Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM

Kirkland & Ellis added another former Morrison & Foerster lawyer, Ali Zaidi, to its corporate practice in Washington, D.C., this week.

Zaidi, who joins Kirkland as of counsel, focuses on environmental risks and regulatory hurdles arising in M&A deals. In leaving MoFo for Kirkland, he's following a path beat just last month by partner Robert Fleishman, who specializes in defending energy and financial industry clients in regulatory enforcement matters.

The two lawyers were recruited separately and made their decision separately, according to Kirkland.

“I think a big part of the transition for me is this unique moment, where there's so much significant activity that's being planned by investors operating in this arena, and they're doing that with uncertainty in the air,” Zaidi said. “I'm very excited to be at Kirkland and counsel clients as they make those significant business decisions in a way that's prudent and reduces their exposure to risk.”

Ali Zaidi

Before joining Morrison & Foerster in February 2017, Zaidi served in the White House Office of Management and Budget and in the White House Domestic Policy Council as deputy director for energy policy. 

In Kirkland's environmental transactional practice group, he will be one of almost two dozen lawyers advising buyers, sellers, lenders, underwriters, and investors in transactions with environmental implications across the U.S. and globally. The group's lawyers are based in D.C., Houston, and San Francisco, in what Kirkland has touted as the “largest such group” in the country. 

Zaidi declined to say whether he considered other options outside Kirkland or whether he is bringing any specific business to his new firm. 

Fleishman began his career at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and then spent more than three decades in a series of in-house and law firm roles, including at Baltimore Gas & Electric, Constellation Energy Group, and Covington & Burling. He was most recently of counsel at Morrison & Foerster for five years.

“Bob is one of the preeminent energy regulatory lawyers in the U.S.,” Kirkland partner Andrew Calder said in a statement welcoming his move to the firm last month. “Kirkland is pleased he has agreed to join us to build and lead a top-notch energy regulatory practice to support the firm's large and growing energy and infrastructure practice.”

Kirkland has been on a seemingly endless lateral hiring streak, and its financial growth has catapulted the firm to the top of the Am Law 100. MoFo is also coming off a year of strong financial growth, and the firm posted record-high gross revenues in 2017, following modest growth and declining revenues in previous years.

Amid the departures to Kirkland, MoFo's office in Washington has added several prominent lateral hires from government since last month, including John Smith, former director of the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, and Lisa Phelan, from the Justice Department's Antitrust Division.