An ex-counsel for President George W. Bush resigned from the law firm of Weil Gotshal & Manges to become a manager for the law firm of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan’s Washington office. The man in question is William Burck. Burck served for President Bush from 2005 to 2009. Following his time with Bush, Burck was hired at Weil’s Washington office as a litigation partner.
Burck and Jon Corey, another lawyer from Quinn Emanuel, started the Washington location back in September following a move from Los Angeles, California. The two are going to lead a 10 lawyers who will help to expand the law firm’s dispute resolution and international litigation. The group of attorneys includes people who previously worked at Alston & Bird. Those attorneys are Paul Brinkman, Alan Whitehurst and Alex Lasher. The attorneys have experience in international trade while also being intellectual property litigators.
Burck worked as an assistant United States attorney in the Southern District of New York before working for Bush. He worked as the Assistant U.S. Attorney from 2003 to 2005.
While working in the United States attorney’s office, Burck was a member of the prosecution for the Martha Stewart case. Stewart was convicted of lying to investigators. She lied about the sale of shares for ImClone Systems. Martha Stewart wound up serving time in prison, five months of it, for her crime.
An office was opened by Quinn Emanuel in 2007 in Tokyo. The firm opened a location in London in 2008, a location in Manheim, Germany in 2010 and a location in Moscow in 2011. Burck practices criminal litigation in the white-collar industry as well as investigations of those businesses.
Burck said that working at Emanuel, which is purely a litigation firm, could help to reduce the conflict of interest that can occur in bigger law firms.
Marcus Asner, a partner for Arnold & Porter, is a former co-worker of Burck at the United States Attorney’s office and is a former federal prosecutor. Asner said that Burck wrote the majority of the briefs for the government in the Stewart case. “He had a reputation as a very smart guy who could write quickly,” Asner said.
A spokeswoman for Weil issued a statement regarding the loss of Burck: “We have a deep bench of very talented lawyers and we wish Bill well in his future endeavors.”
Burck is a 1998 graduate of Yale Law School and also was a clerkfor the U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and Alex Kozinksi of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Before he joined the U.S. Attorney’s office, Burck worked as an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell.
“I wouldn’t say that was the driver [of the move from Weil], but there were definitely some cases that I would’ve liked to pursue that I couldn’t,” he said.
Information researched from FindLaw and Thomson Reuters.