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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

JOINING THE HUNT -  You know the old saying: give a law firm a lateral candidate and you feed it for a day, teach a law firm to headhunt and you're out of a job. Legal industry recruiters are feeling the squeeze as their law firm clients increasingly invest in internal recruitment resources, creating C-suite talent management positions and becoming more liberal with referral bonuses, Law.com's Justin Henry reports. Leveraging data analytics, offering more incentives to draw on lawyer networks and creating more C-level and managerial positions charged with managing talent have all become part of firms' playbooks. But recruiters, no doubt protective of their livelihoods, also highlighted the downside for firms that aim to be more self-reliant in a competitive talent market. Steve Kruza, a recruiter with Kruza Legal Search working with firms in the Mid-Atlantic, told Henry placements that result from referral bonus incentives are often "low-hanging fruit," as they tend to target candidates unhappy with their current conditions and seeking to relocate. What's happening with more frequency in recent months is a candidate that Kruza places will become a "conduit" for their new firm to start poaching from the candidate's previous firm, using referral bonuses as an incentive rather than going to him, he said. "That can be frustrating," Kruza said. "Firms are throwing money around with internal referral programs more…because the market is really hot right now."

WALK THE TALK - Companies that have embraced progressive values might find an unintended consequence to that approach: a unionization target on their backs, Law.com's Jessica Mach reports. That's at least the perception of some labor experts, who say companies perceived as progressive could soon see organizing efforts as the union movement gains the most momentum it's had in decades. "I think that as companies try to attract new talent in a very hot labor market—as they attempt to appeal to people by espousing what some would call progressive values—unions are now trying to flip that on its head and argue, 'Well, if you're so progressive, you should be open to unionization efforts,'" said Don Schroeder, a partner at Foley & Lardner who represents Fortune 500 clients. The perception of hypocrisy is also playing a role in this phenomenon. When workers believes there's a "disjunction between the rhetoric of an entity and its behavior to its own workers, [that] can be a big motivating force for workers to unionize," said Joshua Freeman, a professor at the City University of New York's School of Labor and Urban Studies who has done consulting work for unions.

WHO GOT THE WORK?℠ - Tesla CEO Elon Musk has agreed to purchase Twitter for $44 billion. As a result of the transaction, Twitter will become a privately-held company. Twitter, which is based in San Francisco, was represented by Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. The company's board of directors was advised by a Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett team led by New York-based partners Alan Klein, Katherine Krause and Anthony Vernace. Sullivan & Cromwell represented the financial advisers to Twitter, which were Goldman Sachs Group and JPMorgan Chase.  >> Read more on Law.com Radar and check out the most recent edition of Law.com's Who Got the Work?℠ column to find out which law firms and lawyers are being brought in to handle key cases and close major deals for their clients.

PAPARAZZI HAS ENTERED THE CHAT - Buchalter filed a trade secret lawsuit Monday in Utah District Court on behalf of clothing accessory wholesaler Paparazzi. The complaint takes aim at eight former Paparazzi consultants for allegedly conspiring to "harass and harm" the company by creating a group chat on social media for the purpose of misappropriating and sharing confidential information. Counsel have not yet appeared for the defendants. The case is 4:22-cv-00028, Paparazzi v. Sorenson et al. Stay up on the latest deals and litigation with the new Law.com.   

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