DLA Piper has lured a high-level government lawyer, who once worked at Cravath Swaine & Moore in New York, to its office in Chicago. Thomas Shakeshaft, who served as assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois from 2004 until this year, is now a partner in DLA Piper’s litigation practice. As a government attorney, Shakeshaft took on a wide range of contentious regulatory matters, including corruption, money laundering, and tax fraud. Shakeshaft’s experience in private practice includes tenures at McDermott Will & Emery, where he handled securities and antitrust litigation, from 2000 to 2003, as well as Cravath, where he kept busy with securities, derivatives, trademark, antitrust, and commercial litigation, from 1994 to 1998.
The firm’s recruitment of Shakeshaft comes hot on the heels of its addition of emerging growth and venture capital lawyer Jonathan Axelrad last month. San Francisco-based Axelrad, who was previously at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, advises emerging growth companies at all stages of their inception and growth. His clients also include private equity and venture capital funds looking for investment opportunities in the emerging company sector.
“I would say that there’s a tremendous interest in early-stage companies, and San Francisco is at the heart of that trend. It’s a global trend, and early-stage companies are expanding into multiple markets at the same time,” Axelrad told IFLR1000. “It’s the nature of business today. Essentially, there are multiple markets, and the technology can be immediately scaled and adapted to them concurrently, and that’s what you’re seeing startups do at an early stage in their growth, focusing internationally.”
Shakeshaft holds a J.D. from the University of Iowa College of Law and an A.B. from Dartmouth College. Axelrad obtained his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and his B.A. from the University of Victoria.