Bracewell & Giuliani’s Dallas office has hired a new labor & employment team. Robert E. Sheeder and Marc D. Katz, formerly partners in Jenkens & Gilchrist’s Dallas office, will join as partners. Sheeder’s practice focuses on employment-related litigation, arbitration, employment discrimination and representing employers in collective bargaining and labor union organization campaigns. Katz focuses on the management-side of labor and employment litigation and counseling. Gail N. Salcido and Donna G. Hiltenbrand will also join Bracewell & Giuliani as associates.
Source: www.home.businesswire.com

Tyree C. Collier has joined Thompson & Knight as a partner in the Tax practice of the Dallas office. Collier specializes in the representation of nonprofit organizations, including large and small private foundations, hospitals and health systems, university-affiliated organizations, private schools, fundraising organizations, other types of public charities, and non-charitable tax exempt organizations. Thompson & Knight has around 420 attorneys in offices in North America, South America, Europe, and Africa.
Source: www.clickpress.com

Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal has opened a new Dallas office. U.S. attorney, Matthew Orwig, will join the law firm on June 1 to serve as Dallas managing partner and national chair of Sonnenschein’s Government Litigation and Investigations Group. Cyberlaw attorney Matthew Yarbrough and ERISA lawyer David Cowart are also immediately joining the office as partners. Yabrough joins from Fish & Richardson, and Cowart from the now-dissolved Jenkens & Gilchrist. The Dallas office will focus on intellectual property litigation, government litigation and investigations, health care enforcement and compliance, and ERISA. Sonnenschein expects to seek new office space within a year as its new office expands.
Source: www.lawfuel.com

DLA Piper has entered new territory, finally crossing the border to Latin America. The firm has 62 offices in the U.S., U.K., Europe, Middle East, and Asia, but none in Central or South America. Taking steps to address this regional hole, DLA has launched a Latin America Initiative led by two Dallas lawyers. Partner Michael Santa Maria and counsel Todd Bowers already do cross-border deals; what the initiative will do is to establish a network of “best-friend” firms in Latin America with which DLA will work closely. Using that network, the firm will build its business in the region and eventually be able to select locations for offices. The best-friend firms include six in Mexico, four in Brazil, and three in Argentina.
Source: www.nylawyer.com

Dallas firm Jenkens & Gilchrist has finally reached the end of its rope, as it announced that it would close its last office and cease practicing law by the end of the month. The firm has entered into a nonprosecution agreement with federal prosecutors over its past involvement in illegal tax shelters. Between 1998 and 2003 the firm’s tax shelter practice wrote hundreds of legal opinion letters supporting illegal tax shelters; in return, Jenkens will pay a $76 million civil penalty to the IRS and the firm has agreed to continued cooperation with the investigation. Though at one time the firm had about 600 lawyers in offices nationwide, it has since then lost about two-thirds of the lawyers and has closed a number of offices.
Source: www.law.com

Three corporate and securities lawyers from Winstead in Dallas recently moved to Bracewell & Giuliani. Partners Bruce Cheatham and Brice Tarzwell, and counsel Connie Stamets joined Bracewell’s 400-lawyer corporate and securities practice at the end of February. Cheatham commented that Bracewell’s New York, Washington, and international offices were a draw because of the benefit they hold for his practice. After losing Cheatham, Winstead reorganized, doing away with his former position of corporate and securities section head.
Source: www.law.com

The Dallas office of Bracewell & Giuliani has added two new partners. Bruce A. Cheatham and Brice E. Tarzwell have joined the firm’s corporate and securities practice. Connie S. Stamets has also joined the firm as counsel. All three of the new hires came from the Dallas office of Winstead P.C., where Cheatham was the head of the corporate and securities group. Bracewell & Giuliani has 400 lawyers in New York, Texas, Washington, D.C., Kazakhstan and London.
Source: www.lawfuel.com

Hunton & Williams has raised starting salaries in Charlotte, NC to $145,000. National firms Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft; Dechert; and Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw are also reported to have increased to $145,000 or plan to next year. Until now, first-year associates at Hunton’s 43-lawyer Charlotte office were making only $117,5000, making the increase a 23 per cent raise. The firm’s Raleigh, Richmond, DC, LA, Miami, Atlanta, Dallas, Norfolk, and Knoxville offices also now have a starting pay of $145,000. The NY office also increased to match the market rate of $160,000.
Source: www.charlotte.bizjournals.com

Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal plans to open two more offices after the opening of its Menlo Park office in March. The Chicago-firm will open an office in Dallas this month, and by the end of March will have another somewhere in southeastern U.S. Sonnenschein currently has 10 U.S. offices and one in Brussels. The firm is positioned for growth and wants to have more than 1,000 attorneys to increase profits and attract new talent; lateral hiring of lawyers from other firms is the firm’s strategy for increasing its numbers.
Source: www.nylawyer.com

Jenkens & Gilchrist of Dallas, TX is reported to have been talking with Hunton & Williams management about a number of lawyers from Jenkens’ Dallas office relocating to Hunton & Williams’ Dallas office. Currently, Jenkens’ Dallas office houses most of the firm’s lawyers, 140 of 251 attorneys in six cities across the country. One of the largest firms in Texas, Jenkens’ management assures that the firm is talking with several firms, and refuses to confirm rumors of negotiation with Hunton. Hunton & Williams is based out of Richmond, VA, and boasts 875 attorneys in 18 offices worldwide; management from this firm would not comment either.
Source: www.law.com