California Pulse


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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.

  • Voir Dire: Law360 Pulse's Weekly Quiz

    The legal industry kicked off November with another busy week as BigLaw firms launched new office attendance policies and expanded practices. Test your legal news savvy here with Law360 Pulse's weekly quiz.

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    Dorsey & Whitney Adds Real Estate Duo From Womble Bond

    Dorsey & Whitney LLP has expanded its Southern California team, bringing in two Womble Bond Dickinson real estate attorneys in its Orange County office in Costa Mesa.

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Expert Analysis

  • A Model For Optimal Legal Tech Investment Strategy Author Photo

    Legal organizations struggling to work out the right technology investment strategy may benefit from using a matrix for legal department efficiency that is based on an understanding of where workloads belong, according to the basic functions and priorities of a corporate legal team, says Sylvain Magdinier at Integreon.

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    My Nonpracticing Law Job: Recruiter Author Photo

    Self-proclaimed "Lawyer Doula" Danielle Thompson at Major Lindsey shares how she went from Columbia Law School graduate and BigLaw employment associate to a career in legal recruiting — and discovered a passion for advocacy along the way.

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    Ask A Mentor: How Do I Balance Social Activism With My Job? Author Photo

    Corporate attorneys pursuing social justice causes outside of work should consider eight guidelines for finding equilibrium between their beliefs and their professional duties and reputation, say Diedrick Graham, Debra Friedman and Simeon Brier at Cozen O'Connor.

  • Personality Tests And Machine Learning Applications In Law Author Photo

    Mateusz Kulesza at McDonnell Boehnen looks at potential applications of personality testing based on machine learning techniques for law firms, and the implications this shift could have for lawyers, firms and judges, including how it could make the work of judges and other legal decision-makers much more difficult.

  • AI Is Reshaping Lawyering: What To Expect In 2024 Author Photo

    The future of lawyering is not about the wholesale replacement of attorneys by artificial intelligence, but as AI handles more of the routine legal work, the role of lawyers will evolve to be more strategic, requiring the development of competencies beyond traditional legal skills, says Colin Levy at Malbek.

  • Embrace Active Voice In Legal Writing — In Most Cases Author Photo

    Legal writers should strive to craft sentences in the active voice to promote brevity and avoid ambiguities that can spark litigation, but writing in the passive voice is sometimes appropriate — when it's a moral choice and not a grammatical failure, says Diana Simon at the University of Arizona's James E. Rogers College of Law.

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    Ask A Mentor: How Can I Help Associates Turn Down Work? Author Photo

    Marina Portnova at Lowenstein Sandler discusses what partners can do to aid their associates in setting work-life boundaries, especially around after-hours assignment availability.

  • How AI Legal Research Tools Are Shifting Law Firm Processes Author Photo

    Although artificial intelligence-powered legal research is ushering in a new era of legal practice that augments human expertise with data-driven insights, it is not without challenges involving privacy, ethics and more, so legal professionals should take steps to ensure AI becomes a reliable partner rather than a source of disruption, says Marly Broudie at SocialEyes Communications.

  • Data Source Proliferation Is A Growing E-Discovery Challenge Author Photo

    With the increased usage of collaboration apps and generative artificial intelligence solutions, it's not only important for e-discovery teams to be able to account for hundreds of existing data types today, but they should also be able to add support for new data types quickly — even on the fly if needed, says Oliver Silva at Casepoint.

  • Bracing For A Generative AI Revolution In Law Author Photo

    With many legal professionals starting to explore practical uses of generative artificial intelligence in areas such as research, discovery and legal document development, the fundamental principle of human oversight cannot be underscored enough for it to be successful, say Ty Dedmon at Bradley Arant and Paige Hunt at Lighthouse.

  • Why I Use ChatGPT To Tell Me Things I Already Know Author Photo

    The legal profession is among the most hesitant to adopt ChatGPT because of its proclivity to provide false information as if it were true, but in a wide variety of situations, lawyers can still be aided by information that is only in the right ballpark, says Robert Plotkin at Blueshift IP.

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    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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