The in-house job market in February seemed to still be enjoying the new year high. We found numerous new chief legal officer/general counsel announcements, more compared to slower months. The unemployment rate has been around 3.5% for the past six months. Everything looked normal. More so, spring hiring was expected to blossom into more top lawyers taking over corporate legal departments.

But that might not happen.

March started with more U.S. residents being diagnosed with the COVID-19 coronavirus. We've seen major companies such as Microsoft and Amazon.com bond over preparing a response plan for the novel coronavirus pandemic. Living in Los Angeles where county officials have declared a public health emergency, I wondered how the California employment numbers in the legal industry would fare under the weight of the latest coronavirus news.

Then we received an answer: West Coast in-house recruiters at Major, Lindsey & Africa say they are feeling the coronavirus impact.

"We've seen that employers are taking more of a wait-and-see approach," said Lina Guo, a director of in-house recruiting for Major, Lindsey & Africa in San Francisco and Palo Alto. "Employers are still out there and looking to add head count, though in the past month or so that seems to have slowed down a bit compared to the past year."

This week, Eastman Chemical announced it had hired a new chief legal officer. The company is one of many with manufacturing sites throughout China, including the city of Wuhan, ground zero for the COVID-19 pandemic. We'll continue to look out for employment trends amid the global health crisis.

How is the latest pandemic affecting your legal department hiring plans? Please let me know at [email protected].

 

What's Happening

 

  

Former In-House Lawyers Fight Back

Vered Yakovee is suing her former employer, The Miami Heat, over allegations the NBA team fired her for requesting maternity leave after adopting a newborn baby. Now the Heat describes Yakovee, who was associate general counsel and vice president, as a "disruptive, toxic, and sub-standard employee."

Yakovee's attorney, Erika Rotbart of Deutsch Rotbart & Associates in Boca Raton, Florida, said the Heat's "allegations are not only inaccurate but yet another attempt to cast Ms. Yakovee in a poor light and are further evidence of the Heat's bad acts and continued attempts to bully my client."

Sharan Rene Boudreau is also suing her old company, Nokia, in Texas over claims of sex and age discrimination. The former in-house attorney says she was passed over for a promotion by a younger and less experienced man. Nokia filed this week another motion to dismiss, arguing Boudreau didn't file her complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Texas Workforce Commission on time.

Boudreau's attorney, Hal Gillespie of Gillespie Sanford in Dallas, called the motion "frivolous."

 

Learning to Comply

Wells Fargo is still building trust with the federal government and the public after its fake account scandal. We recently learned the company replaced Allen Parker, who became general counsel in 2017 then interim CEO last year, with Douglas Edwards in his second interim GC stint.

On Tuesday, new CEO Charles Scharf testified in a House hearing that the bank has upgraded its compliance team, days after the House released a report accusing Parker and other officials of being "focused on financial considerations, rather than addressing the bank's compliance failures."

Don't Miss

Corporate Counsel is hosting its 20th annual SuperConference in Chicago from April 28-29. Join hundreds of general counsel and senior legal leaders at the premier forum designed for and by general counsel from Fortune 1000 companies. Register today!

*As of March 11, SuperConference is still on the calendar. Find coronavirus-related event updates here.

On the Move

 

 

Sysco general counsel, Eve McFadden, tells Corporate Counsel how her focus on the restaurant supply company's enterprise risk management system led to the added titles of senior vice president of legal and corporate secretary.