The former general counsel of a bankrupted South Florida law firm that was at the center of a massive fraud was sentenced Jan. 30 to 18 months in federal prison for his role in helping managing partner Scott Rothstein swindle investors by selling them “income” from faked settlements, reports the ABA Journal.

David Boden, 53, has cooperated with the government from the start and is expected to testify against other defendants charged in connection with the schemes for which the former Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler chief is now serving 50 years. Prosecutors said Boden verified that the claimed settlements sold by Rothstein, which involved fictitious individuals and entities, were legitimate.

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A recent poll by the Association of Corporate Counsel found that more than half of in-house lawyers said work-life balance was a large factor in their decision to choose an in-house position.

The ACC polled more than 30,000 lawyers to gain insight into how organizations and leaders can benefit from the positive business outcomes of encouraging and fostering a climate of work-life balance for corporate lawyers.

The poll showed:

• Globally, Canada and the United States rate their happiness with work-life balance more positively than those from Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Asia Pacific and Latin America.
• One in five in-house lawyers who are caregivers have had to leave a job for one that better supports their caregiving role, and 4 percent quit work entirely. One in five will consider making a change in role or position in the coming year.
• Seventy percent of women caregivers say their caregiving role has had a negative impact on their opportunities for career advancement.

See the report.

Wells Fargo & Co. recently snagged two former Bank of America Corp. high-ranking lawyers to fill openings in its litigation and workout division, the bank confirmed, reports The Wall Street Journal‘s Moneybeat blog.

Craig Baldauf, a former Bank of American interim director of litigation and regulatory investigations, plans to join Wells Fargo on Feb. 23 as a deputy general counsel, the San Francisco-based lender said. He most recently served as head of global litigation for Toronto-based TD Bank Group, after leaving Bank of America in 2011.

Bob McGahan, former associate general counsel of litigation and regulatory inquiries at Bank of America, joined Wells Fargo Jan. 20 as an assistant general counsel.

Moneybeat says both will work on litigation and regulatory matters across the bank.

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Michael Volkov, CEO of The Volkov Law Group, will discuss the respective mandates of the CCO and legal officers in a free webinar Tuesday, Feb. 3, at noon Eastern time.

With the rise of the compliance function in corporate governance, chief compliance officers and general counsels have had to define their responsibilities and coordinate their activities, the firm says on its website. “To do so, chief compliance officers and legal counsel have to understand their different mandates.  As the chief legal officer, the general counsel has to understand his or her responsibilities in relation to the Chief Compliance Officer. They have very different responsibilities but share an important responsibility to coordinate their activities,” the firm says.

Register for the webinar.

Encana Corp. has announced the appointment of Joanne Alexander as its new executive vice president and general counsel.

She replaces retiring GC Terry Hopwood at the Canadian energy company

The company says Alexander has more than 20 years of legal and business experience in the oil and gas industry. Before starting at Encana, she was the senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary with Precision Drilling Corporation.

Read Alexander’s company bio.

Frank R. Jimenez

Raytheon Companyhas announced the appointment of Frank R. Jimenez as general counsel for the company, effective Jan. 19.

Jimenez, 50, previously served as general counsel of the Navy from 2006-2009, and was one of seven Senate-confirmed Pentagon civilians of four-star equivalent rank overseeing the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. He succeeds Jay B. Stephens, who is retiring from Raytheon on March 31 after serving 12 years as Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary.

Prior to joining Raytheon, Jimenez served as general counsel, secretary and managing director, corporate affairs of Bunge Limited, a Fortune Global 200 agribusiness and food company with 35,000 employees and $60 billion in 2013 revenues.

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Thomas Sabatino

Walgreens Boots Alliance top attorney Thomas Sabatino is the latest executive to leave the company, according to a report in The Chicago Tribune.

Sabatino will join Hertz Global Holdings as senior executive vice president, chief administrative officer and general counsel starting Feb. 9.

“Sabatino had been general counsel for the former Walgreen Co. since 2011 and chief administrative officer since last year,” The Tribune reports. “He will remain with the company until the end of January, a month after Walgreen’s acquisition of Alliance Boots closed Dec. 31 and formed holding company Walgreens Boots Alliance.”

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Can the Federal Bureau of Investigation wire up your longtime company counsel and then use recordings of the conversations against you in court? The answer – as reported in The Wall Street Journal‘s Risk & Compliance Journal – is often yes, according to legal experts and a ruling by a New Jersey federal judge.

Joseph Sigelman, the ousted chief executive of oil services firm PetroTiger, was seeking to have a secretly recorded conversation with his former general counsel turned informant, barred from his coming trial for foreign bribery. Sigelman, who maintains his innocence, argued that the secret video recording made with a camera attached to the lawyer Gregory Weisman, who also sometimes served as his personal attorney, violated his right to attorney-client confidentiality, The Journal reports.

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Sometimes negotiators care so much about the issues at stake that they mistake compromise for surrender, says the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. Sometimes they’re so confident things will go their way they don’t try hard enough.

The program’s list of the 10 Worst Negotiations of 2014 includes talks that failed for one or both of these reasons, as well as for numerous other lapses. “As we reflect on the shortcomings of 2014, let’s learn from the past and strive to negotiate more rationally in 2015.” the program says on its website.

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United Airlines has announced that Brett Hart, its executive vice president and general counsel, will assume responsibility for customer care and customer experience. John Rainey, United’s chief financial officer, will take on strategy.

Hart joined the airline in 2010 after a stint in the same job for food group Sara Lee, following a period as a partner for the Chicago law firm Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, reports Quartz.com.

Hart will have his job cut out for him, Quartz says. Despite making improvements in metrics like on-time performance, mishandled bags, passenger complaints, and overbooked flights, United still ranked 12th out of 15 U.S. airlines, and last among major carriers, according to the annual Air Quality Rankings released in April.

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Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP will present seminars in New York and San Francisco for a discussion of issues that every in-house counsel has or will face.

The comprehensive 1.5-day CLE program, will be offered in the firm’s New York office Jan. 14-15 and in the San Francisco office Jan. 28-29.

The event will pair current in-house counsel and Orrick practitioners for a discussion of issues and offers an opportunity for learning and networking for seasoned and unseasoned in-house counsel alike, the firm says on its website.

Topics will include:

• What Does It Mean To Be In-House Counsel?
• Employees: Can’t Live With or Without Them
• Handling Internal Complaints, Investigations, and Civil Lawsuits
• The Transactional Side of Being In-House Counsel
• Who Does This Belong To?: Protecting Your IP Rights and the Rights of Others
• Big Risks With “Big Data”: Navigating Data Sharing and Security in a Digital World

Register for the seminar.

Embattled Japanese air bag manufacturer Takata Corp. has named a new general counsel for its North American unit — less than a week after its president and chief operating officer resigned, reports The Detroit News.

Bruce D. Angiolillo, a longtime lawyer at Simpson Thacher & Barlett LLP, has been named general counsel at TK Holdings Inc., the Auburn Hills-based North American subsidiary of Takata.

“Angiolillo will oversee all North American legal and regulatory matters at the company and work directly with Takata’s senior management, external legal counsel and the Company’s governing bodies. He will play an integral role in Takata’s continued efforts to work cooperatively with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and other regulators to resolve all outstanding issues related to the safety campaigns associated with certain Takata air bag inflators,” the company said in a statement.

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Massachusetts-based cybersecurity firm Veracode will increase its headcount from by about 100 employees during 2015 to deal with a surge in demand for companies fighting online threats. The new hires will include a new general counsel.

The company also is preparing for an initial public offering.

The Boston Business Journal reports the hiring of general counsel Dean Breda, who was formerly general counsel for Cambridge-based Zipcar, which went public in 2011 before being acquired by Avis in 2013. Veracode would be Breda’s fourth IPO, CEO Bob Brennan said. Prior to Zipcar, Breda was general counsel at Burlington-based Demandware.

Read the story.

Eastman Kodak Co. , the Rochester-based printing technology company, has promoted Deputy General Counsel Sharon E. Underberg to General Counsel. She replaces Patrick M. Sheller, who has been with the company since 1993, reports the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle.

The move is one of an array of changes in Kodak’s top management in recent months. Since CEO Jeffrey J. Clarke took over in March, Kodak has made such headquarters changes as new chief financial officer, chief human resources officer, and chief marketing officer.

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Enterprise Products Partners L.P. announced Dec. 17 the election of Craig W. Murray as group senior vice president and general counsel, Harry Paul “Hap” Weitzel as senior vice president and deputy general counsel and Vijay A. D’Cruz as vice president, litigation. Each of the appointments is effective Jan. 5, 2015.

The company is based in Houston.

Most recently, Murray was a senior partner at Vinson & Elkins LLP in Houston where he focused primarily on corporate and energy-related finance, including pipeline financing. His energy finance experience has involved oil and gas properties in all major producing states, as well as the Gulf of Mexico. Murray earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee and a JD from the Louisiana State University Law Center.

Murray will succeed Stephanie Hildebrandt as general counsel, who will join the Houston office of the global business law firm Norton Rose Fulbright as a partner in February.

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Avvo has posted a complimentary on-demand webinar discussing ways to help lawyers and law firms get comfortable with the rapid proliferation of online feedback and the most effective – and ethical – ways to respond.

Josh King, Avvo’s General Counsel and VP of Business Development, is the presenter.

Avvo says participants will learn about:

• The spread of online feedback via social media and review sites, and the importance of this trend to professional services and reputation
• Why suing for defamation is the technique of last resort
• Avoid violating the ethics rules around misleading advertising and attorney-client confidences when responding to online feedback

Watch the on-demand webinar.

AMB Group LLC,  parent company of the Atlanta Falcons, has appointed Mike Egan as general counsel, effective Jan. 5, 2015.

Egan is a partner in the Corporate Practice Group of King & Spalding LLP and is co-head of the firm’s Mergers and Acquisitions Practice.

Egan will serve as operational executive of the new Atlanta stadium construction project, representing the interests of Atlanta Falcons Stadium Company, reports The Atlanta Business Journal. His legal responsibilities will span all of the AMB Group companies.

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International Business Machines Corp. has named Michelle Browdy as new general counsel, succeeding Bob Weber, who is retiring after nine years.

Browdy currently is assistant general counsel as well as secretary to the IBM board. Her title will become senior vice president, legal and regulatory affairs and general counsel as of Jan. 1, reports Bloomberg Businessweek.

Browdy, 50, holds degrees from Harvard, Yale and Princeton and was a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP before joining IBM in 2006 as the head of litigation, reports.

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Guardians of Peace, the hacking group responsible for obtaining and then leaking thousands of pieces of confidential Sony information, has released the email of Sony Pictures General Counsel Leah Weil.

The nature of the majority of the documents is highly sensitive, according to a report on Gizmodo.com.

An email exchange between Weil and the president of Columbia Pictures’ business affairs carried the subject line “email purge.” The executives discussed the need for Sony to take a more cautious approach to email retention policies and whether they should move to a more secure system.

The emails also disclosed squabbles with writer-producer Aaron Sorkin, net neutrality confusion, and a host of conflicts within the company itself.

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Verizon Communications Inc. has announced that Craig Silliman, senior vice president, public policy, has been named executive vice president – public policy and general counsel.

His appointment will be effective Jan. 1, 2015.

He will succeed Randal S. Milch, who has been appointed to a new position as strategic policy adviser to Lowell C. McAdam, Verizon’s chairman and CEO. Milch will oversee strategic policy initiatives.

In his new role, Silliman will also report to McAdam and lead the company’s public policy, legal, regulatory, government affairs and security groups.

Read the story.