Emmet Bondurant of Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore told students and attorneys at the University of Georgia Law School Saturday that they should do pro bono work because they care, not because their firms require it or provide them with a pro bono partner to facilitate the effort.

“You ought to be seeking out those opportunities for yourself. You don’t need a pro bono partner to say you have to do it,” Bondurant told an auditorium full of students and lawyers at the 8th annual Working in the Public Interest conference at UGA law school.

Bondurant spoke during a program titled “A higher calling: the importance of pro bono efforts in the legal profession.” Sitting beside Bondurant on the panel was Mary Benton, Alston & Bird’s pro bono partner. Also on the panel: Cynthia Adcock, constitutional law professor at the Charlotte School of Law; Lonnie Brown, UGA legal ethics professor; Andrew Vail, partner with Jenner & Block in Chicago.

“If it’s something you care about, do it,” Bondurant said. He noted his own firm is smaller and doesn’t have a pro bono department. “When young lawyers come into a firm there ought to be a presumption that they’re adults. They shouldn’t be handed something on a platter for their own interests,” he said. But he told the group young lawyers can “do well by doing good.”

Bondurant talked about his own pro bono work, starting in the early 1960s – soon after his 1959 graduation from UGA law – when he took on the loyalty oaths being required by the state in the anti-Communist paranoia of the times. And he mentioned a recent cause, representing Guantanamo detainees being held indefinitely without charges filed.

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What if you made partner, and no one slapped you on the back? No one congratulated you? Your mother had nothing to brag about?

What if you made partner, and no one told the Daily Report?

Don’t let that happen. If you recently made partner, make sure you are counted in the Daily Report’s annual new partners special coverage. Take our online survey and, if you’re up for it, tell us how to reach you for your close-up.

Our colleagues at The Blog of the Legal Times, and another legal blog, Law And More, have taken note of a Craigslist ad by a Stratford, Conn., law firm that will allow newly minted lawyers, including those who have not yet passed their state bar exams, to shadow their attorneys – for a fee.

Baby lawyers would pay a monthly fee to the firm for the privilege of  “watching the day to day practice of law” and observing legal proceedings.

Noted the Legal Times blog: “it is like ‘Take Your Child to Work Day,’ but if your child paid you.  Actually, it is more like ‘Take Someone Else’s Child to Work Day,’ and the child’s parents pay you since the child/lawyer is unemployed.”

Not to mention that there is no admission fee for court hearings.

Law firm mergers increased in the last quarter of 2012, a year characterized by a record number of deals with foreign firms, according to Altman Weill MergerLine. In a sign that U.S. firms are continuing to expand globally, there were four major international combinations in the fourth quarter.

K&L Gates, based in Pittsburgh, acquired a 300-lawyer Australian firm, Middletons, giving the firm more than 2,000 lawyers. The deal was announced in December and went into effect Jan. 1.

New York-based SNR Denton announced major European and Canadian acquisitions in November—a combination with Paris-based Salans, which has 770 lawyers, and another with Toronto-based Fraser Milner Casgrain, which has 559 lawyers, for a combined firm of almost 2,500 lawyers. Both deals go into effect in the first quarter of this year.

The other big deal of the fourth quarter was the combination of Houston’s Fulbright & Jaworski, which has 850 lawyers, with London’s Norton Rose, which has 2,900, for a combined firm of 3,750 lawyers. The combination, announced in November, will go into effect June 1.

There were a total of 19 combinations announced in the fourth quarter—nearly one-third of the 60 deals announced in 2012. The annual total matched the 60 deals announced in 2011.

Five additional international deals were announced in 2012 for a total of nine, the largest number since MergerLine began tracking law firm mergers in 2007. That included Baker & McKenzie’s fourth quarter acquisitions of a 91-lawyer Lima firm, Estudio Echecopar, and a 16-lawyer Johannesburg firm, Rudolph Bernstein & Associates, which pushed the Chicago firm over the 4,000 lawyer mark.

Another mega-firm, DLA Piper, acquired a 26-lawyer Paris firm, Frieh Bouhenic, in August. The other international deals were K&L Gates acquisition of a nine-lawyer Milan firm, Marini Salsi Picciau in February and San Francisco-based Carroll Burdick & McDonough’s March acquisition of the five-lawyer Munich firm Schweiger & Partners.

One notable local combination in 2012 was McKenna Long & Aldridge’s March acquisition of the 139-lawyer San Diego firm Luce Forward Hamilton & Scripps.

Arnall Golden Gregory raised almost $10,000 in November to combat prostate and testicular cancer, thanks to the moustache-growing efforts of several attorneys.

Led by team captain Aaron Danzig and abetted by Mike Ryan, Scott Fisher and Allen Hirsch, all honorary captains, the lawyers cultivated moustaches for the month, culminating in a firm-wide vote.

Here are the winners, as reported by Kevin Duffy in the firm’s newsletter:

Hirsch was the surprise winner in the Best Moustache Category, having shaved off part of his 40 year-old beard to sport a “Chester A. Arthur” stache.

Allen Hirsch

Matt Wilson won for the Cheesiest Moustache: no surprise there.

Matt Wilson

In a tight race separated by one vote, Rick Mitchell edged out Danzig in the “Looks most likely to be in jail” category.

Aaron Danzig

Rick Mitchell

The other members of the “AGG Moustache Not If, But How” roster were: Russ Arouh, Neil Hoffman, Glenn Hendrix, Henry Chalmers, Jason Bring and Rich Gardner.

An employee of Glaser, Currie & Bullman was arrested Tuesday for carrying a loaded handgun into the DeKalb County Courthouse.

The DeKalb Sheriff’s office issued a press release that said: “Brook Ingle, age 27, was taken into custody and charged with carrying a weapon in an unauthorized location when deputies found a loaded handgun in her purse.

Ingle told deputies that she was visiting the court to file civil documents for her employer, Glasser [sic], Currie and Bullman, Attorneys at Law.”

The release noted that Ingle, like another woman arrested for the same offense last week, was taken to the county jail.

Ingle said by telephone Tuesday that she preferred not to discuss her case.

The website of her employer, Glaser, Currie & Bullman, shows that it often represents plaintiffs claiming to have been mistreated by law enforcement officers.

Bouhan, Williams & Levy's Armstrong House

Two established Savannah firms have announced they’ll merge. Bouhan, Williams & Levy, whose roots go back to 1886, is combining with Inglesby, Falligant, Horne, Courington & Chisholm, effective Jan. 1, 2013.

The combined firm, to be called Bouhan + Falligant, will be headquartered in the Armstrong House at 447 Bull Street, where Bouhan Williams is currently located. It will have 29 lawyers if all 17 Bouhan Williams and all 12 Inglesby Falligant lawyers make the move.

One Bouhan Williams lawyer, Sonny Seiler, was the lead defense counsel in the trials of local antiques dealer and preservationist Jim Williams for the 1981 murder of his assistant, Danny Hansford, in Williams’ home, Mercer House. The case was made famous by the book, “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” published in 1994.

Bouhan Williams acquired the Armstrong House from Williams in 1970, according to the firm’s website.

Bouhan + Falligant’s managing partner will be Lea Holliday, the managing partner of Bouhan Williams.

“Inglesby Falligant will contribute what we consider to be the best group of commercial and residential real estate lawyers in the Southeast, plus an extensive bankruptcy practice,” Holliday said in a statement. “Our trial lawyers, who are well known for litigating business disputes and defending malpractice cases, will be complemented by Inglesby Falligant’s successful products liability, transportation and family law practices.”

The merger marks the first name change in 44 years for Bouhan Williams, which handles corporate law and litigation.

Inglesby Falligant’s senior partner, Danny Falligant said Bouhan Williams has “produced some of the finest lawyers in Savannah in many years. We’ve observed their exceptional team from the other side of the table and now can look forward to being on the same side.”

To see the interior of the Armstrong House click here.

Melba Hughes, one of Atlanta’s original legal recruiters, has joined global legal search firm Major, Lindsey & Africa. The two other recruiters and assistant at her firm, Hughes Consultants, are part of the merger.

Becoming part of a global recruiter will make her more competitive, Hughes said, and expand the services she can offer clients—particularly contract attorney placements, which she called a “huge opportunity.”

“We find that our in-house clients want to be served by one full-service vendor that can supply contract lawyers, temp to perm, and global search,” she said.

Hughes’ firm has focused on the more traditional recruitment areas of corporate law staff plus partners and associates for law firms. Clients include Turner Broadcasting System, General Electric, Del Monte Foods, MetLife, Paul Hastings and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Hughes Consultants handled the search for Atlanta’s current city attorney, Cathy Hampton.

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Women are 70% of staff lawyers, but stuck at 15% for equity partners.

NAWL’s annual progress (or lack of progress) report on women in the legal profession is out. Vivia Chen hits the main points at The Careerist blog.

Two large firms with Atlanta offices, Carlton Fields and Jones Day, have announced that they are expanding into new territory.

Carlton Fields opened a New York office at the beginning of the month by acquiring a six-lawyer boutique, Rosner & Napierala. This is the Tampa-based firm’s eighth office—and its second outside of its Florida base. It made its first foray out of Florida when it opened an Atlanta office almost eight years ago.

“It was time,” said the firm’s president and CEO Gary L. Sasso in a statement. “Many of our national clients are based in or near New York, and our attorneys from our offices in Florida and Atlanta travel there often to work with these clients. So the new office is a natural step for us.”

The Rosner & Napierala lawyers handle litigation, corporate governance and securities, and custody and lending law. The new office is located near Wall Street at 26 Broadway in the Standard Oil building.

Jones Day will open an office in Amsterdam in early 2013, which will be its 10th in Europe. The partner-in-charge of its Brussels office, M&A lawyer Luc Houben, will lead the office. The administrative partner will be another Jones Day lawyer from Brussels, Yvan Desmedt, who practices antitrust law. The office will handle corporate, M&A, private equity, capital markets and antitrust work as well as litigation, according to the firm.

“The opening of our Amsterdam office, together with the recent addition of our Dusseldorf office, is a demonstration of Jones Day’s confidence in and commitment to the future of the European Union, which remains the largest economy in the world,” said the firm’s managing partner, Steve Brogan, in a statement.