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3. 59 partners leave A&O Shearman outside Asia…

Layoffs

59 partners leave A&O Shearman outside Asia since decision to trim 10% of equity partnership

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 28, 2025, 3:19 pm CDT

Twenty-five U.S. partners are among the 59 partners who left A&O Shearman since its decision last year to trim 10% of its global equity partnership, according to a count by Law.com.

The count does not include 15 partners who left A&O Shearman in Asia, as previously reported by Law.com. Butit does include partners who left in the United States, London, Europe, Africa and Australia.

A&O Shearman said last year the partner cuts were “a difficult but necessary step forward” following the merger between Allen & Overy and Shearman & Sterling. About 45 partners who left joined other law firms.

A&O Shearman said it currently has around 800 partners worldwide, which is about the same number that it had when it announced the cuts. It is unclear why the current number isn’t lower, according to Law.com.

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3. Former DOJ lawyer faces disbarment for entanglement…

Ethics

Former DOJ lawyer faces disbarment for entanglement in ‘one of the largest kleptocracy schemes in history’

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 17, 2025, 3:07 pm CDT

A lawyer who worked for the U.S. Department of Justice is facing disbarment after pleading guilty for his role in an illegal foreign influence scheme that allegedly stemmed from his friendship and legal work for hip-hop artist Prakazrel “Pras” Michel.

Lawyer George A. Higginbotham, a former senior congressional affairs specialist at the DOJ, prepared fake loan documents, investment agreements and consulting agreements to hide the source of tens of millions of dollars intended to be used to lobby the U.S. government, according to the April 16 opinion by the Appellate Division’s Second Judicial Department of the New York Supreme Court.

The Legal Profession Blog published highlights.

Higginbotham’s work was intended to facilitate lobbying for the extradition of a political dissident to China and to resolve an investigation of a foreign national who orchestrated a multibillion-dollar embezzlement scheme involving a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund.

Higginbotham was working on behalf of Michel, who wanted help with his dealings with the foreign national, Jho Low, according to Higginbotham’s testimony, as reported by Reuters, at Michel’s trial in April 2023.

Higginbotham entangled himself in a conspiracy to avoid prosecution “in one of the largest kleptocracy schemes in history,” the appeals court said. “Anything less than a disbarment is unwarranted.”

Higginbotham pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to make false statements to a bank in November 2018, according to a press release. He did not influence any aspect of the DOJ investigation involving the investment company known as 1MDB.

Higginbotham was sentenced to probation in November 2023 and ordered to forfeit $70,000, the amount of money that he was paid after submitting invoices for work in the scheme.

Michel was convicted of conspiracy and other charges in April 2023 for using straw donors in the lobbying campaign.

Low was convicted and sentenced in absentia to 10 years in a Kuwaiti prison, the New York Post reported in March 2023.

See also:

Despite lyrics mistake by AI, lawyer wasn’t ineffective for using tech in rapper’s case, federal judge says

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3. This ‘reinvigorated’ doctrine could be used…

Constitutional Law

This ‘reinvigorated’ doctrine could be used to challenge Trump’s tariffs

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 5, 2025, 11:59 am CST

Importers and others who want to challenge tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump could argue that he doesn’t have that power—but the argument isn’t a slam dunk, legal experts say.

Trump has cited the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, a law giving presidents authority to restrict trade in some circumstances, as authority for his power to impose tariffs. At issue is whether the IEEPA gives Trump that power and whether the “major questions doctrine” leads to the conclusion that it does not, Bloomberg Law reports.

Trump has imposed a 10% tariff on imports from China, but he paused threatened tariffs of 25% on goods from Canada and Mexico. Trump said tariffs are needed because of “the grave threat to the United States posed by the influx of illegal aliens and illicit drugs” at the borders, creating a national emergency.

Under the major questions doctrine, Congress must “speak clearly” when authorizing an executive branch agency to make decisions of vast economic and political significance, wrote Ilya Somin, a professor at the George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, at the Volokh Conspiracy. If a statute is ambiguous, the presumption is that the power was not granted.

The major questions doctrine has been “reinvigorated” by the U.S. Supreme Court in striking down the federal eviction moratorium and vaccine mandates imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bloomberg Law says.

The Supreme Court also cited the doctrine when it ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency didn’t have broad power to regulate climate change and that the Biden administration didn’t have the power to forgive student loans.

Somin argued that imposing “massive tariffs” is “pretty obviously” a decision with vast economic and political significance with high costs to the public. And the statute under which Trump claimed authority is far from clear, as were the statutes in the student loan and eviction moratorium cases, he wrote.

The IEEPA is a “vague statute” that authorizes presidents to restrict trade when there is “any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy or economy of the United States, if the president declares a national emergency with respect to such threat,” Somin wrote.

Peter E. Harrell, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, also sees an argument regarding the major questions doctrine, particularly for “universal baseline” tariffs imposing a specific percentage charge on all imports.

“Courts should find that allowing Trump to waive his magic sharpie to sign an IEEPA executive order imposing tariffs would upset the balance Congress has long sought to strike when it delegates its tariff authority to the president,” he wrote in a Lawfare post.

Apart from the major questions doctrine, an argument could be made that the plain text of the IEEPA doesn’t give presidents tariff authority, Harrell wrote.

Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the authority to set tariffs and regulate commerce with foreign nations. A president’s power to set tariffs comes from delegated authority by Congress, Harrell wrote. The IEEPA gives a president the power to ban or limit exports and imports, but the list “notably” does not explicitly include the power to impose tariffs or taxes.

Saikrishna Prakash, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, told Bloomberg Law that the opposite argument is that the broad powers granted by the law should include the lesser power of imposing tariffs.

The “IEEPA allows a very broad power to ban commerce, and so given that, why can’t the president do something less?” Prakash asks.

Somin sees yet another argument that the the nondelegation doctrine applies. It allows broad delegations of power when they are based on an “intelligible principle.” Some Supreme Court justices have expressed interest in “tightening up” the doctrine, and a tariff challenge “might be a good opportunity to do just that,” he wrote.

Somin doesn’t argue that a challenge to tariffs is likely to succeed.

“But the arguments are strong,” he wrote, particularly those in support of the major questions doctrine.

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The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Jan. 17 upholding the federal law banning TikTok continues a long history of judicial deference to claims of national security. The ruling upholds a federal statute that bans a medium of communication that is used by more than 170 million people in the United States. The speech of all who generate content for it and all who receive it is restricted by this law. It is difficult to think of any law in American history that restricted so much speech for so many people.

TikTok stopped operating in the United States for a brief time after the court’s decision. Upon taking office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order delaying the TikTok ban from going into effect for 75 days. It is questionable whether he has the authority to do this under the federal statute. But if no court enjoins his order, TikTok at least has a temporary reprieve. The ultimate fate of TikTok in this United States remains uncertain.

Factual background

On April 24, 2024, President Joe Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act into law. The act identifies the People’s Republic of China and three other countries as foreign adversaries of the United States and prohibits the distribution or maintenance of “foreign adversary controlled applications.” The law prohibited TikTok in the United States as of Jan. 19, unless its owner, ByteDance, had sold it by then.

Under the law, the president may grant a 90-day extension if there is significant progress being made toward a sale of TikTok. ByteDance has given no indication that it is interested in a sale, so it is difficult to see President Trump’s action fitting within this statutory authority.

On Dec. 6, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the federal law outlawing TikTok. The judges acknowledged the impact of the law on freedom of speech, but they accepted the government’s argument that national security concerns justified the ban.

First, the court said China, through TikTok, could gather information about those in the United States. Second, the court said China could attempt to use TikTok to influence attitudes, including about politics, in this country.

Supreme Court decision

The Supreme Court granted certiorari and scheduled oral argument for Jan. 10. A week later, the court unanimously affirmed the D.C. Circuit in a per curiam opinion.

At the outset, the court said there was the question of whether “heightened review” was appropriate when there was a regulation of nonexpressive activity (ownership of a platform) that disproportionately burdens those engaged in expressive activity (those who post on TikTok and receive information there). The court did not resolve that issue, instead declaring, “We assume without deciding that the challenged provisions fall within this category and are subject to First Amendment scrutiny.”

The court began by reciting the familiar principle that content-based regulations must meet strict scrutiny, while content neutral laws only need meet intermediate scrutiny. Under strict scrutiny, a law must be necessary to achieve a compelling purpose, while under intermediate scrutiny, a law only need be substantially related to an important purpose. A law is deemed content-based if either it restricts speech based on its topic or its viewpoint.

The court said that “As applied to petitioners, the challenged provisions are facially content neutral and are justified by a content-neutral rationale.” The court explained that the federal statute was content- neutral because it prohibited all speech over TikTok in the United States, whatever its topic and whatever its viewpoint.

The court identified the government’s purpose as preventing China, a foreign adversary, from gathering large amounts of information on Americans using the platform. And it expressly declared that this was a sufficiently important interest to meet intermediate scrutiny: “The act’s prohibitions and divestiture requirement are designed to prevent China—a designated foreign adversary—from leveraging its control over ByteDance Ltd. to capture the personal data of U. S. TikTok users. This objective qualifies as an important Government interest under intermediate scrutiny.”

The court said China could gather vast amounts of information about users of TikTok that could include enabling “China to track the locations of federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.” The court stressed that the case arose in the context of “national security and foreign policy,” and therefore concluded that “we must accord substantial deference to the predictive judgments of Congress.”

Notably, the court did not echo the D.C. Circuit’s conclusion that the TikTok ban was justified because China might use it to influence attitudes in the United States. The premise of the First Amendment is that more speech is inherently better, regardless of its source. Restricting speech because it might change minds is antithetical to the First Amendment. Even during the height of the Cold War, the United States allowed the Russian newspaper Pravda to be sold in this country.

The challengers argued that the purpose of the federal law was to prevent TikTok to be used to convey particular views. The court acknowledged that no prior cases had determined “the appropriate level of First Amendment scrutiny for an act of Congress justified on both content-neutral and content-based grounds.”

The court said it did not need to decide that issue, but then effectively did by declaring: “The record before us adequately supports the conclusion that Congress would have passed the challenged provisions based on the data collection justification alone.” This is an important clarification of First Amendment law: If a government action is justified by both content-based and content-neutral rationales, it will be treated as content-neutral so long as the court is convinced that the law would have been adopted anyway based on the content-neutral rationale.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor concurred in part and concurred in the judgment. She agreed with the decision but said the court should have held, not just assumed, that the ban on TikTok is expressive activity. She said, “TikTok engages in expressive activity by ‘compiling and curating’ material on its platform.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch concurred in the judgment. He questioned whether the law was actually content-neutral but said it was constitutional under any level of scrutiny. He wrote: “I am persuaded that the law before us seeks to serve a compelling interest: preventing a foreign country, designated by Congress and the president as an adversary of our oation, from harvesting vast troves of personal information about tens of millions of Americans.”

Analysis

No one in the litigation disputes that TikTok can gain a great deal of information about users of its platform. Nor was it disputed that this information potentially could be obtained by China.

What is missing in the court’s analysis is a discussion of what information China can obtain and how that information can be used to damage national security. It is certainly true that every app allows those administering it to gather information about users. But knowing how many people are watching a dance video hardly seems a basis for endangering the country. Because the federal law is a very significant restriction on speech there must be a real, proven danger, not conjecture.

None of the briefs elaborates this, either. Nor is it the case that the court relied on secret information provided by the government to justify the law. Justice Gorsuch observed: “I am pleased that the court declines to consider the classified evidence the government has submitted to us but shielded from petitioners and their counsel.”

The court should have explained in much greater detail what information China could gain from TikTok users and how China possessing this information could harm the United States.

Ultimately then, what explains the court’s conclusion is not a proven likely harm to national security from TikTok. Rather, it is the court giving deference to the government’s claim that TikTok is a threat to national security. There have been many cases throughout American history where the court has professed such deference. But the crucial question is whether such deference is appropriate when it involves a major restriction on the exercise of a fundamental right.

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Erwin Chemerinsky is dean of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. He is an expert in constitutional law, federal practice, civil rights and civil liberties, and appellate litigation. He’s also the author of many books, including No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States and A Court Divided: October Term 2023 (2024).

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This column reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily the views of the ABA Journal—or the American Bar Association.

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3. Supreme Court will decide whether TikTok…

U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court will decide whether TikTok ban violates the First Amendment

By Debra Cassens Weiss

December 18, 2024, 2:17 pm CST

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider the constitutionality of a law that bans TikTok in the United States if the company isn’t sold.

Oral arguments in the First Amendment challenge are scheduled for Jan. 10 in two consolidated cases seeking emergency applications for an injunction. One was filed by TikTok and ByteDance, its owner. The other was filed by TikTok users.

The TikTok ban is “a massive and unprecedented speech restriction,” the company argued in its Supreme Court request.

SCOTUSblog, Law360, the Washington Post and the New York Times are among the publications with coverage.

TikTok must be sold or face a U.S. ban under the Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. The law bans apps controlled by China and three countries identified as foreign adversaries of the United States, SCOTUSblog explains. The deadline for compliance is Jan. 19.

Lawmakers who supported the law said TikTok is a security threat because the Chinese government has oversight of private companies, the New York Times explains.

In an amicus brief, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said TikTok is a threat because it is “under the direct control of the Chinese Communist Party.”

The goal of the law, the brief said, “is to further the highly compelling state interest of preventing Chinese Communist mining of American data and deployment of subversive enemy propaganda through algorithmic curation.”

TikTok users’ injunction application notes that Vice President Kamala Harris and President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on TikTok during the 2024 presidential election, “thereby implicitly encouraging Americans to use the app.”

Trump said at a news conference on Monday he has a “warm spot in my heart for TikTok.”

The Supreme Court granted review after treating the emergency injunction applications as cert petitions, as suggested by the briefs.

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3. Does judge’s reference to ‘little Chinese…

Judiciary

Does judge’s reference to ‘little Chinese woman’ show bias? Appellate concurrence sees ‘pure stereotyping’

By Debra Cassens Weiss

December 19, 2024, 1:42 pm CST

A California judge who said he was almost amused when a “little Chinese woman” stared him down did not rule against her based on ethnic bias, but his comment was “pure stereotyping,” according to two concurring judges in an appellate opinion.

The California Courts of Appeal’s Second Appellate District certified the Nov. 27 opinion for publication Dec. 17 after receiving requests that it do so from the California Civility Task Force and the Orange County Asian American Bar Association, Law360 reports. Published opinions can be cited as precedent.

The case involved a dispute between the plaintiff, Natalie Lloyd Merrick, and her mother over funds from the sale of a condo in China. Merrick was awarded more than $242,000 from the sale, leading to a dispute over the amount of prejudgment interest.

Judge Randolph M. Hammock of Los Angeles County, California, ruled against Merrick on the interest issue in June 2022 and awarded mandatory attorney fees of about $2,000 to the mother.

During the final hearing, Hammock made these comments: “I already rejected those arguments. OK. I know your client was not happy with my ruling [at a previous hearing]. I mean, she was there, you know, mad dogging me, which didn’t bother me at all. It was almost amusing to see this little Chinese woman stare me down because she didn’t like the ruling. But again, it’s just business. I didn’t take it personally.”

The appeals court opinion by Judge Elizabeth A. Grimes said there is no reason to believe that Hammock harbored any bias against Merrick. She added, however, that “unnecessary references to a litigant’s ethnicity and gender are certainly to be avoided.”

In a concurring opinion, Judge Maria E. Stratton agreed that Hammock’s “gratuitous comments” did not influence his ruling. His findings were supported by evidence, and his decision was based on a realistic evaluation of facts. But his comments “cannot pass without censure,” she said in the concurrence joined by Judge Victor Viramontes.

Stratton asserted that Hammock’s “patronizing description” of Merrick violated judicial canons requiring judges to be dignified and courteous, to act in a manner that promotes confidence in the judiciary, and to refrain from conduct that would reasonably be perceived as biased.

“Beyond being generally demeaning,” Stratton wrote, “the trial judge’s fatuous comment traded on racist and sexist tropes.” Hammock found it almost amusing that Merrick, “a little Chinese woman,” stared him down, she wrote.

“Implicit in the court’s identification of these characteristics as what made Merrick’s conduct funny was the concept that her behavior was incongruous; that is, someone like Merrick was neither expected nor supposed to act in a certain manner. This is pure stereotyping. How should a ‘little Chinese woman’ have acted? Like the stereotype of an Asian woman—demure, meek, eager to please, deferential to men?”

Stratton acknowledged that Hammock’s comment may have been “unwitting” and said such remarks implicate implicit bias, which can influence behaviors without awareness.

Stratton added that “being mindful of the stereotypes we all carry” is part of a judge’s job.

“Reining in impulses, our inner autopilot, to make random comments that personally denigrate a litigant is also part of our job,” she wrote.

Hammock told the ABA Journal that he couldn’t comment because there is no final judgment yet.

Hammock apologized for his conduct to his presiding judge after the appellate opinion was issued.

“Suffice it to state, I am extremely embarrassed and regretful of those comments,” he said in a letter self-reporting his conduct to the judge.

Hammock’s letter said he accepts that his comments violated judicial canons.

“I have certainly thought long and hard as to my actions in this regard, and moreover, I have considered what I need to do myself in order to take the appropriate ‘corrective actions’ needed to ensure that such violations do not occur again by me,” Hammock wrote.

The first step, Hammock wrote, was to self-report. He has also read publications on implicit bias mentioned in the concurrence and plans to take the next judicial course offered on the subject.

“You can rest assured that I will strive to do my best to learn a serious lesson from this incident and to act accordingly,” Hammock wrote. “I must and will do better.”

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3. Lawyer awarded $3.3M after crashing snowmobile…

Verdicts & Settlements

Lawyer awarded $3.3M after crashing snowmobile into negligently parked Army helicopter

By Debra Cassens Weiss

September 26, 2024, 2:28 pm CDT

A federal judge in Massachusetts has awarded $3.3 million in damages to a lawyer for injuries suffered when he crashed his snowmobile into a camouflaged U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter parked on a snowmobile trail at dusk.

U.S. District Judge Mark G. Mastroianni of the District of Massachusetts awarded damages to Massachusetts lawyer Jeffrey Smith in a Sept. 23 decision following a bench trial.

The Associated Press and Fox News have coverage.

Mastroianni found that the government was 60% responsible for the 2019 incident because it failed “to take any steps to protect against the obvious risk” that it created from parking the helicopter in the spot. Smith was 40% responsible for speeding and wearing tinted goggles at night, the judge said.

Mastroianni came up with the $3.3 million figure after reducing damages to account for Smith’s comparative negligence and to account for a settlement reached with the landowner. The judge also awarded $100,000 to Smith’s son and $150,000 to his minor daughter.

Smith “suffered life-changing injuries” from the crash in Worthington, Massachusetts, Mastroianni said. He had multiple broken bones, a puncture to his left lung, herniated discs and neurological damage. A neurosurgeon had testified that Smith’s nerves had been “pulled clean out of the spinal cord itself,” making breathing difficult and essentially robbing him of the use of his left arm.

Smith’s law practice suffered because of limited stamina and pain. His net earnings were $134,394 in 2018, before the incident. In 2022, after the incident, he had a net loss of $5,671 because of increased paralegal hours.

The helicopter crew had flown from New York to Worthington for night training before deployment to Afghanistan. The chief warrant officer chose the location to replicate what the crew would see in Afghanistan. He also chose the location so that he could meet and socialize with a friend who lived in the town.

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3. Lewis Brisbois accused of failing to recognize…

Law Firms

Lewis Brisbois accused of failing to recognize ‘draconian lending terms,’ conspiring to cover up mistakes

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 26, 2024, 1:08 pm CDT

A lawsuit accuses Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith of conspiring to deflect blame for its failure to protect 185 Chinese investors who lost $92.5 million that they invested in a hotel and condominium project through an investment group called CMB Export.

Law360 has the story on the allegations, contained in a March 14 suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.

CMB Export was a junior mezzanine lender contributing $450 million total to the $2.5 billion project, according to the suit. The plaintiffs’ investments of $500,000 each allowed them to qualify for the federal EB-5 visa program.

The investors were supposed to receive repayment of loaned funds plus a portion of any profit earned by CMB. They have so far received nothing, and their investment capital has been wiped out, according to the suit.

CMB was represented by Lewis Brisbois. According to the suit, CMB was “a valuable client” whose business in the EB-5 industry generated “massive legal fees” for the law firm for at least a decade.

The plaintiffs allege that Lewis Brisbois committed malpractice and aided CMB’s breach of fiduciary duty to investors. The firm then engaged in a RICO conspiracy with CMB to hide the mistakes by filing meritless suits against senior lenders, the suit claims.

Lewis Brisbois and CMB “seek to disguise their naivete by shifting the focus to unfortunate conduct by senior lenders in the project and away from their failed business judgment, complete ineptitude, and failure to exercise a modicum of diligence,” the suit says.

As a junior mezzanine lender, CMB had lower repayment priority than a senior mezzanine lender and a senior lender for the project.

“From the beginning of the project,” the suit says, “CMB should have but failed to negotiate a first
right of refusal and/or unilateral right to buy up or purchase a partial stake in the senior loan
and/or senior mezzanine loan to protect its interest in the project.”

The developer sought more funding, producing a new lender and amended loan agreements with an unreasonable maturity date that failed to reasonably protect CMB’s junior mezzanine loan interest, the suit says.

If CMB and Lewis Brisbois had been “paying attention,” the suit says, they would have realized the severity of “the draconian lending terms” in an amended loan agreement, the petition says.

“At the very least, CMB should have ensured an extension of the project’s loan maturity date to minimize the possibility of a foreclosure,” according to the suit.

Nor did CMB notify the petitioners of a one-time right to purchase the senior loan, the suit says.

After CMB received notice of foreclosure in August 2022, Lewis Brisbois filed meritless suits in California and New York, the investors allege. The “sham lawsuits” alleged that Lewis Brisbois and CMB were “tricked” into signing a fourth amendment to the creditor agreement, even though a term sheet sent to Lewis Brisbois attorneys disclosed many of the terms, the investors say in their suit.

So far, CMB has paid Lewis Brisbois more than $3.8 million in legal fees.

“To this day,” the suit says, “CMB continues to conceal the meritless nature of the litigation against lender and recently had the audacity to request additional money from petitioners” to fund the litigation.

A Lewis Brisbois spokesperson told Law360 that the firm is in the process of responding to the allegations. But the firm did not comment further, saying it “does not generally comment on claims against clients or the firm.”

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3. Fourth BigLaw firm closes office in China

Law Firms

Fourth BigLaw firm closes office in China

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 6, 2024, 8:16 am CST

Perkins Coie is closing its Shanghai office while emphasizing that it remains committed to its China practice and clients.

Perkins Coie still has a Beijing office that opened in 2002 and a China intellectual property agency that opened in 2019, report Law360 and Law.com. Law.com also mentions a Taipei, Taiwan, office that Perkins Coie opened in 2011.

The Shanghai office shutdown affects two lawyers and two patent consultants, the articles report. Three other Perkins Coie partners are connected to the Shanghai office, but they primarily work in the United States.

Perkins Coie is the fourth law firm to announce an office closure in China within the last eight months, according to Law.com. Other firms that recently closed offices in mainland China are Proskauer Rose, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, and Latham & Watkins.

“The move comes amid a flurry of movement among BigLaw firms in China,” Law360 reports, “with the majority of those firms closing offices or conducting layoffs and a handful adding new offices as the country faces an ongoing economic slump and a downturn in mergers and acquisitions activity.”

Linklaters laid off 30 lawyers in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong in September. Kirkland & Ellis reportedly laid off nine lawyers in those same locations, according to a report yesterday. Kirkland & Ellis refused to confirm or deny the report in a statement issued to Law360.

“However, we would note that our Asia capital markets team, with eight partners and over 30 fee earners, continues to be one of the largest in the region,” the Kirkland & Ellis statement said.