April 8, 2009 11:53 AM

Fred Fielding Joins Morgan Lewis

Posted by Zach Lowe

Fred Fielding has been in Florida since leaving Washington, D.C., when his stint as George W. Bush's White House counsel came to an end this year. But now he's jumping back into law with Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, the firm where Fielding started his career as a summer associate in 1963 and stayed off and on through 1981, according to Legal Times, an Am Law Daily sibling publication. 

Fielding's last stint with an Am Law 100 firm was as a name partner at Wiley Rein & Fielding (now Wiley Rein). He left the firm just after its biggest victory: helping the tech company NTP Inc. win a $612.5 million settlement from Research In Motion, the makers of the BlackBerry device, in a patent infringement case in early 2007. Of that amount, $200 million went to Wiley Rein, resulting in a 400 percent jump in profits per partner. 

Fielding cashed out of the firm to the tune of nearly $7 million when he joined the Bush administration.

So why did he chose Morgan, Lewis over Wiley? Barbara Van Gelder, Fielding's former cohead of Wiley's white-collar practice, is now at Morgan Lewis. She tells Legal Times that Morgan's global presence appealed to Fielding. Van Gelder asked Fielding about joining Morgan just after the new year, and Fielding said he needed time to mull his options.

Fielding, of course, worked in both the Reagan and Nixon administrations, and briefly did some work for the company formerly known as Blackwater before leaving Wiley for the Bush White House.

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