February 10, 2009 8:30 AM

THE CHURN: Lateral Moves and Promotions in The Am Law 200

Posted by Rachel Breitman

Arnold & Porter has seen the potential for a boom in life sciences and health care work, and made sure new compliance partner Keith Korenchuk will be in its Washington, D.C., office to handle it. He'll work with major pharmaceutical, medical device, and health care companies on compliance and enforcement matters ranging from off-label promotion, marketing, and disclosure  He was previously at McGuireWoods, Covington & Burling, and Davis Wright Tremaine and also had been CEO at organizations focused on pharmaceutical and health care compliance.

Judging on his success on the Obama campaign, Bryan Cave  added Jeffrey Berman, formerly the campaign's national delegate director. He joins the D.C. office and its new public policy and governmental affairs group. Berman was the mastermind behind a strategy using unpledged delegates, caucus states, and proportional allocations to help Obama narrowly win the primary. He once worked as an adviser to former House representative Dick Gephardt and also spent some time in private practice at Winston & Strawn.

Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll has hired two new antitrust partners, Kit Pierson and J. Douglas Richards. Pierson handled complex civil litigation matters as a partner at Heller Ehrman for eleven years and Jenner & Block for four years. Richards was a partner at Milberg and, before that, Pomerantz Haudek Block Grossman & Gross; he focused on antitrust class actions. He had previously worked as deputy general counsel at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

New York firms continue building up their restructuring and insolvency groups. Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle's newest bankruptcy counsel is Maryann Gallagher. With two decades of bankruptcy experience, most recently as a consultant at NYSE Euronext, Gallagher has advised on liquidations, receivership and administration proceedings. She previously represented chapter 11 debtors, official and unofficial committees of creditors and bondholders, and secured and  unsecured creditors.

Louisa Barash is now a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine. Barash, formerly a partner at Heller Ehrman, is a technology lawyer with more than 20 years’ experience advising clients on technology and other intellectual property focused transactions. She focuses on technology commercialization, including outbound and inbound software licensing and software services for technology companies and large institutional software users.

Dechert also has some new restructuring talent-- veteran bankruptcy and litigation partner G. Eric Brunstad, Jr. ,has joined the firm's Hartford office. Previously a partner at Bingham McCutchen, Brunstad handled appellate matters related to restructuring and bankruptcy. Over the last three-and-a-half decades, he's argued eight cases before the Supreme Court including tax, bankruptcy, federal jurisdiction, and constitutional matters.

Haynes and Boone, looking for a big IP boost, decided to take on Irvine, California IP boutique MacPherson Kwok Chen & Heid. The Texas will add MacPherson's 27 attorneys and support staff. Haynes and Boone now has 550 attorneys in 12 offices worldwide.

Kirkland & Ellis is boosting its litigation team in New York with the hiring of Henry J. DePippo. DePippo joins as a senior partner and will play a key role in Kirkland’s white-collar criminal defense and securities enforcement practice. He joins the firm from the New York office of Nixon Peabody, where he was a partner. Prior to joining Nixon Peabody, he worked for six years in the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York as senior trial counsel. DePippo concentrates on government investigations, white-collar criminal defense, internal investigations, and complex commercial litigation. He has represented corporations, corporate executives, and other individuals in grand jury investigations and other state and federal criminal proceedings related to allegations of securities fraud, health care fraud, tax fraud, antitrust, government contracts, public corruption, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and environmental violations.

Morgan Lewis is growing its employee benefits and executive compensation practice; it's one area that's seems almost recession-proof. The group has grown by more than 30 percent in the last year. The firm's latest hires are two former Reed Smith lawyers: Donald Myers, former counsel for ERISA regulation and interpretation at the Department of Labor. He was previously assistant chief of the Office of Disclosure Policy and attorney adviser at the SEC. Michael Richman joins the group as counsel. The two had worked together on a book on ERISA class exemptions.

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom had some big news on Monday. The firm has hired Richard S. Aldrich, Jr., from Shearman & Sterling to lead Skadden's Sao Paulo office. Aldrich, a leading capital markets lawyer, was at Shearman & Sterling for the past 26 years. He had been cohead and founder of that firm's Sao Paulo office, which opened in 2004. Focusing on private and public financings, he has represented financial institutions and Brazilian companies in their global financing and M&A transactions.

Thomas K. Hyatt has joined Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal as a partner in the firm's health care and nonprofit institutions practices. Hyatt, who will be resident in the Washington, D.C., office, joins the firm from Ober, Kaler, Grimes & Shriver. His national practice focuses on tax exemption and corporate governance issues for health care, higher education, and other nonprofit organizations. Hyatt’s clients include public and private hospitals, multihospital systems, physician clinics and other health care organizations.

Steptoe & Johnson also is expanding its employment litigation practice in Washington, D.C., with returning partner Ronald Cooper, former general counsel to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Cooper had previously spent more than three decades at Steptoe. He specialized in employment defense work at the trial and appellate level in large class actions and government enforcement matters brought under Title VII, The Age Discrimination in Employment Act, The Equal Pay Act, The Americans with Disabilities Act, and The Fair Labor Standards Act. He's also advised foreign companies operating in the United States and U.S. companies operating abroad in employment matters.

The Churn is constant. Our reports are twice weekly. (Though some weeks, we'll run this more than twice, and others less.) Send your news to [email protected].

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