That didn’t take long.
Orrick has snagged a
total of 40 Coudert lawyers in China, including one partner in
Shanghai, two in Beijing, and six in Hong Kong. Despite
the earlier unpleasantness over Orrick’s he-said/she-said poaching
of Coudert’s London and Moscow offices, this is evidently amicable, or at least,
as they say in matrimonial-land, uncontested. Coudert’s chairman,
Clyde ("Skip") Rankin, would only say "As previously announced,
the partners of Coudert authorized" acquisitions like this.
In a more sober analysis of
the firm’s grim last decade than Caitlin Griffith’s still-inexplicable
rant, Legal Week describes the combination of pride, outdated
views of reality, and inability to establish a world-class presence
in either New York or London, that made the events of the past
week surely inevitable.
Update: Bloomberg News covers the story, with a quote from
yours truly.
