Risk Update

Continued Conflicts — Conflicts Driven Lateral Move, Continued Conflicts Clashes Over Judicial Romance, IP Moonlighting Conflict

Posted Dan Bressler

“Former Watergate Defense Attorney Leaves Squire Patton Boggs for Boutique, Citing Conflicts” —

  • “Miami-based boutique Heise Suarez Melville is bringing on a former managing partner for Squire Patton Boggs’s Miami office after he spent almost two decades there.”
  • “Alvin Davis began his career in the U.S. Airforce, where he served as a staff judge advocate in Southeast Asia. Shortly after, he started practicing civil law in D.C., focusing on election law, where he defended Jeb Magruder, one of the people who pled guilty for involvement in the Watergate scandal.”
  • “Davis eventually moved to Florida where he served as Squire Patton Boggs’s Miami managing partner after the firm acquired his previous firm Steel Hector & Davis, where he also served as its Miami managing partner. Since he moved to Florida, Davis has represented some local staples such as Florida Power & Light as well as the Miami Herald.”
  • “Davis says he left Squire Patton for a boutique firm, partly because he kept running into conflict issues at the bigger firm.”
  • “‘With a large firm, there are a lot more business conflicts where you have clients that don’t want you to take on other clients. There are legal theories that you may want to use that may cause problems for other clients,’ Davis said. ‘This is a time in my practice when the advantages of a small firm are very appealing to me.'”
  • “The conflicts were especially in the way over the past few years, according to Davis.”
  • “Despite the many practices global firms like Squire Patton may offer, Davis says smaller firms can also offer plenty of opportunities. ‘There are clients who are adverse to large firms because they don’t want to pay for the large apparatus of the large firm. There are lawyers who will not refer matters to a large firm because they’re afraid that they’ll refer the matter and lose the client,” he said. “So I think there are going to be a number of opportunities that will arise at the new firm that might not have occurred, where I [was].'”

“Kirkland Moves to Dismiss Suit Tying Firm to Texas Judge Romance” —

  • “Kirkland & Ellis LLP moved to dismiss a lawsuit accusing the legal giant of helping to hide a romantic relationship involving a prominent Texas bankruptcy judge and a local lawyer.”
  • “‘That relationship has nothing to do with Kirkland,’ the firm said in a Tuesday filing in the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas.”
  • “The former CEO of petroleum barge company Bouchard Transportation Co. Inc. accused Kirkland of making misleading legal filings to conceal the romance between bankruptcy Judge David R. Jones and onetime Jackson Walker attorney Elizabeth Freeman. Kirkland often partnered with Jackson Walker to handle large Chapter 11 cases in Texas, including Bouchard’s. Jones presided over Bouchard’s bankruptcy in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas.”
  • “‘Bouchard brings serious claims against Kirkland on what amounts to a tortured theory of bystander liability,’ Kirkland said in the filing.”
  • “That theory rests on what the firm called an inaccurate assertion that Kirkland should have acted on allegations about the relationship between Freeman and Jones, who resigned in October. Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur had determined in 2021 that the allegations weren’t ‘credibly substantiated’ after holding a hearing related to the bankruptcy of McDermott International, Kirkland said.”
  • “Bankruptcy rules didn’t require Kirkland to disclose potential conflicts of Jackson Walker, the firm said in the Tuesday filing.”

“Conflict Draws Reciprocal Suspension” —

  • “The full Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court imposed a three-year suspension as reciprocal discipline for a sanction imposed by the United States Patent & Trademark Office.”
    • “In 2019, an administrative law judge determined that Correll had violated several sections of the USPTO Code of Professional Responsibility… by representing private parties before the USPTO while he was employed by the Federal government (as an electronics engineer for the United States Department of the Navy). The director of the USPTO subsequently affirmed the administrative law judge’s decision in a final order issued in February 2021.”
    • “The detailed facts of Correll’s misconduct — of his representation of private parties before the USPTO while he was a Federal government employee — are set forth in the final order from the USPTO, as well as in two Federal court decisions, see note 4, supra, and need not be reiterated here.”
    • “As to Correll’s primary argument, in particular, that his suspension violates his First Amendment rights to free speech and association… Correll was not disciplined — his license was not suspended — on the basis of the content of his speech, but rather on the basis that in representing private parties before the USPTO, he violated certain of the USPTO’s disciplinary rules. Moreover, as the District Court noted, ‘the only prohibition on [Correll’s] speech was the speech [he] exercised when representing private clients in front of the USPTO. [He] was free to speak on patent and trademark matters otherwise.'”
    • “Acting through his firm, Mr. Correll represented private clients, for pay, at the PTO while a Navy employee, filing or prosecuting 211 patent applications and 80 trademark registration applications between 2002 and October 25, 2017. S. App’x 130, 132. He did this despite receiving a reminder, as part of a PTO-distributed practitioner survey in 2003, that federal employees may not represent private clients at the PTO. S. App’x 199. Mr. Correll did not resign from federal employment until September 2018.”