The Big Hiring Move From A Big Law Player
Kirkland & Ellis just made a major power move in the mass torts space, snagging a heavyweight 13-partner team from King & Spalding that’s sure to shake up the litigation landscape.
The star of this lateral hire is Kristen Fournier, (pictured) who Kirkland is calling “among the most distinguished mass tort litigators practicing today” – and honestly, her track record backs up that claim.
She’s bringing along some serious firepower, including trial lawyers Kim Bueno and Morty Dubin, plus environmental and mass tort specialist John Ewald, along with nine other partners. The team is spreading out across Kirkland’s New York, Austin, Houston, and Los Angeles offices.
What makes this move particularly interesting is that Fournier will be reuniting with Allison Brown, the renowned trial lawyer who Kirkland poached from Skadden back in January. Fournier actually called working with Brown again “a personal career goal eight years in the making” on LinkedIn – talk about playing the long game!
Kirkland’s Litigation Hiring Spree
This latest acquisition is part of Kirkland’s aggressive expansion strategy. The firm has already added more than 100 litigators this year alone, clearly betting big on continued high demand in litigation.
That January hire of Brown’s five-partner mass torts team from Skadden was so significant it prompted Kirkland to open a whole new Philadelphia office.
Jon Ballis, who chairs Kirkland’s executive committee, says these new hires will join their already massive 950-lawyer litigation practice that consistently dominates the legal rankings.
The firm’s product liability and mass torts group has built a reputation handling bet-the-company disputes for pharmaceutical and manufacturing giants.
The Players and Their Pedigree
Fournier spent the last five years at King & Spalding as co-chair of their toxic and environmental tort litigation team, but her resume goes way deeper.
She put in 15 years at Orrick before that, working her way up to partner and co-leading their complex litigation practice. Her client list reads like a who’s who of major corporate defendants – she’s been lead defense counsel for Janssen Pharmaceuticals, lead counsel for Walmart, and national coordinating counsel for Johnson & Johnson’s massive talc litigation.
Bueno is particularly interesting because she only just joined King & Spalding last September, leading her own four-partner exodus from Butler Snow. Based in Austin, she’s made her name in pharmaceutical and medical device litigation, recently serving as lead trial counsel for both Johnson & Johnson and Monsanto.
Dubin and Ewald both followed Fournier from Orrick to King & Spalding back in 2020, so this group clearly works well together. Dubin has notched trial wins for Dow Chemical and J&J, while Ewald has been in the trenches as trial counsel for Johnson & Johnson’s talc cases.
What This Means for the Market
Kirkland’s aggressive hiring spree reflects the red-hot demand in mass torts and product liability litigation. With pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, and consumer goods giants facing an endless stream of class actions and multidistrict litigation, top-tier legal talent is at a premium.
The firm’s existing relationships with clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, and Allergan give these new hires a ready-made platform to hit the ground running. And with Kirkland’s deep pockets and elite reputation, they’re clearly positioning themselves as the go-to shop for companies facing existential litigation threats.
For other Big Law firms, this has to be a wake-up call about the talent war heating up in the litigation space. When a firm can poach 13 partners in one swoop and call it just part of their year’s hiring, that’s a sign of how competitive this market has become.
