicial selection and appointments process, government ethics and petitions for clemency.

“I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to serve in the White House under President Obama, and am looking forward to returning to Kirkland & Ellis, private practice and teaching once again,” Mr. Eggleston said in a statement.

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