____________________________________________________________________________

San Francisco, CA (February 18, 2020) – Venable LLP is pleased to announce that Jill Battilega Rowe has joined the firm as a partner in the Commercial Litigation Practice in the San Francisco office. Ms. Rowe is an experienced business trial lawyer who focuses on commercial real estate and contract and fraud disputes.
Ms. Rowe has experience representing companies in a variety of industries, including nationally recognized real estate brokerage and investment firms, a leading pharmaceutical distributor, award-winning wineries, and the country’s largest petroleum pipeline owner. She previously worked as in-house counsel for Fidelity National Financial, where she handled mergers and acquisitions, employment, and general corporate matters.
James E. Nelson, partner-in-charge of the firm’s San Francisco office, said, “Our office’s commitment to smart growth in key practice areas, such as commercial litigation, has allowed us to steadily establish ourselves as one of the premiere law firms in the Bay Area. Clients across a wide range of industries seek Jill for her skill as an effective and zealous advocate on their behalf.Adding her to our deep bench of litigators is a natural step as we continue to grow our team.”
Geoffrey R. Garinther, chair of the firm’s Litigation Division, said, “Jill is a versatile litigator with a formidable track record in the courtroom. She consistently achieves favorable results on behalf of her clients, particularly in the realm of commercial real estate disputes. The creativity she brings to resolving these complex matters will be of immense value to our practice, both in San Francisco and on a national scale.”
Commenting on her move to Venable, Ms. Rowe said, “In addition to having an exceptional commercial litigation practice, Venable’s full roster of services will complement my practice and provide the resources needed to support complex cases across an assortment of industries. I look forward to joining the great community of attorneys at this firm and contributing to the growth of the San Francisco office.
Ms. Rowe received her J.D.,with honors, from the University of Washington School of Law in1998,and her B.A., summa cum laude, from the University of San Diego in1990.
###
Venable LLP is an American Lawyer Global 100 law firm headquartered in Washington, DC that serves as primary counsel to a worldwide clientele of large and mid-sized organizations, nonprofits, high-net-worth entrepreneurs, and other individuals. With more than 850 professionals across the country, including California, Delaware, Maryland, New York, Virginia, and Washington, DC, the firm strategically advances its clients’ objectives in the U.S. and around the globe. Venable, which is celebrating its 120 anniversary, advises clients on a broad range of business and regulatory law, legislative affairs, complex litigation, and the full range of intellectual property disciplines. For more information, please visit https://www.venable.com/.
LawFuel Headlines
- London Law Boss ‘Spitting Feathers’ Over Partners’ Sexual Harassment Pattern
- The $11 Million Club – BigLaw’s Partner Profit Machine Just Broke Another Record — And The 2026 Rankings Haven’t Even Dropped Yet
- Ropes & Gray Raids Latham & Watkins for Eight-Lawyer Paris PE/M&A TeamIn a bold lateral strike that underscores the fierce talent battle in Paris Big Law, Ropes & Gray has snapped up a high-powered eight-lawyer private equity and M&A group from rival Latham & Watkins. The move, confirmed by multiple sources including The Lawyer andLaw.com International, brings three partners — Denis Criton, (pictured) Gaëtan Gianasso, and Michael Colle
- Jay Lefkowitz, Kirkland Partner Who Represented Epstein, to Retire from Firm This Spring
- White & Case Hits $3.6bn — And It’s Just Getting Warmed Up
- $11 Million a Partner -The Big Law Pay Story That Makes Every Other Firm’s Numbers Look ModestKirkland & Ellis just changed the frame for the entire industry If you write about lawyers for long enough, you make a quiet peace with the gap between your pay packet and theirs. This week, however, Kirkland & Ellis has made that gap feel almost cosmic. Equity partners at the world’s highest-grossing law firm averaged $11.1 million each for 2025 – a 20% increase on 2024. The major money figure places Kirkland’s partners in the earnings bracket of a top Premier League footballer, at roughly £22,500 a day. The firm simultaneously became the first law firm in history to break $10 billion in revenue, posting $10.56 billion for the year.
- The Private Equity Lawyer Who Will Run Weil GotshalWhen Weil, Gotshal & Manges announced last week that Ramona Y. Nee will succeed Barry Wolf as Executive Partner from January 2027, the news landed with the quiet inevitability of a deal that everyone saw coming. Wolf, who has steered the firm for 16 years, called her “uniquely suited.” He was not exaggerating. For nearly a quarter-century Nee has been the quiet engine of Weil’s U.S. private equity practice and the beating heart of its Boston office. Now the firm is handing her the keys.
- Is This The Billable Hour’s Last Stand? Anthropic’s Top Lawyer Thinks SoThe legal profession has survived recessions, regulatory upheavals and the occasional partner meltdown. But the next threat to BigLaw’s favourite revenue model may come from something far less dramatic. A machine that reads faster than any associate and which could spell the end of the infamous ‘billable hour’, which has been touted as being in its end time for some time. According to Jeff Bleich, general counsel at AI company Anthropic, (pictured) the traditional billable hour could soon be on borrowed time.
- DLA Piper Makes A Big Bet By Ditching the Verein for a New Global Structure
- Billable Hours vs. Billion‑Dollar Bots – Legora and the New Economics of LawA two‑year‑old Swedish startup has just become one of the most valuable legal tech businesses on the planet—and it is using that war chest to plant its flag squarely in the US legal market. Legora’s $550 million Series D at a $5.55 billion valuation is not just another exuberant AI round; it is a blunt message to law firm leaders that the window for treating AI as a side project has closed. Legora’s pitch is disarmingly simple. Built on top of large language models, its platform targets the work that eats most of a junior lawyer’s life: research, document review, contract drafting and due diligence. The company claims tens of thousands of legal professionals using the product daily, across some 800 customers in more than 50 markets, including heavy‑hitting firms like Bird & Bird, Cleary Gottlieb, White & Case, Linklaters, Goodwin, Dentons and advisers such as Deloitte.
- Big Law’s Trump Reprieve Lasts Less Than 24 Hours — The U-Turn That Changed EverythingIt has been a year — twelve months of watching the most powerful law firms on the planet twist in the wind at the pleasure of a sitting president. And just when it looked like the drama had finally resolved itself, Washington reminded everyone that in this administration, nothing is ever quite over. On Monday, the Trump administration quietly announced it was abandoning its executive orders against Jenner & Block, Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey — four firms that had the nerve, and the litigation chops, to fight back. All four had beaten the orders in the lower courts.
- Is This The Death of Lockstep Pay for BigLaw?For decades, BigLaw partnership compensation had the reassuring predictability of a Swiss watch. Progress through lockstep. Accumulate seniority. Collect your reward. Repeat. That model isn’t dead. But the announcement in February 2026 that Freshfields, the world’s 13th largest firm by gross revenue, and an institution that maintained an all-equity partnership for its entire existence, was introducing a nonequity partner tier while simultaneously stretching its lockstep to reward higher earners at the top of the pay scale, made something abundantly clear. The Pay Reset is Now Freshfields isn’t alone. Cravath created a salaried partner tier in November 2023, and that move gave other highly-ranked firms permission to follow suit — Paul Weiss, WilmerHale, Cleary, Skadden, Debevoise, and Sullivan & Cromwell have all introduced nonequity tiers in the two years since.
- Macfarlanes’ Curious New York Move: A Manhattan Office With No U.S. Law