Legal News

Another Wilmer Partner Lands Senior SEC Post

By Jenna Greene

Another partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr has landed a top job at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Anne Small has been named a deputy general counsel and will join the agency staff next week.

She?ll see some familiar faces - her boss, general counsel Mark Cahn, spent 20 years at Wilmer before joining the SEC in March 2009. Enforcement Division chief counsel Joseph Brenner was a Wilmer partner until November. And Meredith Cross, who is the head of the Division of Corporate Finance, was a partner at Wilmer before joining the SEC in 2009.

Cahn was promoted to GC last month, after David Becker departed. Becker and the SEC have come under fire for his work on the Bernard Madoff case ? a potential conflict of interest since he had family earnings from a Madoff account.

Small will serve as deputy general counsel for litigation and adjudication, Cahn?s old job before his promotion. She?ll help oversee enforcement matters, appellate cases, and adjudications.

She was a litigation partner in Wilmer?s New York office, joining the firm after clerking for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer in 2002 ? 2003. In law school, she was president of the Harvard Law Review.

?We are very fortunate to have someone of Anne?s aptitude, judgment and extraordinary skill in this important role,? Cahn said in a news release.

The Wilmer/ SEC revolving door goes both ways ? in January 2010, Daniel Gallagher left his job as deputy director of trading and markets at the SEC to join the firm as partner. The firm?s securities practice is chaired by William McLucas, a near-legend in the bar who was director of the SEC?s Division of Enforcement from 1990 until 1998 ? the longest tenure in agency history.

Full post as published by The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times on March 24, 2011 (boomark / email).