The law firm of Covington & Burling has created a new position of vice-chairman of the firm and it will be filled by Lanny Breuer, according to the Blog of Legal Times. Breuer has worked with the firm in the past and recently worked as the assistant attorney general in charge of the Criminal Division with the Department of Justice.
“As I said to my wife, this will be my third first day at the firm,” Breuer said in an interview with the blog.
Breuer will work as a liaison for the law firm as the vice chairman. He will also work on his former practice of white-collar criminal defense and civil litigation.
“In that way, those are some things I did for the division,” Breuer said. “I do think there will be a balance and I’ll have to figure it out.”
The chair of the firm’s management and executive committees, Timothy Hester, said, “As we thought about the opportunity for getting Lanny back, I felt that one of the really exciting ideas here was that he could work very closely with me to help reach out to the world and to present the firm to clients and recruits alike. He showed at the Justice Department how good he was at this and I think it will help us significantly.”
“I can’t work on anything that was before the Department of Justice [during my tenure],” Breuer said. “And I can’t physically appear before nor have contact with the department. If it’s a new matter, I can be overtly involved.”
Hester also noted, “We have done extremely well as a firm in the white-collar practice in the time Lanny has been away, but we see his return as vaulting us to a new level in terms of sophistication of what we can bring to bear in support of client matters.”