The change in the calendar year is traditionally a popular time for a change of professional address. Despite the pandemic, that tradition seems to be holding so far in 2021. Since the turn of the year, a wave of litigators have found new homes for their practices. Below are the highlights of what we've seen so far from the coverage of our law.com colleagues.

Turns out it's hard for trial lawyers to watch from the sidelines: Brian Buckley left his post as associate general counsel at Amazon.com Inc. to rejoin his old firm Fenwick & West in Seattle. Buckley practiced at Fenwick for seven years before moving to Amazon in 2016 to serve as a senior corporate counsel focusing on litigation and regulatory issues. He was promoted to associate general counsel in March 2019. "It's hard to sit there as a corporate representative in the courtroom and watch your outside lawyers have all the fun," Buckley told my colleague Phillip Bantz. Buckley also previously practiced at DLA Piper.

Has there ever been a better time to launch a policyholder-side insurance coverage boutique? Robin Cohen has moved her 12-lawyer insurance recovery team from McKool Smith to launch New York-based boutique Cohen Ziffer Frenchman & McKenna to represent policyholders. Cohen and name partners Adam Ziffer, Ken Frenchman and Keith McKenna worked together at Dickstein Shapiro and Kasowitz Benson Torres before joining McKool Smith in 2016. "My tendency is to go back to the people I worked with when I was a lot younger," Cohen told my colleague Dan Packel. "I find those are the best people, those that I trust the most on a substantive level." Cohen told Dan that with business surging due to the influx of pandemic-related claims, she expects the new firm to grow to between 30 and 40 lawyers here in the first quarter of 2021.