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Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, one of New York’s oldest large law firms, is planning to dissolve after losing attorneys to rivals and a series of failed merger talks, the Wall Street Journal reported. The news comes after another firm, Hogan Lovells, agreed to hire more than 30 of Stroock’s partners last week, including co-managing partner Jeff Keitelman and the firm’s elite real estate team. Keitelman and co-managing partner Alan Klinger said in an email on behalf of the executive committee Monday that the move for many of the partners to join Hogan Lovells will “offer the best opportunities and growth potential for the most members of our firm.” A plan to dissolve the firm will move forward, the email said, after partners voted last week to authorize the executive committee to dissolve the firm. The firm said that the Hogan Lovells option amounted to a large-scale lateral acquisition, rather than a merger. Hogan Lovells in a statement last week said that the partners are expected to close their agreements in mid-November.

Pioneering bankruptcy lawyer Jay Goffman is starting a new advisory firm with Steve Smith, a former head of restructuring and leveraged finance at investment bank UBS, that will offer merchant-banking services and restructuring advice for business owners, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Goffman and Smith launched the new boutique firm named Smith Goffman Partners, which expects to provide restructuring advice and arrange bespoke loans for companies facing financial challenges, its co-founders said. “Restructuring is not a purely legal exercise or financial exercise or business exercise; you need all three,” Goffman said in an interview. “We will be rendering financial advice but with the benefit of experience in all three areas, and we can pair that with capital or access to capital to help fill a need.” Goffman, a four-decade restructuring veteran, rose to prominence after resolving some of the largest-ever corporate defaults while leading the bankruptcy practice at law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, including the 2009 chapter 11 case of chemical maker LyondellBasell. Goffman represented the company’s owner, Len Blavatnik, while Smith led a team of UBS bankers who helped provide $6.5 billion in financing for LyondellBasell, the largest-ever bankruptcy loan.

A federal judicial council on Monday approved a plan to hire a replacement for U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones, who announced he will resign after admitting he was in a previously undisclosed romantic relationship with a lawyer whose firm regularly appeared before him, Retuers reported. The 5th U.S. Circuit Judicial Council during a meeting in Dallas signed off on a plan to seek a new judge in Houston to replace Jones, who before announcing his resignation, handled more major chapter 11 corporate bankruptcies than any judge nationally. The next step is for Chief 5th Circuit Judge Priscilla Richman to post the position and appoint a five-member selection panel to review applications, said U.S. District Judge Randy Crane, the chief district court judge for the Southern District of Texas, where Jones is based. Judge Crane, a member of the 19-member council, said the process will likely take about six months, meaning the court will be short handed for a few months after Jones' resignation takes effect on Nov. 15. In an Oct. 16 letter asking the 5th Circuit to approve hiring a replacement for Jones, Eduardo Rodriguez, the chief bankruptcy judge in the Southern District of Texas, said bankruptcy filings were at a record high in his court, with each of its five judges handling around 3,500 cases. "The Court could not continue to adequately serve the public with only four judges," Judge Rodriguez wrote.

Texas law firm Jackson Walker said in court filings that it was an unbiased advocate for the businesses it was guiding through bankruptcy in recent years. It never mentioned that one of its bankruptcy lawyers at the time was in a romantic relationship with the judge overseeing at least two dozen of those chapter 11 cases, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Jackson Walker didn’t disclose that one of its law partners, Elizabeth Freeman, was living with bankruptcy judge David R. Jones, and didn’t correct its paperwork in the bankruptcy cases after learning of the couple’s relationship. The possible conflict of interest could have kept Jackson Walker off chapter 11 cases it filed in Houston’s bankruptcy court — and that earned the firm nearly $10 million in fees, The Wall Street Journal found through a review of court records. Judge Jones resigned from the bench earlier this month amid an official misconduct probe by the federal appeals court that appointed him after he confirmed his romantic relationship with Freeman to the Journal. Earlier this week, the Justice Department’s Office of the U.S. Trustee, which oversees the nation’s bankruptcy courts, said it has started to review Jackson Walker’s fee requests in light of Jones’s resignation. Jackson Walker told the Journal earlier this month that the firm in March 2021 first learned of an allegation that Freeman was in a relationship with Jones. Jackson Walker declined to comment on when it verified that the relationship was real and on the fee requests. It said in a court filing Thursday regarding a pending fee request that it “is working to evaluate and address the issues that have come to light over the past three weeks.”