Posts on ‘July 8th, 2009’

Most of the story lines are already set for Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and just about all of them end with her winning confirmation as the next justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. That doesn’t mean, though, that she’ll have an easy time. Republicans, invoking the Senate’s constitutional responsibility of “advise and consent,” will ask questions designed to throw Sotomayor off balance. As the hearing unfolds over about four days, 12 themes are likely to emerge.

In a lateral move that can only be compared to an earthquake rocking Silicon Valley’s legal world, Cooley Godward Kronish’s two leading M&A lawyers and the head of its busy tech transactions group are leaving for Dewey & LeBoeuf. The announcement that rainmakers and longtime Cooley leaders Richard Climan and Keith Flaum, plus tech practice leader Eric Reifschneider, were moving to Dewey’s small East Palo Alto office shocked lawyers in the Valley. One Cooley alum called the move “a coup for Dewey and a big blow for Cooley.”

Ted Wells may have delivered the most memorable lines in the AIG-Greenberg trial, but it was David Boies who provided the best arguments — at least according to a federal jury, which needed just a few hours to return a verdict Tuesday in favor of Hank Greenberg’s Starr International Co. AIG was seeking more than $4 billion in damages. The embattled insurance company claimed that after Greenberg was ousted from AIG in 2005, he caused SICO to take control of shares that were supposed to be held in trust for AIG.