Legal manoeuvres: PE lawyers’ latest moves

PEM provides a round-up of the latest people moves within the private equity-focused legal community. See the links to your right for past coverage of private equity lawyer moves.

• International law firm Brown Rudnick has recruited private equity lawyer Christopher Hagan for its Washington DC office. Hagan was previously a partner at Goodwin Procter.

Over the past few months Brown Rudnick has beefed up its corporate practice– adding four partners and six associates specialising in areas such as M&A and fund formation.

• Goodwin Proctor’s London office has made its own advances in hiring new talent. The firm poached private equity lawyers David Evans and Samantha Lake Coghlan from London-based law firm Ashurst where both have spent the entirety of their legal careers.

Evans, who becomes Goodwin’s London office chair, will spearhead the firm’s private equity practice expansion in Europe, according to a statement.

• Dewey & LeBoeuf hired restructuring and insolvency specialists Mark Fennessy and Hazel Miller for its London office. The duo join from rival practice Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, where Fennessy headed the firm’s European restructuring practice.

Earlier this year the firm also lured Mark Davis and Russell Van Praagh from London-based peer Taylor Wessing to establish a full-time City private equity practice.

• US firm Chadbourne & Parke has promoted Konstantin Osipov to partner. Osipov, who specialises in Russia private equity, made partner alongside his colleagues Erez Tucner, a tax specialist, and infrastructure specialist Benjamin Koenigsberg.

• Former Department of Justice National Security Division chief of staff Donald Vieira has joinedWilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati’s Washington DC office. Vieira will focus his practice on regulatory and enforcement issues related to foreign investments, export controls, privacy, and data security, according to a statement.

• Reed Smith has bolstered its Paris office with the addition of Marc Fredj alongside two associates from Simmons & Simmons. Fredj specialises in private equity and cross border M&A, with a particular focus on the renewable energy and life sciences sectors.

• Global law firm White & Case  has expanded its China M&A practice with the addition of Alex Zhang from Jones Day. Zhang, who was named partner, joins the firm as head of its Shanghai office, as well as head of its China corporate and M&A practice.

• SJ Berwin has promoted three of its private fund formation lawyers to partner. Cindy Valentine, Ed Hall and Shawn D’Aguiar, all bring “a wealth of experience in secondaries, buyouts, emerging markets and infrastructure”, the firm said in a statement.  Tax specialist Laura Charkin was also made partner. The move follows the departure of fund formation specialists Oliver Rochman and Nigel van Zyl to Proskauer Rose last July.