Bank of America E-Records Guru Leaps to Kilpatrick Law Firm

Atlanta law firm Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton has evened the score with banks, nabbing an attorney from Bank of America (BAC) just two months after losing its chairman to the banking industry.

Craig Cannon joins Kilpatrick Townsend as an expert in so-called electronic discovery after spending roughly two and a half years as Bank of America's global discovery counsel. Having started at the firm's Winston-Salem, N.C., office Monday, Cannon never crossed paths with former chairman Paul Aguggia, who resigned from his position in September to take the helm of Clifton Savings Bancorp (CSBK) in Clifton, N.J.

"I'm not sure they got the best trade," Cannon jokes of his new employer. "I'm not managing partner level."

It is increasingly common for attorneys to toggle back and forth between law firms and banks, Cannon says.

"We're seeing a lot of movement into law firms from financial institutions and vice versa as the largest banks continue to grow their litigation teams in order to address the demands placed on the legal department from a regulatory standpoint," he says.

Meanwhile, law firms are hungry for attorneys with in-house banking experience. "There are very few lawyers who have been inside a bank who can use the skill sets they learned there to benefit law firms," Cannon says.

These labor market demands make Cannon one hot ticket. Not only did he help Bank of America develop and launch a number of policies and procedures for managing electronic records related to Bank Secrecy Act compliance, data destruction and other subjects, he also spent three years as discovery counsel and senior litigation attorney at BB&T (BBT) in Winston-Salem.

Cannon's in-depth knowledge of electronic-records management in the banking industry will help him bolster the e-discovery group at Kilpatrick Townsend, he says.

"In my role as the strategic e-discovery expert for the firm, I'll be able to touch quite a few cases and help the firm come up with people, processes and procedures that make them more efficient with their e-discovery and address the coming changes in e-discovery practice," Cannon says.

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