As we all settle back into our work after the long holidays (and challenging weather), here are a handful of recent news and information of probable interest to the CodeX crowd:

ALM: The Am Law Daily
“Partners Play Musical Chairs as N.Y. Tech Scene Heats Up,” by Nell Gluckman.“|
The shake-up of New York’s tech and life sciences legal scene continued this week, with Fenwick & West hiring transactional partner Ethan Skerry from Lowenstein Sandler just as Lowenstein Sandler lured M&A and tech partner Benjamin Burkhart away from Morgan, Lewis & Bockius,” wrote Gluckman.

“Fenwick & West, which has a large presence in the San Francisco Bay Area, officially opened its New York office in June 2016 in order to compete directly for tech and life sciences transactional work on the east coast,” she reported. “Skerry, who joined the firm on Thursday, is the first major hire since the New York launch.”

“The moves come as Am Law 100 firms have been bulking up their emerging companies practices in New York, racing to capitalize on the city’s growing significance for emerging company financing and M&A deals.” Read more here. (Registration required.)

Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute
“Using KPIs Effectively: Is Your Firm Measuring What Matters (Part 4),” by Mary Juetten.
“We look to the business world for an example of using a sales pipeline for monitoring the amount of incoming client business to ensure that overall firm revenue targets or budgets will be met,” said Juetten.

“An overall caveat is that creating and maintaining a client pipeline is more of an art than a science because of the estimates that must be made.” Read #4 here. (Links to 1, 2 and 3 here.)

Bloomberg Law Big Law Business
1. California Finalizes Opinion on Regulation of Lawyers’ Blogs,” by Joan Rogers.
“California lawyers can blog outside their law office website without worrying about lawyer advertising standards unless the blog touts the lawyer’s availability for employment, according a finalized opinion from the California state bar’s ethics committee.”

“Lawyers in California can use the new opinion as a road map for ensuring that their blogs aren’t subject to regulation as attorney advertising,” said Rogers. Read more here.

2. “Martha Minow to Step Down as Dean From
Harvard Law,” by Casey Sullivan.
“Martha Minow, dean of Harvard Law School, will step down from her post at the end of the academic year after an eight-year tenure, according to an announcement released on Tuesday.” Read more here.

3. “Facebook’s Virtual Reality Foray Challenged as ‘Fanciful Story,'” by Tom Korosec. (Bloomberg News.) “Facebook Inc. bet early on virtual reality, buying Oculus VR 2 1/2 years ago to get its groundbreaking headset. Now it’s fighting claims that the Oculus Rift was built with stolen technology and promoted with a false origin story about a young entrepreneur tinkering in his parents’ garage.”

Mark your calendar: CodeX FutureLaw Conference 2017: April 6, 2017.

Monica Bay is a Fellow at CodeX and a freelance journalist (disclosure: she has written for all three companies above.) She is a member of the California Bar and can’t wait to get to Florida for Spring Training. Email: mbay@codex.stanford.edu. Twitter: @Monica Bay.

Cover image: Clipart.com