Insights

London – November 13, 2024: Crowell & Moring U.K. LLP has been shortlisted for three categories in LawWorks’ 2024 Pro Bono Awards. The awards “celebrate the best legal pro bono activities undertaken by organizations and individuals and the positive impact they have had on those helped.”

Washington, D.C. – May 30, 2024: Crowell & Moring hosted its 25thannual George Bailey Public Service Awards ceremony. Named after the hero of the classic movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” these awards recognize the firm’s lawyers and staff who have made a substantial impact on the lives of others through their pro bono work.

In a recent UK Court of Appeal judgment in what is known as “the motor finance cases” (see Johnson v FirstRand Bank, Wrench v FirstRand Bank and Hopcraft v Close Brothers Limited, which appeals were all heard together), the Court has shone a spotlight on the issue of commissions paid by financiers to brokers and determined that, in some cases, they may be considered “bribes” under UK law. 

On 18 September 2024, the UK Supreme Court handed down its judgment in UniCredit Bank GmbH v RusChemAlliance LLC [2024] UKSC 30.  The judgment considers several significant issues relevant to international arbitration.  Primarily, though, it reaffirms: (i) the English court’s strong support for arbitration, in general; (ii) the steps it is prepared to take to hold parties to their agreement to arbitrate; and (iii) the current position for determining the governing law of an arbitration agreement, in the absence of an express election by the parties.

On Sunday, September 29, 2024, California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed SB 1047, a bill to enact the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act. Although the bill passed the California Assembly and Senate, it generated significant controversy and debate within the tech community. The Center for AI Safety, Elon Musk, the L.A. Times editorial board, and San Francisco-based AI startup Anthropic all supported the bill; while Meta, OpenAI, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposed it as hindering innovation.

We are pleased to invite you to "Cyber Perspectives: Views from Attackers, Defenders, and Regulators," a collaborative event hosted in partnership with Crowell & Moring and IBM. This insightful session will delve into the multifaceted world of cybersecurity, offering perspectives from those on the front lines of cyber defence and the attackers they combat, as well as what we are seeing from the regulators who shape the landscape. Join us for an engaging discussion that promises to enhance your understanding of current cyber threats and the strategies employed to mitigate them.

Join Crowell's Michelle Linderman and Dj Wolff on December 14, 2022, 13:00 UTC for a BIMCO 15 + 15 webinar (15 min presentation, followed by a 15 min Q&A). They will talk about the price cap on Russian oil exports, whereby the G7, along with the European Union and Australia, have agreed to implement a price cap on Russian oil and oil products in order to reduce Russia’s revenues which are funding its war efforts in Ukraine while seeking to ensure energy security.  The price cap is designed to allow companies to provide shipment and insurance of Russian oil and oil products provided that the purchase price is below the agreed price cap, but how has it begun to work in practice, and what are the practical issues being experienced by the different actors in the supply chain?

Please join us for an update on the current developments at the EU level, in Germany as well as in the USA and UK. We look forward to a thoughtful discussion from Stephan Müller of Oppenhoff and Caroline Brown and Peter Broadhurst of Crowell & Moring.

The session will cover the preservation of the attorney client privilege during internal investigations and will examine both the basics of privilege law and best practices for preserving it in the US, UK and EU. Attendees will find this program very beneficial for members of the compliance, internal audit, and legal functions.