Junaid Odubeko, a partner in Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP’s Nashville office, has been elected to the Nashville Bar Association’s (NBA) Board of Directors for a four-year term, starting Jan. 1.

The election results were announced at the NBA’s Annual Meeting and Banquet on Dec. 5.

In a release, the firm said Odubeko, a member of Bradley’s Litigation Practice Group, focuses his practice on advising and representing clients in complex commercial and business disputes and real estate litigation. He has represented clients in industries that include healthcare, financial services, transportation, lodging, entertainment, and insurance. Odubeko represents clients in a variety of state regulatory matters before the state’s various departments, boards and commissions. His administrative law experience includes representing insurance producers before the department of commerce and insurance and representing utility companies before the Tennessee Regulatory Authority.

The firm said Odubeko represents and advises clients in the political arena on legal and other issues related to campaign finance. He serves as the legal counsel to the Tennessee Senate Democratic Caucus and as an adjunct professor of campaign finance and elections law at Vanderbilt University Law School.

Odubeko is a Fellow in the Nashville Bar Association and has completed the Tennessee Bar Association’s Leadership Program. He has served on the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity, which is a national organization made up of general counsel and law firm managing partners dedicated to creating a truly diverse U.S. legal profession. Named to the Nashville Business Journal’s “40 Under 40” list in 2017, Odubeko serves on the board of directors of Hands On Nashville, which focuses on meeting community needs through volunteerism.

At Bradley, Odubeko is a member of the firm’s Recruiting Committee and serves as chair of the firm’s Lawyers of Color Resource Group.

Susan Meyer, an officer in the Chicago office of Greensfelder, Hemker & Gale, P.C. and leader of the firm’s Trademark, Copyright, Media, and Advertising group, has been appointed as Norway’s Honorary Consul General for Illinois, effective Dec. 1, 2019.

Norway’s honorary consul general assists with consular affairs and helps to facilitate development of business, cultural, and educational relations between Norway and the United States. In conjunction with the appointment, Greensfelder’s Chicago office is designated by Norway’s Foreign Ministry as the Royal Norwegian Honorary Consulate.

According to the firm, Meyer, a past president and current member of the Chicago Chapter of the Norwegian-American Chamber of Commerce, advises companies on matters related to commerce between the United States and Scandinavia. She is also involved with the Norwegian-American Defense and Homeland Security Industry Council and the Swedish American Chamber of Commerce. In addition, she is on the board of Women Entrepreneurs Grow Global, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping women-owned businesses expand internationally.

In her practice, Meyer advises businesses in the areas of intellectual property, franchising, and distribution. A member of Greensfelder’s Intellectual Property and Franchising & Distribution groups, she represents companies in the United States and internationally in every stage of development. In addition to her work involving intellectual property transactions, licensing, and dispute resolution, Meyer has experience in trademark law, representing clients before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board and federal courts. She also works with franchisors on compliance issues and serves as outside general counsel for businesses on general business matters.

Above the Law has a report on BTI Consulting Group’s latest 2020 Client Service A-Team report — the report designed to show which law firms are tops in 17 different client-service-related activities.

The four basic categories considered in the survey include: understanding the client’s business, uniformity of service, dealing with unexpected changes, unprompted communication, and anticipating clients’ needs.

The article lists the 30 Biglaw firms that were mentioned most often across all categories, starting with Jones Day at the top of the list.

Read the Above the Law article.

Attorneys representing both sides of the aisle will present evidence, but no witnesses, when the House Judiciary Committee holds its next hearing in the impeachment inquiry Monday, reports Courthouse News Service.

Reporter Brandi Buchman explains the process that in the potential impeachment of President Trump:

“According to the rules authorizing the inquiry passed in October, attorneys for both the Democratic and Republican parties will have a chance during the 9 a.m. hearing Monday to give written statements explaining the scope of evidence they wish to put forward for articles, as well as a ‘detailed presentation’ of that evidence ‘other than the testimony of the witnesses.’”

Read the Courthouse News article.

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at a specific product liability case and puts it into context in the larger question of how Amazon and other internet companies try to avoid a legal burden when the products they sell malfunction, causing injury and damage.

The article by Alexandra Berzon tells the story of malfunctioning hoverboards that caused millions of dollars in damages when they burst into flames.

“The cases are testing a longtime argument made by Amazon and other internet companies, one that underpins the modern tech industry,” she writes. “We are just operating a platform that connects buyers and sellers, the argument goes. It’s up to the sellers who use our site to make sure that they meet proper safety standards.”

Read the WSJ article.

The Oil and Gas Lawyer Blog of Graves Dougherty Hearon & Moody takes a look at a recently published issue brief titled “Reducing Oilfield Methane Emissions Can Create New US Gas Export Opportunities.”

Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy published the brief by Gabriel Collins.

Collins argues that instead of flaring gas, it should be liquefied and sold in the international market.

Read the article.

Lewitt Hackman discusses two recent cases concerning franchise agreements, one involving a forum selection clause and the other covering indemnification.

Inn the first case: “A California Court of Appeal held that courts should not enforce forum selection clauses in contracts that also contain a jury waiver. For franchisors that have California franchisees, this ruling could complicate the ability to litigate claims in their chosen forum.”

And in the second case, a federal appellate court held that a franchisee must indemnify a franchisor for its litigation defense costs, vacating a district court’s order of summary judgment for the franchisee.

Read the article.

The office of the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel has released an advice memorandum finding an employer violated federal labor law by requiring employees to sign a broad non-disparagement agreement at the time of hire, according to a Kramer Levin post.

The memo referred to a case in which a law firm required all newly hired support staff and attorneys to sign an employment agreement containing a non-disparagement provision, according to the post’s authors, Kevin B. Leblang and Emily M. Wajert.

The GC rejected the law firm’s reasoning for the broad provision, explaining that “[t]he employer’s asserted interest . . . is not a unique interest nor strong enough to outweigh the significant interference the [provision] has with employee rights.”

Read the article.

A post by Davis Wright Tremaine proposes that professional services and particularly IT outsourcing agreements provide a better model for analytical artificial intelligence services than the widely used cloud services contracts.

“AI services have already become an important component of the IT portfolio for many large and small businesses,” writes Patrick E. Basinski. “The easy application of existing cloud services agreements as a contractual structure for AI services has helped accelerate AI’s adoption. As the reach of AI expands, new structures are needed to drive adoption of a set of potentially valuable AI solutions.”

Read the article.

Chief Justice John Roberts

CNN takes a look back at how Chief Justice William Rehnquist captured unprecedented attention as he presided over the Senate trial of a president, a role that would fall to Chief Justice John Roberts if the U.S. House were to impeach President Donald Trump and a Senate trial were launched.

“The magnitude of an impeachment trial for a US president — only two have been held in US history — is underscored by the Constitution’s specific mention that the chief justice presides,” writes CNN’s Joan Biskupic.

Read the CNN article.

A Philadelphia lawyer who was convicted on six counts of laundering money for a multimillion-dollar drug ring, was disbarred this week in Pennsylvania by the state’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel, reports The Philadelphia Inquirer.

J. Michael Farrell, 65, is serving a three-year federal sentence in Philadelphia, writes the Inquirer‘s Sam Wood. His license to practice law has been suspended since 2017, when a jury found him guilty on a total of 10 charges that also included witness tampering.

Prosecutors alleged Farrell worked with a crime family based in Baltimore that distributed thousands of pounds of illegal marijuana throughout the Mid-Atlantic states.

Read the Philadelphia Inquirer article.

An embattled federal district court seat in North Carolina that multiple presidents struggled to fill over the course of 14 years finally has a new occupant, reports Bloomberg Law.

By a 68 to 21 vote, the U.S. Senate confirmed law professor Richard E. Myers to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, eliminating the longest-running vacancy in the federal judiciary and bolstering President Donald Trump’s efforts to reshape the courts with conservatives, according to Bloomberg’s Madison Alder.

“Myers, who Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said would be the first black judge on his court, is a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law and is a former federal prosecutor,” writes Alder.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Joseph P. Lentivech III, a former administrative patent judge with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), has returned to Harrity & Harrity, LLP as counsel. He was a patent attorney at Harrity & Harrity from July 2010 until late 2014 when he joined the USPTO.

The firm said Lentivech will be joining Harrity’s patent application drafting team, where he will draft patent applications for the leading technology companies in the world. He will also oversee all PTAB appeals at the firm.

As an administrative patent judge, Lentivech served as a member of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) of the USPTO. The PTAB conducts trials, including inter partes, post-grant, and covered business method patent reviews and derivation proceedings; hears appeals from adverse examiner decisions in patent applications and reexamination proceedings; and renders decisions in interferences.

Lentivech also was a patent attorney at Brouse McDowell L.P.A. before his earlier stint at Harrity & Harrity. Prior to his law career, Lentivech served with the U.S. Marine Corp., most recently as a captain/artillery officer.

Lentivech received his J.D. (cum laude) from the University of Akron School of Law and his Bachelor of Science from State University of New York at Buffalo.

Stroock announced the promotion of three lawyers to partner and nine lawyers to special counsel, effective Jan. 1, 2020.

The following lawyers have been promoted to partner:

David Cheifetz (Litigation); Christopher Guhin (Financial Restructuring); and Dina Kolker (Government Affairs & Regulatory Support).

The following lawyers have been promoted to special counsel:

Elizabeth Carter (Litigation); Raymond Garcia (Litigation); Matthew Garofalo (Financial Restructuring); Benjamin Lee (Real Estate); Shauneida Navarrete (Litigation); Nicholas Richard (Real Estate); Debra Sapp (Real Estate); Gabriel Sasson (Financial Restructuring); and Julieta Stepanyan (Litigation).

ContractWorks has published “Legal Department Operations: A Guide for General Counsel.”

The publication is available for downloading from ContractWorks at no charge.

Legal departments are taking a multi-pronged approach to become more efficient and contribute to overall organizational profitability: they are onboarding specific people as well as technology solutions, the company says on its website.

This paper explores how certain solutions help streamline legal ops to solve common problems and the role of general counsel in the expanding legal department.

Download the guide.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas compelled arbitration in a putative Fair Labor Standards Act class action based on language in a “notice to employees” that put the plaintiffs on notice that they were agreeing to arbitrate claims in an incorporated (and hyperlinked) arbitration agreement, according to Carlton Fields; Reinsurance Focus.

Author Brendan Gooley adds that the court also rejected various other defenses to arbitration raised by the plaintiffs in an attempt to avoid arbitration.

The court found that the notice to employees contained sufficient language to incorporate the arbitration agreement by reference, and the notice to employees was also clear on that point.

Read the article.

Michelle E. Espey has joined Farrell Fritz in its Uniondale office as a tax partner.

The firm said Espey counsels clients on  tax matters, from representing individuals and businesses in federal, state and city tax disputes to advising clients on tax aspects of various transactions. She also advises not-for-profits on issues related to their tax exempt status.

Prior to joining Farrell Fritz, Espey was counsel at Moritt Hock & Hamroff, LLP in Garden City.

She is a Smithtown, NY, resident. She earned her J.D. from Quinnipiac University School of Law and her B.A. from College of the Holy Cross. Espey is admitted in New York and New Jersey and the United States Tax Court.

Zachary G. Williams has joined Venable LLP as counsel in the Zoning and Land Use Practice in the firm’s Tysons and Washington, D.C., offices. Williams focuses his practice on land use law, and land use and real property litigation.

The firm said Williams works with land use, zoning, and real estate development matters, including applications for special exceptions, comprehensive plan amendments, conditional use permits, special use permits, site plans, variances, subdivisions, and rezonings. He also regularly assists clients with zoning violation issues and zoning due diligence reviews prior to the acquisition and development of property. Williams has handled land use and real property-related litigation and appeals that have reached the Virginia Supreme Court, District of Columbia Court of Appeals, Maryland Court of Appeals, and the Maryland Court of Special Appeals.

In addition to Williams, the firm recently added three new associates to the Tysons office.

Williams received his J.D. from The George Washington University Law School, and his B.A. in Political Science from Davidson College.

Galen R. Mason has joined Michael Best in the firm’s Transactional Practice Group and Venture Best, the firm’s team dedicated to matters impacting high growth entrepreneurs. He joins as a partner in the firm’s Chicago office.

In a release, the firm said Mason focuses his practice on representing investors, emerging companies, founders, and management throughout all stages of the start-up lifecycle. This includes start-up formations, financings, growth stage employment, tax, intellectual property, and regulatory matters as well as exits. He also has experience with corporate structure and transactions for high-growth companies and in matters impacting companies in their later stages of growth including commercial agreements, rapid and discreet dispute resolution, and secondary transactions.

He co-founded Catapult Chicago, a nonprofit co-working space specifically designed for such entities. Mason is also a managing director of an active early stage venture capital firm.

Before making the move to Michael Best, Mason served as special counsel at Foley & Lardner LLP. Mason received his J.D. from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law, where he was a member of the Missouri Law Review, and his B.S., cum laude, from St. Olaf College.

The U.S. law firm of Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP announced that Jordan D. Shea has joined the firm as a partner in the Product Liability practice in Chicago.

In a release, the firm said Shea has experience in successfully representing domestic and international companies across a wide range of industries in product liability, labor and employment, commercial and toxic tort matters in courts across the Midwest.

Previously a partner with Williams Montgomery & John, Shea represents companies in high-stakes litigation across a range of industry sectors, including aviation, lawn and farm equipment, power tools and consumer household goods. He has employment litigation experience as well and has also successfully defended manufacturers in toxic tort cases. He is a certified Cook County arbitrator and regularly conducts arbitrations.

He served as a member of the legal team that secured one of the largest ever False Claims Act settlements in a case in which the government did not intervene.

A native of Chicago, Shea received his J.D., magna cum laude, from Loyola University Chicago School of Law and his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin Madison.