• Cooley corporate partner Jim Fulton has relocated from Palo Alto, Calif., to New York to serve as partner-in-charge of the office. Fulton, who works in the emerging companies practice group, succeeds real estate partner Shira Nadich Levin as head of the Manhattan office.
• Sidley Austin has added Michael O'Brien as partner in the M&A and private equity group. He was a partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr. Meanwhile, Joshua Rovine has rejoined Sidley Austin as a partner in the pooled investment entities group. Rovine, who was a Sidley partner from 1998-2002, was general counsel of advisory services at The Blackstone Group and chief compliance officer of Blackstone Capital Partners.
• Cullen and Dykman has added Robert Wakeman as a partner in Albany concentrating on commercial real estate, commercial loans, not-for-profit bond finance, and general business matters. He was a partner at Lombardi, Walsh, Wakeman, Harrison, Amodeo & Davenport.
• Goldberg Segalla has hired Theodore Ucinski III as special counsel in its construction and general liability practices in Garden City. He was an associate at Farber Brocks & Zane.
• Several attorneys have joined or will join Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A, which provides free civil legal services to low income residents. They are Adam Meyers, Harvard Law School, who will join the group representation unit in Williamsburg in September; Romy Ganschow, Yale Law School, who recently joined the Williamsburg group unit; AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer lawyers Shoshannah Goodman (Brooklyn Law School) and Tiffany Femiano (Touro Law Center) who are with the Williamsburg unit; and Janna Levin (Fordham University School of Law) and Ryan Ridings (City University School of Law) who are with the East Brooklyn office.
• Ira Herman has been named chair of the steering committee of The New York City Bankruptcy Assistance Project, a program of Legal Services NYC that provides free bankruptcy assistance to low-income residents. Herman, a partner at Thompson & Knight, has been a member of the steering committee for more than six years. As chair, he succeeds Jane Lee Vris, general counsel and partner of Millstein & Co., who will remain a committee member. Also, the committee's newest members include former Southern District bankruptcy judge Arthur Gonzalez, a senior fellow at New York University School of Law; D.J. Baker, a partner at Latham & Watkins; Jeffrey Cohen, a partner at Cooley; M. Natasha Labovitz, a partner at Debevoise & Plimpton; Steven Smith, a partner at Edwards Wildman Palmer; and Joseph Smolinsky, partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges.
• Michael Blass, the New York managing partner of Arent Fox, has been elected chairman of the board of the National Executive Service Corps., which pairs retired executives with metro-area nonprofits in need of operations and management expertise.
