Kirkland & Ellis has hired a 13-partner US litigation team from King & Spalding, as the near-$9bn powerhouse continues to expand into mass tort work in the States.
The team, which will join the firm’s offices across New York, Austin, Houston and Los Angeles, includes Legal 500 toxic tort leading partner Kristen Fournier and fellow specialists Morty Dubin and John Ewald in New York, as well as pharmaceuticals and medical devices leading partner Kim Bueno in Austin.
The hires are part of a concerted push by the firm to ramp up its litigation practice, and come on the back of the hire of a five-partner Skadden team led by Philadelphia partner Allison Brown this January, a move which saw the firm open a new office in the city.
The other partners making the move from King & Spalding include four others in New York – Shaila Rahman Diwan, who chaired the pharmaceutical and medical device litigation team, Matthew Bush, Kevin Hynes and Michael Vives, as well as Christopher Cowan in Austin and the LA-based Julia Romano, who is followed in the move by counsel Matt Ashby, who is joining as a partner.
Two of the other partners are currently located in Tennessee – Amy Pepke in Memphis and Tara Blake in Nashville – however, Legal Business understands that Kirkland has no plans to open an office in the state.
More junior lawyers are set to follow the partners to Kirkland, with a spokesperson telling LB that the firm expected ‘close to 30 King & Spalding lawyers’ to make the move in total.
Bueno, Cowan, Blake and Pepke all previously worked together at Mississippi-headquartered firm Butler Snow, joining King & Spalding in 2020.
Chicago-based litigation partner and executive committee member Andrew Kassof told Legal Business: ‘Product liability and mass tort litigation has long been one of Kirkland’s strengths and areas of focus. We’ve handled some of the most important matters in this space, from high-stakes personal injury trials to sprawling multidistrict litigation cases involving thousands of claims. Adding more superstars like Alli Brown, Kristen Fournier and their teams was truly about adding strength to strength.’
Elsewhere, Paul Weiss has seen four of its litigation partners leave its Washington DC office to launch a new litigation boutique, Dunn Isaacson Rhee. The departures include litigation department co-chair Karen Dunn, her fellow Boies Schiller Flexner alums William Isaacson and Jessica Phillips, and Jeannie Rhee, who headed the firm’s DC office. Both Dunn and Isaacson are tier 1-ranked Legal 500 leading trial lawyers.
In a LinkedIn post, Dunn said that the boutique would specialise in high-stakes trials, investigations and crisis management.
In addition to their work for corporate clients, many of the departing litigators have experience in political matters. Rhee served two stints at the Justice Department in 2009-11 and 2017-19, and worked as a prosecutor in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference int he 2016 US presidential election.
Meanwhile, Dunn helped to prepare Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Kamala Harris for debates in the 2012, 2016 and 2024 campaigns respectively.
The departures come after Paul Weiss became the first law firm to strike a deal with the Trump administration, discarding its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and providing $40m in pro bono legal services to causes the administration supports in return for the rescission of an executive order issued against it.
The firm said in a statement: ‘Paul Weiss is grateful to Bill, Jeannie, Jessica and Karen for their many contributions. We wish them well in all their future endeavors.’
Finally, Simpson Thacher has hired project finance partner Fern Han from White & Case into its Houston office. Han spent more than 14 years at the firm, and made partner there in 2022.
White & Case has seen several departures in energy and infrastructure since partners George Kazakov and Din Eshanov left for Paul Hastings in March, with a three-partner team led by Katie Hicks moving to Milbank in April.
Simpson Thacher has also hired Jana Hymowitz, who made partner at Cravath in 2024, into its executive compensation and employee benefits practice in New York.
