Law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (BCLP) announced on Wednesday that it hired Jenny Durkan, the former mayor of Seattle and a former U.S. attorney. Durkan will lead BCLP’s U.S. white-collar practice from the firm’s Seattle and Washington, D.C., offices.
BCLP opened its Seattle office last year, marking the firm’s first new U.S. office since the 2018 merger of St. Louis-based Bryan Cave and London’s Berwin Leighton Paisner.
Durkan joined BCLP in part because of the firm’s ability to represent clients facing investigations in multiple international jurisdictions. “Only a handful of firms can do that,” she said. Her tenure as Seattle’s mayor from 2017 to 2021 provided her with insights to help corporate executives navigate real-life challenges, as she faced similar issues herself.
During her time as mayor, Durkan managed the city’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and dealt with protests against racial injustice following the 2020 murder of George Floyd. A significant number of protesters occupied Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, creating an “autonomous zone” with makeshift barricades to keep police out. Durkan, a Democrat, clashed with the Trump administration over how to handle the protest zone, opposing the former president’s desire to deploy military forces to clear the area.
After four nights of gun violence left two teenagers dead and several others injured, Durkan ordered the Seattle police to clear the protesters in July 2020. She reflected on the experience, calling it “a very unique set of circumstances that would be difficult to recreate.”
Before her mayoral election in 2017, Durkan served as the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington from 2009 to 2014. In that role, she oversaw efforts to secure a harsher sentence for Ahmed Ressam, the “Millennium bomber,” who attempted to detonate a bomb at Los Angeles International Airport on New Year’s Eve 1999. The federal appeals court deemed Ressam’s initial 22-year sentence too lenient, and in October 2012, the court re-sentenced him to 37 years in prison.
At Quinn Emanuel, Durkan represented FIFA and conducted the firm’s internal investigation into the organization following the 2015 corruption probe by U.S. and Swiss authorities, which led to more than 50 indictments by 2021.
