Three lawyers have joined Morgan, Lewis & Bockius in the firm’s 274-lawyer D.C. office.
Charles “Chuck” O’Connor, the former general counsel for the container shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk Group, and Jonathan Snare, the current deputy solicitor of labor at the Department of Labor, will join Morgan, Lewis in Washington in its labor and employment practice. Thomas Lang, a former senior trial counsel for the Federal Trade Commission is joining in the firm’s antitrust group.
O’Connor, whose first day is today, joins as a senior counsel, while Lang, who also started today, and Snare - who will not start until Feb. 23 - are joining as partners. According to the firm’s labor and employment leader, Steven Wall, Snare will resign from his post on inauguration day and then "take a couple of weeks off." Both Lang and Snare were voted in by the partnership the week before Christmas, according to Wall.
O’Connor, a former partner at Morgan, Lewis who had spent 35 years at the firm, left Morgan, Lewis in 2003 and had planned on retiring. But by the request of a firm client, however, O'Connor accepted the general counsel position at Maersk. Back with the firm, O'Connor will only be working part-time. (O'Connor did not immediately return a call for comment.)
Wall says Snare, with his government experience at the Labor Department, is expected to be able to advise clients on changes in law that come out of the President-elect Barack Obama administration as well as advise on labor issues that clients face relating to wage and hour matters, and affirmative action issues. In O'Connor's case, Wall says the firm expects him to use the international experience he gained by working with Maersk, a Denmark-based company, to advise international clients on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. For Lang, Wall says the firm is hoping that his experience with the FTC will prove helpful to clients in dealing with a government - that the the firm expects - to be "much more active in antitrust enforcement."
"This represents the firm's continuing effort to bolster the Washington office," Wall says.
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