California Pulse


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    Where Are Top Firms Bringing On The Most New Partners?

    Lateral partner hiring data for the last five years paints a surprisingly static portrait of where top law firms are making the most hires, even as they warm up to secondary and tertiary legal markets.

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    Cozen O'Connor E-Discovery Biz Names New Operations Director

    Cozen O'Connor has named the practice technology and e-discovery director at Shepherd Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP as the new operations director for its electronic discovery business unit.

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    Kilpatrick Expands Partnership Class With 14 Attys

    Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP elected 14 attorneys as partners across Georgia, Illinois, Texas, New York, North Carolina, California and China, representing an increase from the 10 attorneys in the firm's partner class promoted last year for 2025.

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    Morgan Lewis Adds Gibson Dunn Tech Transactions Ace In LA

    Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP is expanding its corporate team, announcing Wednesday it is bringing in a Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP technology transactions expert as a partner in its Los Angeles office.

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    McDermott Exploring Selling Stake To Private Equity

    McDermott Will & Schulte on Wednesday acknowledged it is fielding interest from private equity investors, a development that underscores how some of the legal industry's largest players are considering moving to a nontraditional business model.

  • Edelson Enters 'Clean' Dismissal In Girardi Atty Case

    Edelson PC has submitted a "clean and unadulterated" dismissal of its conversion case against two former attorneys from the now-defunct law firm Girardi Keese after an Illinois federal judge took issue with a previous version of the stipulation.

  • Legal Prediction Platform Theo AI Names GC Advisory Board

    Top in-house attorneys for Bristol Myers Squibb, Docusign and GoDaddy are among the members of the newly announced general counsel advisory board for Theo Ai, a company using an artificial intelligence platform to predict outcomes in civil suits.

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    General Counsel AI Raises $60M Series B At $555M Valuation

    General Counsel AI Inc., a legal artificial intelligence platform for in-house counsel, announced on Wednesday a $60 million Series B funding round that values the company at $555 million.

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    Law360 MVP Awards Go To Top Attorneys From 76 Firms

    The attorneys chosen as Law360's 2025 MVPs have distinguished themselves from their peers by securing significant achievements in high-stakes litigation, complex global matters and record-breaking deals.

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    Squire Patton Launches Veterans Business Resource Group

    Squire Patton Boggs LLP announced Monday a new business resource group aimed at connecting employees with military service backgrounds, with a kickoff event planned for Veterans Day.

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    Law Firm Revenue, Demand Are Up, But So Are Expenses

    U.S. law firms saw an average of double-digit growth in both revenue and inventory during the first nine months of 2025, signifying they're on pace to end the year on a positive note, according to the results of a survey released Monday by Citi Global Wealth at Work.

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    Disney's Top Lawyer Gets Contract Extension, New Title

    The Walt Disney Company has extended its top lawyer's contract into 2028 and changed his title to senior executive vice president, chief legal and global affairs officer, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

  • Trump Pardons Giuliani, Others Accused Of Election Crimes

    President Donald Trump has reportedly pardoned scores of lawyers accused of attempting to interfere in the 2020 election, including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Sidney Powell, according to a social media post created by the president's pardon attorney, Ed Martin.

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    Former Prosecutors Come Full Circle To Lead Munger Tolles

    For former federal prosecutors and close friends Martin Estrada and Daniel Levin, being tapped to lead Munger Tolles & Olson LLP as co-managing partners marks a full-circle moment.

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    Biopharmaceutical Co. Exelixis' GC Steps Down

    The longtime general counsel of biopharmaceutical company Exelixis Inc. abruptly stepped down Friday and was replaced by the company's senior vice president for intellectual property & licensing, according to filings submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

  • Ex-Calif. Judge Seeks To Toss Sex Assault, Coverup Charges

    A former California state judge on Friday moved to toss federal criminal charges alleging that he sexually assaulted a court employee and lied to investigators, saying the employee was not under his direct supervision so he could not have been acting under the "color of law" when the alleged assault occurred.

  • Jeffer Mangels Hit With Pregnancy Bias Suit By Ex-Associate

    A former Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP associate has accused the firm of discriminating against women, especially pregnant women, claiming that she was harassed throughout her pregnancy and eventually fired after she advocated for herself and pointed out the disparate treatment.

  • Shutdown, Funding Crisis Leave Federal Defenders Unpaid

    The record-long government shutdown has hindered an already dire funding situation for the federal defense community, but now the judiciary is working on requests to Congress to alleviate that.

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    Mayer Brown Adds Goodwin Real Estate, Hospitality Trio In SF

    Mayer Brown LLP is boosting its West Coast team, bringing in a trio of Goodwin Procter LLP real estate and hospitality experts as partners in the firm's San Francisco office.

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    Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

    Latham & Watkins LLP and Ogletree Deakins Nash Smoak & Stewart PC lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the Eighth Circuit vacated a National Labor Relations Board ruling that Home Depot illegally forced out a worker who showed support for Black Lives Matter.

  • UK Contract Software Co. Summize Opens San Diego Office

    Summize, a provider of contract lifecycle management software, announced Wednesday the launch of a new office in San Diego, part of an expansion on the West Coast by the United Kingdom company.

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    BigLaw Tightens Attendance Rules, But Oversight Differs

    BigLaw's push to restore in-person work is picking up speed as more firms require attorneys to spend four days a week in the office. While additional firms are expected to follow, experts say the pace and enforcement will vary widely depending on firm culture, leadership priorities and individual performance.

  • UC Irvine Law Launches Center For Technology And Justice

    The University of California, Irvine School of Law announced Wednesday the opening of a new Center for Technology and Justice, which will focus on studying and addressing issues such as digital abuse, privacy and tech regulation.

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    Office Snapshot: Wilson Sonsini Rises From Studs In Calif.

    More than three decades after the construction of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati PC's Silicon Valley headquarters in a Stanford Research Park building, the firm recently completed a total renovation that its leader says modernizes the space and inspires employees to come into the office.

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    Attys Brace For Turbulence As Flight Cancellations Begin

    The Federal Aviation Administration on Friday cut hundreds of flights following an emergency order to slash air travel at 40 airports as the longest-running government shutdown in history drags on. Here, Law360 Pulse talks to attorneys who travel for work about how the air travel reduction is impacting them.

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Expert Analysis

  • Series

    Ask A Mentor: How Can I Use Social Media Responsibly? Author Photo

    Leah Kelman at Herrick Feinstein discusses the importance of reasoned judgment and thoughtful process when it comes to newly admitted attorneys' social media use.

  • Yada, Yada, Yada: The Magic Of 3 In Legal Writing Author Photo

    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.

  • How Firms Can Stop Playing Whack-A-Mole With Data Security Author Photo

    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.

  • 5 Life Lessons From Making Partner As A Solo Parent Author Photo

    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.

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    Ask A Mentor: How Can I Turn Deferral To My Advantage? Author Photo

    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.

  • Resume Gaps Are No Longer Kryptonite To Your Legal Career Author Photo

    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.

  • Law Firm Guardrails For Responsible Generative AI Use Author Photo

    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 Headwinds Author Photo

    Though 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 Cannot Ignore Attorneys' Personal Cybersecurity Author Photo

    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.

  • Why Writing CLE Should Be Mandatory For Lawyers Author Photo

    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.

  • How To Find Your Inner Calm When Client Obligations Pile Up Author Photo

    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? Author Photo

    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.

  • Law Firm Cybersecurity Should Not Get Lost In The Cloud Author Photo

    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.

  • Advice For Summer Associates Uneasy About Offer Prospects Author Photo

    There are a few communication tips that law students in summer associate programs should consider to put themselves in the best possible position to receive an offer, and firms can also take steps to support those to whom they are unable to make an offer, says Amy Mattock at Georgetown University Law Center.

  • How Law Firms Can Cautiously Wield AI To Streamline Tasks Author Photo

    Many attorneys are going to use artificial intelligence tools whether law firms like it or not, so firms should educate them on AI's benefits, limits and practical uses, such as drafting legal documents, to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving legal market, say Thomas Schultz and Eden Bernstein at Kellogg Hansen.

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