For Alston & Bird's Scott Ortwein, running a securities practice means forecasting trends as well as responding to them. Ortwein sat down with Business Law Currents in the interview below and discussed his practice and the trends he is seeing in the marketplace. He notes that in the current climate, equity markets are choppy and debt markets hot. Meanwhile, predicting the manifold impacts of Dodd-Frank injects uncertainty into the field. Although Ortwein has sensed an uptick in cross-border M&A, as the recently cratered merger of the Toronto and London stock exchanges suggests, he observes that companies may still be wary of large deals.

The financial crisis has dovetailed with sea change in bankruptcy law and not always with predictable results. Heather Lennox, a bankruptcy partner at Jones Day, sees a number of unexpected drifts, from a diminution in restructurings, to an increase in prepackaged bankruptcies. Crediting a dedicated bankruptcy bench for helping to shape the law, Lennox concedes the practice is "a lot more contentious" than it used to be. In handicapping future trends, Lennox muses on fallout from Dodd-Frank and potential consolidation in the healthcare industry as consequences of a "slow and fragile" economic recovery.