The Lawdragon 2022 Annual Magazine by Lawdragon

THE VISIONARIES

leftfrom to right: Jelena DebraLarry Yang,Rogers, MatthewJeannemarie Minner, Karen Dunn,Philip Neal Corboy, Manne, Taj Clayton, Elaine Golin, Noah CoverFrom spread left to right:McWilliams, Deneen Howell, O’Brien, Richard Sayles, Sherrilyn Ifill, Sigrid McCawley, Paul Phillips, Geller, Johnine Donna Wilson, Barnes, Stuart Geoffrey Grossman, Harrison,Larry SteveRogers, Yerrid,William Travis Lenkner, Savitt, Deneen Jay Eisenhofer, Howell, Sabina Kalpana Lippman Srinivasan, and Hamish Andy Pitts. Hume.

INSIDE

DEBRA WONG YANG’S AMERICAN STORY TAYLOR & RING TAKES ON SCHOOL ABUSE CRAVATH MOVES IN ON THE NATION’S CAPITOL LITIGATION FINANCE IN UNCERTAIN TIMES FEATURES OF LAWDRAGON LEGENDS AND HALL OF FAMERS

S G Sher Garner Cahill Richter Klein & Hilbert, L.L.C., located in New Orleans, Louisiana is a nationally renowned full service law firm recognized for commercial litigation and transactions. Our talented team of attorneys provides our clients with the astute knowledge of a large firm practice, but with responsiveness, personal attention and sensible staffing of a smaller firm, all while delivering quality legal services effectively and efficiently. Clients receive the benefit of the firm’s proficiency across all disciplines, through handselected, integrated teams of experienced transactional and litigation lawyers. The hallmark of our service is our attention to the needs of our clients that goes beyond the rules of professional responsibility. When representation requires litigation, we are aggressive trial lawyers, who are not afraid to fight to protect our clients’ rights. We also believe in reasonableness and cooperation, however, and adjust our representation to suit the needs of any particular client. A client who brings us a transactional matter can expect an honest and accurate appraisal of the matter and a resolution in the most practical, direct and economically feasible manner.

Sher Garner Cahill Richter Klein & Hilbert, L.L.C. Co-Managing Members, James M. Garner & Leopold Z. Sher 909 Poydras Street, Suite 2800, New Orleans, LA 70112 (504) 299-2100 • www.shergarner.com

A Tradition of Excellence

Kenneth T. Lumb

Francis Patrick Murphy

Edward G. Willer

Daniel S. Kirschner

Michelle M. Kohut

William T. Gibbs

Michael D. Ditore

Britney R. Pennycook

Jamaal R. Buchanan

Tom Demetrio

Mitchell Bild

Peter M. O’Malley

33 N DEARBORN ST | CHICAGO, IL 312.346.3191|CORBOYDEMETRIO.COM Thomas A. Demetrio

Philip H. Corboy, Jr.

Attorney Advertising

Congratulations to all the Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America, including Robbins Geller attorneys Aelish Marie Baig, Randall Baron, Spencer Burkholz, Daniel Drosman, Jason Forge, Paul Geller, Tor Gronborg, Rachel Jensen, David Mitchell, Danielle Myers, Darren Robbins, Samuel Rudman, Shawn Williams, and Debra Wyman.

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Number For the 12th we have more Lawdragons than

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One year in a row any litigation rm in the Nation.

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{ CONTENTS }

16 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR AND PUBLISHER 18 CHANGING THE SYSTEM

Plaintiffs’ firm McGinn, Montoya, Love & Curry earns results that go far beyond the courtroom.

26 VERSATILITY AND POWER

How Selendy Gay Elsberg built a trial-forward bankruptcy practice.

32 THE GOLD STANDARD

Walkup Melodia is teaching trial skills at home and abroad.

38 FIGHTING SEXUAL ABUSE IN SCHOOLS Taylor & Ring helps clients expose systemic problems.

48 STRENGTH IN UNCERTAINTY

Validity proves that economic uncertainty can broaden the appeal of litigation finance as a solution.

56 THE KING’S GAMBIT

Cravath makes history by moving in on D.C.

63 GLOBAL 100 LEADERS IN LEGAL FINANCE

These leaders provide access to justice for claimants alongside access to the potential for handsome returns. Featuring:

65 69 75

Tim Farrell and Mike Nicola of Longford Capital Brandon Deme of Factor Risk Management Oliver Gayner of Omni Bridgeway

81 GLOBAL 100 LEADERS IN LEGAL STRATEGY & CONSULTING

The 6th annual guide represents the crème de la crème of the legion of advisors who assist firms. Featuring:

84 Sabina Lippman of Lippman Jungers 90 Gary Miles and Robert Clemons of Miles Partner Placement 93 Iris Jones of Akerman

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2006 – 2023

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99 THE HALL OF FAME

We present to you 58 new additions in 2022, as well as Lawyer Limelights with a sampling of the honorees who have made the Hall of Fame since we first launched it in 2015:

134

180

104 Mary Alexander of Mary Alexander & Associates 108 Lynn Bernabei of Bernabei & Kabat 111 Frank Branson of The Law Offices of Frank L. Branson 115 Brad Brian of Munger Tolles 122 Jim Fitzgerald of Fitzgerald Law 126 Aaron Freiwald of Freiwald Law 130 Jay Goffman of Teneo 134 Stuart Grant of Bench Walk Advisors 138 Steven Kazan of Kazan McClain 142 David Kirby of Edwards Kirby 146 Frank Pitre of Cotchett Pitre 149 Joseph Power of Power Rogers 152 Harry Reasoner of Vinson & Elkins 156 Ron Safer of Riley Safer 160 Todd Smith of Smith LaCien 163 Deborah Willig of Willig Williams

169 THE LEGENDS

These Lawdragon honorees set the bar high for themselves and in doing so remind us of the magic of the law in the hands of a great lawyer.

176 THE LAWDRAGON 500 LEADING LAWYERS

188

200 6

IN AMERICA

While exhausted, this nation does justice – and the lawyering it requires – as well as any country in the world. Better, as this group proves. Featuring:

180 Debra Wong Yang of Gibson Dunn 188 Taj Clayton of Kirkland & Ellis 192 Ira Schacter of Cadwalader 200 Karen Dunn of Paul Weiss 204 Avi Josefeson of Bernstein Litowitz 210 Hamish Hume of Boies Schiller 216 Bill Reid of Reid Collins 228 George Schoen and Robert Townsend of Cravath 234 Jennifer Pafiti of Pomerantz 240 Ray Boucher of Boucher LLP 248 Lynn Lincoln Sarko of Keller Rohrback 252 Ronald Schutz of Robins Kaplan

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“The special forces unit for complex litigation.” Lawdragon

RELENTLESS | REVOLUTIONARY | RECOGNIZED A national trial boutique that prosecutes high-stakes, complex business litigation on a success-fee basis, Reid Collins has recovered billions of dollars for our clients and created precedent to protect investors and hold wrongdoers accountable. We are proud to congratulate three of our partners on being named to the Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America. Eric D. Madden | William T. “Bill” Reid IV | Lisa S. Tsai To learn more about why sophisticated business plaintiffs choose Reid Collins, visit our website.

Austin

Dallas

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Wilmington

R e i d Co l l i n s & Ts a i L L P w w w.r e id col l ins.co m

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Boies Boies Schiller Schiller Flexner Flexner is aisfirm a firm of internationally of internationally recognized recognized trial trial lawyers, lawyers, crisis crisis managers, managers, andand strategic strategic advisers advisers known known forfor ourour creative, creative, aggressive, aggressive, andand efficient efficient pursuit pursuit of of successful successful outcomes outcomes forfor ourour clients. clients. Our Our attorneys attorneys have have an an established established track track record record of of taking taking onon andand winning winning complex, complex, groundbreaking, groundbreaking, andand cross-border cross-border matters matters in in diverse diverse circumstances circumstances andand industries. industries. From From thethe thorniest, thorniest, most most high-stakes high-stakes matters matters to straightforward to straightforward business business disputes, disputes, wewe have have a knack a knack forfor identifying identifying thethe strongest strongest arguments, arguments, understanding understanding thethe benefits benefits of of each, each, andand determining determining when when andand how how to to deploy deploy them them in in a case. a case. With Withoffices officeslocated locatedthroughout throughoutthetheUnited UnitedStates, States,London London andand Milan, Milan, wewe operate operate as as oneone firm firm with with a seamless a seamless approach approach to to building building thethe most most skillful skillful andand cost-effective cost-effective team team possible possible forfor every every matter. matter.

New New York York • Albany • Albany • Armonk • Armonk • Fort • Fort Lauderdale Lauderdale • Hollywood • Hollywood • Las • Las Vegas Vegas • London • London LosLos Angeles Angeles • Miami • Miami • Milan • Milan • San • San Francisco Francisco • Washington, • Washington, D.C.D.C. • www.bsfllp.com • www.bsfllp.com

David David Boies Boies Chairman Chairman Lawdragon Lawdragon HallHall of Fame of Fame

Jonathan Jonathan Schiller Schiller Managing Managing Partner Partner Lawdragon Lawdragon HallHall of Fame of Fame

Stephen Stephen Zack Zack Partner Partner Lawdragon Lawdragon HallHall of Fame of Fame

Hamish Hume Hamish Hume Partner Partner

Sigrid McCawley Sigrid McCawley Managing Partner Managing Partner

Matthew Schwartz Matthew Schwartz Managing Partner Managing Partner

Stuart Singer Partner

AlanSinger Vickery Stuart Managing Partner Partner

Joanna Wright Alan Vickery ManagingPartner Partner

We Wecongratulate congratulateour ourLawdragons Lawdragons onontheir theirachievements achievements

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A LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER AND EDITOR

No Lawyer

BETTER EXEMPLIFIES THE GRIT AND DETERMINATION REQUIRED FOR REGULAR INCLUSION ON THE LAWDRAGON 500 THAN DEBRA WONG YANG. THE LEGAL PROFESSION HAS PLENTY OF BRAINS AND NO SHORTAGE OF ACUMEN THAT CAN BE DEVELOPED OVER TIME BY MANY SERIOUS PROFESSIONALS. YANG HAS THOSE, OF COURSE, BUT MORE INSPIRING IS HER PROUDLY AMERICAN STORY THAT BROUGHT HER FROM L.A.’S CHINATOWN TO HER NEARBY AERIE AT GIBSON, DUNN & CRUTCHER, WHERE THE RENOWNED WHITE-COLLAR LAWYER CHAIRS THE CRISIS MANAGEMENT PRACTICE GROUP. We may have a particular fondness for Yang’s story, as we covered her closely in our pre-Lawdragon days when she was the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, in Los Angeles. The Bush appointee held the slot in the critical post-9/11 phase – and as a single mom – leading a diverse mix of prosecutions before coming a judge. At Gibson Dunn, where she has been since 2006, Yang has now entered legendary status – in this magazine as a member of the “Legends” for making the Lawdragon 500 a tenth time. Yang is the perfect headliner for our 2022 presentation of a guide that is both the most elite and most inclusive in the industry – the guide where consistency (of excellence) and diversity (of talent) go hand-in-hand. The lawyers and other legal professionals recognized here have already shown how they can help us navigate uncertain times and unprecedented challenges, an exhausting feat accomplished with quiet strength over the past fears. The difference for the true leaders in the law is that there is little time for rest when the most pressing matters for individual clients or the public at large are at stake. For proof, look no further than our features on McGinn Montoya Love & Curry and Taylor & Ring, the plaintiff powerhouses that continue to push for real reforms of broken systems (in addition to money damages) on behalf of the most vulnerable. Many challenges have accompanied producing this magazine over 17 years. But finding inspiring stories has never been one of them. For us, the true inspiration is seeing how, time and again, the professionals in these pages – regardless of which side of the courtroom or negotiating table they sit – have shown no interest in resting on their laurels.

K AT R I N A D E W E Y Publisher and CEO katrina@lawdragon.com

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J O H N R YA N Editor-in-Chief john@lawdragon.com

“It’s a go-to team for high-stakes litigation.” — CHAMBERS AND PARTNERS

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Changing

Legendary plaintiffs’ firm McGinn, Montoya, Love & Curry earns results that go far beyond the courtroom.

the System BY ALISON PREECE

PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE FIRM

osing a loved one or suffering a catastrophic injury is even more tragic if it was preventable but for the wrongdoing of a corporation, insurance company, government or hospital. The attorneys at McGinn, Montoya, Love & Curry recognize that most people who have experienced such horrific losses turn to the legal system to ensure that their suffering is not in vain.

“When the worst thing in the world has happened to somebody,” says partner Kathy Love, “we represent them.” Families want wrongdoers to be held accountable and they want changes so that other families do not have to suffer as they have. “Every single family that comes to us,” says Love, “tells us, ‘We are here because we don’t want this to happen to someone else.’” The firm, based in New Mexico, focuses its practice on wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases, including trucking collisions, medical malpractice injuries, sexual abuse, police shootings and dangerous products. Its goal is not only to obtain justice for clients, but also to make changes that make the whole community safer. The resounding question for the cases they take on is, as partner Elicia Montoya puts it, “How do we prevent this from happening again?” The firm sees the importance of drawing attention to systemic dangers as a way to catalyze change. “Oftentimes, decisions are made to cut costs or increase productivity, but they end up having a dangerous impact on consumers or patients or drivers on the road,” says partner Katie Curry. “I love this work because there’s a huge opportunity to make a difference, to change things for the better.” The firm recently settled a case against an outof-state hospital corporation, and as part of the resolution, the company agreed to hold an annual symposium to educate medical providers about national trends in emergency room care. In another case, a nursing home resident died of neglect, in large part, the firm discovered, because the company had no one in charge of overseeing its medical providers. As part of the settlement, the company agreed to ensure that there was a designated medical director to whom doctors and physician assistants were required to report. 20

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The details are confidential, but the resolutions are typical of McGinn, Montoya, Love & Curry cases: The firm pursues justice by finding out why the tragedy occurred, then fights to hold the company or industry accountable either through trial or through negotiating changes to policies and practices as part of settlements.

Using the Law as a Force for Good The drive to make systems safer is not just responsible lawyering – it is what matters most to the firm’s clients. In fact, they’ve noticed a phenomenon that happens more often that one might think: They frequently need to follow up with clients to remind them to cash their settlement checks. “Most people really don’t like cashing a check for their child’s life, or for their husband’s or wife’s life,” explains Love. “They’re there because they don’t want this to happen again. They don’t want their loved one to have died in vain and they don’t want other families to have to suffer like this in the future.” We spoke to the partners in the midst of preparation for simultaneous jury trials: one case against 7-Eleven and another against a health insurance company. The 7-Eleven case focused on a store in California where police were called multiple times a day in response to complaints of criminal activity. Still, the store hadn’t paid for any of its own security. One night, there was an attempted theft. “Our client, a good Samaritan, tried to stop the theft,” says Montoya, “and ultimately got attacked with an ax.” The case went through about a week and a half of trial before it resolved. The case against the insurance company was litigated in Santa Fe. The company had an incentive program for employees where, at the end of the year, whatever money was left over in the budget was dispersed to the employees in the form of bonuses. “It created this perverse incentive for the people who were making decisions about life-saving medical treatment,” says Love. “They knew that if they spent more on out-of-network hospitals, they would have less in their pockets at the end of the year.” The firm represented the family of a man who died waiting for approval of an emergency surgery for an aortic dissection – a tear in the

CONGRATULATIONS —————

Winston & Strawn applauds its elite lawyers who are listed among Lawdragon’s 500 Leading Lawyers of America

MATTHEW F. BERGMANN

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heart’s main artery – at an out-of-network hospital. “He was stonewalled by the insurance company for 27 days,” says Love. “His death was, sadly, completely unsurprising with a perverse system like that in place.”

JJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJ The f irm sees the importance of drawing attention to systemic dan-

The firm was spurred on in the case by some of the man’s last words, which were posted on Facebook: “I’m sitting in a hospital room waiting for my insurance company to determine what the cheapest option for them will be …. If I die because they sent me to the wrong place or didn’t send me anywhere at all, promise me that someone will sue the shit out of them.”

gers as a way to catalyze change.

Speaking Truth to Power

drivers on the road,” says partner

In one particularly memorable case early in her career, Curry got a call from a woman who said her husband had been sexually assaulted during a doctor’s appointment in the prison where he was incarcerated. They started investigating, and discovered that this doctor was a serial abuser, regularly assaulting inmates who had no choice but to see him since he was the prison doctor.

Katie Curry. “I love this work be-

“It speaks to one of the missions of our firm,” says Curry: “In addition to making real changes, we pride ourselves on representing the little person when there’s an abuse of power.” As a result of that case, the firm worked with the company providing medical care to New Mexico prisons to implement a policy that a second person has to be present for any appointment that involves the examination of breasts or genitals. “It was one of the first cases where I saw firsthand how this work can make a real difference on a larger scale,” says Curry. In her 15 years of practice, while there is much progress to be made, Curry has seen a larger societal shift in terms of sexual abuse cases, precipitated by the #MeToo movement, which has brought a greater understanding to the experiences of survivors, including the fear and stigma that can prevent individuals from reporting abuse right away. She also sees more awareness of the dynamics of power in these situations. “There’s a wider understanding now that not everyone is on a level playing field,” she says, “and that the power and trust inherent in the position of a teacher, doctor, priest or boss can play a significant 22

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“Oftentimes, decisions are made to cut costs or increase productivity, but they end up having a dangerous impact on consumers or patients or

cause there’s a huge opportunity to make a difference, to change things for the better.” JJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJ role in precipitating abuse,” so there need to be checks in place. The firm has battled for years against misconduct at the Albuquerque Police Department, representing innocent bystanders who were injured or killed in crashes caused during unnecessary police pursuits, and others who were wrongfully killed by police. They served as special prosecutors in a case in which a mentally ill man who was camping in public space in the foothills of Albuquerque was shot and killed by the APD SWAT team. Their work has brought to light a “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality and has contributed to an examination of policies and procedures within the department. The partners have seen an uptick in trucking crash cases recently, which they trace to a lack of proper training in the industry. “Companies are hiring inexperienced drivers and are not putting enough time into teaching them how to drive a truck, to study their routes ahead of time, to operate this heavy machinery,” says Montoya. “They’re taking shortcuts with safety and the results are deadly.” They’re also currently serving as co-counsel with attorney Brian Panish for the family of de-

Keller/Anderle LLP UNRIVALED TRIAL LAWYERS

ceased cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who was killed when Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun on the set of “Rust.” The wrongful death suit is being brought against Baldwin and the film’s producers, alleging negligence and an unsafe work environment, and that the armorer was unqualified and overworked.

A Family Affair The attorneys at McGinn, Montoya, Love & Curry, a woman-owned firm, don’t view the demands of motherhood as inherently conflicting with their legal practices. When challenges arise, they make it work – which has meant nursing a baby in the back of the courtroom during trial, pumping breast milk during breaks in depositions, taking the red-eye to get home in time for piano recitals and signing back onto their computers late at night after the kids have gone to bed. The partners’ children all know each other “like cousins,” says Love, and everyone’s whole family is invited to the annual firm retreat. The kids even pitch in with the admin: During some recent trial prep, Curry’s seven-year-old twins spent an evening cutting and pasting index cards for jury selection. “They understand that lawyers are here to help people,” says Curry, “that it’s our job to see unfairness and preventable tragedy in the world and say, ‘That’s not ok.’” The partners also test-drive their arguments and visuals on their families ahead of trial. “We have really honest critics in our lives,” says Montoya. “Our kids will listen to our arguments and they’ll tell us if they’re bored. If they aren’t interested, no one else will be either.” “Our families are some of our best focus groups,” adds Love. “They all dive in and help out when we’re getting ready for trial. It really is a family affair.” Love was the one who told us about the cut-andpaste story with Curry’s kids, because during our first scheduled interview, Curry couldn’t make it at the last minute due to a doctor’s appointment for her son. No one was remotely fazed. “We all just really respect how important family is,” says Montoya. “When one of us has something going on with our families, everyone is right 24

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there, checking in on each other, encouraging us to take care of what needs to be taken care of.” When a family issue comes up, “None of us are saying to each other, ‘Oh great, you’re going to be out of the office now,’” continues Montoya. “We say, ‘Of course you’re going to be out of the office for this.’” For Montoya, the work, and her connection to her clients, comes from a place of deep understanding: Her father died from medical malpractice, just after she graduated law school and passed the bar. “That experience really fueled my passion and commitment to keep doing this work,” she says. The sense of family extends to their clients, who often bond deeply with these attorneys as they usher them through the worst episode of their lives. They frequently stay in touch long after the case is finished, calling for advice on everything from vaccinations to which major to choose in school. The partners are currently mentoring two young men who are family members of clients. (They never refer to “former clients,” even in cases that were settled decades prior.) Both of these men went through a tragic family death when they were young boys, and, inspired by the work of the McGinn, Montoya, Love & Curry team, turned that pain into action: They both hope to pursue law degrees after college. For one, his aunt was abducted from a convenience store and raped and murdered in a field, despite the store owners having been told repeatedly by the local police chief that they need to fortify their security system to protect clerks working overnight. In the other case, the young man’s baby sister was recovering from pneumonia when a traveling temp doctor, who was unfamiliar with the hospital’s code system, attempted to replace a chest tube and stabbed it through her liver, killing her. “These young men did not want their family members to die in vain,” says Montoya. “They made changes in their own lives and are now dedicating their lives to becoming lawyers, to help other people whose lives have been turned upside down through no fault of their own.”

W E A R E A N I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O M M U N I C AT I O N S F I R M A D V I S I N G A M B I T I O U S , C O M P L E X O R G A N I Z AT I O N S . WE PROVIDE THE E XPE RIE NCE , SKILLS AND I N S I G H T TO D R I V E YO U R B R A N D F O R WA R D O R , I N S P E C I A L S I T U AT I O N S , D E P L O Y T H E S T R AT E G I E S T O D E F E N D Y O U F R O M R E P U TAT I O N A L R I S K .

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VERSATILITY &POWER

How Selendy Gay Elsberg Built a Trial-Forward

BANKRUPTCY PRACTICE BY EMILY JACKOWAY

single trial can take multiple years of a lawyer’s sole focus. So, when they had four trials and arbitrations last year alone, you’d think the attorneys at Selendy Gay Elsberg might be slowing down heading into next year. But with five trials slated for 2023 already, the team is racing ahead. They love it. The courtroom is where they thrive.

This year’s trials have been in areas ranging from energy to financial services, and next year’s include cases for investment firm and life sciences clients. The firm’s litigation practice areas are widespread – from general commercial to white-collar to securities to insurance – and the firm practices on both sides of the V. Selendy Gay Elsberg has proven that curating a team of litigation generalists can be extremely helpful to clients: They’ve seen significant wins in every sector.

A Selendy Gay Elsberg lawyer is a trial lawyer, through and through. And the firm’s bankruptcy practice, which involves a majority of its attorneys, is no exception. Because of that trial-first mindset, managing partner Maria Ginzburg explains that the team’s approach to bankruptcy litigation is more rigorous than the usual “let’s cut a deal” routine. “We are a hardcore litigation firm,” she says. “Litigations and investigations are what we do. So, we come at bankruptcy from the point of view of being trial lawyers.” Among the most high-profile of the firm’s cases is their current representation of the liquidators of what was the largest feeder fund in Bernie Madoff’s infamous $65B Ponzi scheme, Fairfield Sentry Limited. In these cases, the team is suing more than 1,000 defendants in more than 300 actions.

PHOTOS PROVIDED BY THE FIRM Clockwise from top left: Maria Ginzburg, David Elsberg, Lena Konanova, David Flugman

Selendy Gay Elsberg’s team has defeated a series of motions by the defense to get the claims thrown out of court. They succeeded in beating back multiple motions to dismiss, keeping the complaints in court and paving the way for the firm to continue to pursue billions of dollars in clawback claims. In total, Selendy Gay Elsberg and co-counsel Brown Rudnick are seeking to recover more than $6B to be distributed to those affected by the scheme. David Elsberg, name partner and lead counsel on the Fairfield cases, says, “We have a determined team of trial lawyers vigorously pursuing recovery for innocent victims of this scheme.” Partner David Flugman has worked on cases related to the scheme since litigation began in 2008. Before joining Selendy Gay Elsberg, he was instrumental in representing the Joint Official Liquidators of Herald Fund SPC, a Madoff feeder fund in the Cayman Islands, in clawback litigation brought by the Madoff trustee. He and his team successfully resolved the clawback claims and obtained a $1.6B claim under the Securities Investor Protection Act, and now, Flugman brings that experience to Selendy Gay Elsberg’s work on the Fairfield cases. In the Fairfield cases, as in many other large proceedings, the attorneys collaborate with other firms to achieve the best results possible. They are known for their capacity for collaboration, which is aided by their unique firm structure. The partners also bring their defense-side capabilities to their bankruptcy work. For example, early in the life of the firm, the partners represented a precious metals mining company that found itself with a significant bailment and reclamation claim in the Chapter 11 insolvency of a major refining company. Bringing the firm’s signature analytical skills to bear, and its experience on both sides of the V, it guided the company to a settlement that resolved both the client’s creditor claim and significant potential clawback exposure before any adversary proceeding was filed. The magnitude of cases like Fairfield Sentry and others might seem to require the heft of a Big Law firm, but Selendy Gay Elsberg brings a depth to its bankruptcy approach that belies the firm’s small size. The firm operates out of a single New York office – by design. With all the partners and associates close, they can work together with a speed and efficiency that can outperform bulky, widespread firms. “When we are brought in, time is usually of the essence,” explains founding partner Lena Konanova. “A statute of limitations is about to expire, or other 28

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fast-moving bankruptcy procedural reasons require tackling something very quickly, and then we’re able to scale up without sacrificing quality.” In doing so, they tackle cases across the country and internationally, while building a game plan from within their central hub. In one international example, the team is just beginning litigation on behalf of a trustee of a litigation trust coming out of the Puerto Rico bankruptcy proceeding, in which they are suing 13 major banks. The trustee is making claims on behalf of the Commonwealth that misconduct by these big banks led to the territory’s deepening insolvency. In this litigation, the team is going to bat for unsecured creditors, most of which are island businesses or individuals on the island – “mom and pop” creditors, as Ginzburg explains. “It’s not just about moving money between sophisticated players in New York. It affects the people of Puerto Rico,” she says. The firm wields its size to multi-faceted advantage. Because it has no corporate or tax departments, it has fewer conflicts than many major players in the bankruptcy space. With a sole focus on litigation, the lawyers don’t need to worry about taking an aggressive litigation position that might be averse to a corporate client, which gives them a leg up in trial. Elsberg, who has handled a large number of adversarial proceedings in bankruptcy court, explains, “We don’t have departments other than our litigation practice. We have a reputation for being a firm that will go all the way through a trial if we don’t get a settlement that our client believes is right. Our calling card is that we go in to litigate and win.” The team’s nimbleness, attention to detail and adaptability has allowed them to scale up to take on the largest of matters. The large number of adversarial proceedings handled by Elsberg and his colleagues in bankruptcy court is reflected in Lex Machina’s 2022 Law Firms Activity report, which lists Selendy Gay Elsberg as one of the two most active firms representing bankruptcy plaintiffs and appellants in federal court. While many attorneys at the firm are involved in bankruptcy litigation, they are actively involved in other practice areas. As Flugman explains, “The skillsets that make us sharp in one practice area are very much conducive to another. So, it’s very organic. I don’t think of my bankruptcy practice and the rest of my practice separately. I think of them together.” Nowhere is that dovetailing more prominent than in client relationships that cross practice areas. One

such client is Nexstar Broadcasting, the largest owner of television stations in the U.S. Flugman and name partner Jennifer Selendy represented Nexstar in a breach of contract dispute that was being litigated in New York State Court. A year later, the station operator, Marshall Broadcasting, declared bankruptcy. The federal bankruptcy petition was filed in the Southern District of Texas – a playing field the firm was already familiar with. So, rather than assign a different group of lawyers to the second matter, the attorneys worked both matters at the same time. They litigated in both New York and Texas, synchronizing until the cases felt like part of one another. It was “a seamless transition from litigating in a state trial court into the bankruptcy court, where the substantive issues overlapped but were procedurally quite different,” Flugman says. “We were able to work within both systems in order to achieve a great result for the client.” The firm is growing quickly, and in 2022 it welcomed first a summer class of 24 and in the fall, their largestto-date class of new associates; there are now 60 partners and associates at the firm. Uplifting new talent is one of Selendy Gay Elsberg’s highest priorities, and the partners are committed to giving associates early and frequent substantive experiences out front. From day one, first-year associates join in on meetings with partners and clients and participate in the decision-making process. This level of respect for younger lawyers can come as a surprise to the junior ranks. “Associates can be thrown off because they weren’t expecting to have their view taken so seriously,” says Konanova. “But they learn very quickly that in our firm, if you’re on a case, we want you to be thinking about the entire case – looking around corners, being creative and talking to people about it. Associates quickly get used to it, and they love it.” Konanova leads the firm’s associate training program, an initiative that includes stand-up trial experience as well as intensive trainings on writing, deposition and trial skills. The partners train their associates to be litigation generalists, but with a depth of knowledge and experience in each practice area that surpasses that of most young lawyers. Outside of just educating the associates, partners also work to make sure they stand up in trial: “Every week we have a meeting and one of the items on the standing agenda is associate experiences and making sure that everybody has lots of opportunities repeatedly,” 30

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says Elsberg. The firm’s efficiency is boosted by its associates’ ability to take point on substantive parts of cases, and clients receive the benefit of more well-trained minds working on their case. That emphasis on a flat structure and promoting opportunity stretches into the firm’s culture and litigation work, as well. Selendy Gay Elsberg is known for their deep commitment to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Nearly half of the firm’s equity partners, including two of the four name partners and the firm’s managing partner, are women (compared to an average of just under 26 percent within Big Law) and while 3.67 percent of attorneys identify as LGBTQ+ in Big Law, nearly a quarter of Selendy Gay Elsberg’s attorneys are part of the LGBTQ+ community. In an effort to expand opportunities to more marginalized groups, the firm also recently launched a fellowship devoted to hiring and training young lawyers from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds. The firm is also heavily involved in pro bono and public service matters in every practice area, including bankruptcy. Recently, the firm represented a group of families whose children were victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. The families are seeking to preserve claims brought against firearms manufacturer Remington Outdoor Co., despite the company’s filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Remington was the maker of the weapon used in the shooting, which took the lives of 20 children and six adults. Selendy Gay Elsberg was able to secure a path for the families to continue litigation efforts against the company, ultimately leading to a $73M settlement for the victims in February 2022. The commitment to pro bono and public interest initiatives is part of what the partners love about bankruptcy litigation. While these pro bono cases are a clear example of the power of bankruptcy litigation to give individuals agency, even the firm’s larger corporate litigations involve a deeply personal element. “Behind these multibillion-dollar bankruptcies, there are real people,” explains Flugman. The lawyers also find the cases endlessly exciting. As Ginzburg says, bankruptcy cases are a “fast-moving opportunity to dive in, get the evidence, present your situation and get to a result. We thrive on that.” Every attorney at Selendy Gay Elsberg feels the thrill of litigation. As Elsberg puts it, “It’s hard not to have your blood pumping when you’re at a trial.”

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J ury trials have been steadily declining

in recent decades, particularly in the federal system. Yet the right to a jury trial is guaranteed by the Seventh Amendment, and has become a key part of functioning legal systems around the world. Three partners at Walkup Melodia are in the forefront of the effort to continue teaching the skills necessary to effectively represent clients before juries. “The American adversarial system remains the gold standard,” says Mike Kelly, name partner at the firm and nationally recognized personal injury attorney. “It’s a critical part of a working democracy for citizens to be involved in community decision making, deciding what is acceptable both on the criminal and civil side.” Kelly, together with partners Rich Schoenberger and Doris Cheng, have committed to teaching trial skills to both law students and practicing members of the bar. Many of their students seek them out after reading about their trial successes. They have taught for a wide variety of skills providers including the National Institute of Trial Advocacy (NITA), the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA), local and national bar associations, and law school programs across the country.

THE GOLD STANDARD Walkup Melodia Is Teaching Trial Skills at Home and Abroad BY ALISON PREECE Each has also been invited to teach internationally, including in the Republic of Georgia, Chile, Japan, the Caribbean, Kosovo, Macedonia, Scotland, Ireland and Italy. Kelly and Schoenberger helped establish an adversarial judicial system in Georgia after the end of the Cold War and Kelly was part of a team invited to bring jury trial skills to Japanese practitioners 15 years ago. Cheng, who has spearheaded training for prosecutors throughout the Caribbean, says “I feel really fortunate to be among the people who get invited to teach. It’s a privilege.” Their teaching is a volunteer endeavor. When compensation is available, they donate their fees back to the sponsoring organizations. They don’t do this for the money. They do it because they believe in protecting a fundamental democratic right. Lawdragon: You have all been involved in teaching trial skills and training other lawyers on a consistent basis for many years. When did that start? Doris Cheng: Right out of law school, at the University of San Francisco. I took a twoweek trial advocacy program. After I graduated, the program director invited to come back and teach the first week of the program, which back then covered pre-litigation and pre-trial topics. I was fortunate to teach with trial lawyers from all around country. I’ve been going back to USF to teach for the last 24 years and I now run the advocacy program that shaped my career.

PHOTO BY RORY EARNSHAW Left to right: Rich Shoenberger, Mike Kelly and Doris Cheng

Rich Schoenberger: I got started in the early ‘90s when I was invited to teach at NITA, by MJ Tocci. Tocci was a deputy DA in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, where I worked before Walkup. She was an inspirational, immensely talented trial lawyer and a great mentor to me. Mike Kelly: I started back in 1980. I was initially invited to teach with NITA, and then at UC Hastings, where I taught evidence and trial practice courses for 20 years. LD: Why has teaching been such an important part of your careers? MK: Initially I was attracted by the opportunity to be surrounded by other faculty who were brilliant, experienced lawyers. Then, as my career progressed, it became about giving back. I was fortunate to have spent lots of time in the courtroom, and I enjoy passing that experience on. RS: It’s so much fun to watch eager students learn and dramatically improve in relatively short periods of time. Obviously, those students who are fully engaged and committed to bettering their craft improve the most. There’s really nothing more satisfying than doing what you love, which for me is trying cases, and then sharing that passion with others. When it works, it really is magic. DC: For me, it is about protecting the rule of law. The adversarial system is the most effective way to protect people’s rights. At a time when there is growing inequality and disinformation, a critical tool is the judicial branch of government. When competing belief systems polarize our society and compromise people’s sense of safety and security, the courtroom is a refuge for order and fairness. For my practice, it’s the place where we hold tortfeasors accountable. Trial skills education matters because we are training our colleagues to elevate integrity and truthfulness. That’s why I keep doing it. LD: You’ve all been involved in bringing the U.S. adversary system to a variety of foreign lawyers in courts around the world. What were those experiences like? MK: It’s been special. I never expected to be the original jury trial trainer for Japanese lawyers in the Saiban-In system. Following the end of World War II, General Douglas McArthur oversaw the creation of a national Japanese judicial system patterned after the Code of Military Justice with judges as decision makers and no civilian jury involvement. In the early 2000s, two Japanese legal scholars who served as visiting faculty at California law schools supported a national referendum adopting a modified jury system. In that new system a panel of nine – three judges and six civilians – hear and decide major cases. 34

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Since no Japanese lawyer had ever presented evidence to civilian jurors, I was invited to bring a team of U.S. based advocacy teachers to Tokyo to teach a handpicked group of Japanese lawyers in a trial skills boot camp. We used consecutive translation professionals over a seven day program. Later I was asked to return twice to Osaka and Tokyo for follow-up advocacy trainings. Ultimately, I directed their first ever trial advocacy teacher training program. I still keep in touch with many of my colleagues and students there. In Chile I was asked to come and train advocacy trainers at the law school in Santiago. Under Chilean law, jury trials exist but are limited primarily to employment cases. I was contacted by a Chilean judge who had trained with me at NITA to visit and work with practitioners to develop a Chilean-specific litigation advocacy program which continues today. And, like Rich, I was invited to the Republic of Georgia when the USSR collapsed to help train young, optimistic, patriotic young lawyers in the adversarial system of criminal and civil justice. It was an exciting time. The motto of the young Georgian lawyers was: “Our country is free. Democracy has come. We need a judicial system that is fair.” RS: Yes, we both went to Georgia through the ABA’s Rule of Law Institute. The Rose Revolution happened in 2003. Before that, not only did they not have a jury system, but the prosecutors used to meet with the judges and basically decide the defendant’s sentence. It was a sham system of justice. Then Mikheil Saakashvili, who was a Kennedy-like figure, ushered in this new era, which included jury trials. It was very rewarding to bring that system to such passionate people. Sadly, the new system didn’t have long to thrive, since Russia invaded in 2008 and throttled the fledgling justice system. DC: After the breakup of Yugoslavia from the USSR, the war in Kosovo and then the horrific genocide which ensued, countries in Eastern Europe had to rebuild their judicial systems. The U.S. State Department delivered training programs, including ones for trial advocacy. I was invited to direct four different advocacy skills programs in Kosovo and Macedonia. I worked with trial lawyers who had been displaced for almost twenty years. It was an honor to contribute to restoring their legal infrastructure and sustainability. For the last eight years, my foreign-teaching focus has been in the Caribbean nations. Working with the National Center for State Courts in support of the federally funded Caribbean Basin Securities Initiative, I have served as the program director for trial advocacy skills training for the

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Prosecutor’s Offices and some of the public defense attorneys. The Caribbean lawyers are intuitive and gifted storytellers. We share a common belief that jury trials are among the necessary tools to protect functional democracies from corruption. Sharing different methods and approaches for witness examinations, opening statements and summation has made a visible difference in their pursuit and success in achieving justice. RS: Recently I traveled to Italy to teach. We were invited there as part of an ABOTA delegation. Italy’s justice system does not allow for what we recognize to be a true jury trial where the parties are judged by their peers. Nor does the system allow cross examination in the truest sense. And expert testimony comes into evidence virtually unchallenged. When we introduced the Italian lawyers to our system of justice trial practice, the information was received with mixed results. Younger criminal defense-oriented lawyers said, “This is really cool, I love this.” But older lawyers were not so interested in new techniques – “We don’t do it that way. Our way is better.” Theirs is an antiquated system, and, if you ask me, confusing and unfair. But that is also how they describe the U.S. system. I like to think we made some inroads in moving them towards adopting our system of justice; time will tell. Regardless, they were incredibly gracious and I know we learned as much from them as they did from us. LD: Let’s talk about the vanishing jury trial here in the U.S. Do you think the trend will continue until it’s a relic of the past? Or do you have hopes for it being revived? RS: It’s really scary. One poor prognosticator for me is that younger lawyers who have become partners in their firms don’t seem as passionate about getting into the courtroom as we were. They have fallen into a trend that more easily leads them to settle cases rather than to allow a jury to decide. If they’re not into it, who’s going to fight for the constitutionally guaranteed Seventh Amendment rights in 10 years? Put differently, unfamiliarity with trial breeds insecurity, which then breeds fear to engage in the process. When that happens, a vicious cycle can materialize. And, if you lack the confidence to duke it out in court, you’ll too easily depend on the settlement route. Fortunately, from bottom to top, the lawyers at our firm have a passion for trying lawsuits and we are always trying our darnedest to get into trial. I’d like to think that those of us who are teaching the art of trial advocacy will continue to have a positive impact on the legal community at large. Hopefully the pendulum will swing back toward jury trials as the rule rather than the 36

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exception in the resolution process. In the meantime, whether it is via an expedited jury trial or some other accelerated court process, we need to continuously and tirelessly promote the civil jury system. DC: I’m optimistic. These things are cyclical. When rights are violated, the dispute is resolved by agreement or trial. Settlements are informed by relevant predictors, and we often look at past verdicts to predict future ones. But there is always a point when those predictive outcomes become outdated and unreliable. The value of money changes. Societal prioritization of certain rights change. Trials test and create data. Our firm has handled drug and device bellwether cases, like the first defective hip replacement trial against Johnson & Johnson that Mike tried. As with every trial, that trial was necessary because the parties could not agree on what a jury would do with the case, and it was worth the risk to define our own standard for the plaintiffs’ losses. So I think the reliance on juries will swing back, because as the value of everything continues to change, there will be a segment of people who will feel undervalued or underestimated in these cases and that will send us back to juries. That said, we also need to see a change in the mindset of our judges and legislators. Dispositive motions and legislative bills that elevate arbitration above citizens’ ability to hold wrongdoers accountable through constitutional processes, such as the right to a civil jury trial, encourage the kind of corruption that we are working to drive out in other countries. MK: I’m not sure how this ends. Particularly in the federal system, judges are spending less time in trial hearing disputed matters. There’s great pressure to get matters disposed of, and in the federal courts there is an anti-jury pressure to employ summary judgment and motions to dismiss as decision tools. That pressure undermines trying cases to jurors. Corporate interest groups play a big part here. Major corporations are cynical about juries. They push the arbitration bandwagon in the hopes of little to no citizen involvement. But arbitration is private and opaque. No one in the community knows what’s happening. It is made confidential by contract or service agreement. Because it’s all behind closed doors, there are no precedents set, and the wrongful conduct which underlies the proceedings can easily recur. Because the decision in one arbitration will not be binding in another, and will not be cited, there is frequent inconsistency in results.

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FIGHTING SEXUAL Taylor & Ring helps clients expose systemic problems BY EMILY JACKOWAY

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ABUSE IN SCHOOLS Everyone wants to feel special. It’s innate. We want to hear we’re the smartest, or most insightful, or most beautiful. Never are we more susceptible to those feelings than as children – when we’re in school, anxiously grappling for a higher spot in the social and academic pecking order. Kids crave validation and love – which make them more impressionable to the authority figures they look up to. It’s all too easy for an adult in power to weaponize that hunger to be seen. To use that desire for specialness to manipulate and abuse.

No one knows that more than the team at Los Angeles-based Taylor & Ring. Dave Ring, co-founder of the firm, has been litigating plaintiffs’ sexual abuse cases for more than three decades. When he joined forces with John Taylor in 2002, they knew abuse cases were going to be a significant part of their firm. Time and again, the abuse the attorneys see takes place in schools. The first sexual abuse case Ring tried back in the ‘90s was against a school district. At that time, sexual abuse trials were rare. “They all settled quickly, quietly,” Ring remembers. But, when the school district didn’t provide an adequate settlement, he and his then-partner made the bold decision to go to trial. The case ended in a $10M jury verdict for the victim, and Ring realized the positive influence a successful trial can have on a victim’s recovery. “It gave [our client] so much closure and confidence that he didn’t do anything wrong,” Ring says. “It changed his life.” In the ensuing years, our culture has undergone a seismic shift; after the exposure of abusive priests

in the Catholic Church and the rise of the #MeToo movement, more people understand that sexual abuse is pervasive, and that abuse is not the victim’s fault. We’ve instituted trainings for professionals, created mandatory reporting laws and fostered support networks for victims. Yet, the abuse persists, so the attorneys at Taylor & Ring continue to fight. The firm, which now boasts nine lawyers, is recognized throughout California for both the volume of sexual abuse cases litigated and the depth of commitment to victims. With multiple landmark cases this year alone, the team has shown they’re not slowing down.

A STRING OF RECENT VICTORIES When David Lamb applied to be a bus driver with the Lucia Mar School District, he hid a Peeping Tom conviction on his application. Caught in the lie when his criminal record came to light, he was taken out of consideration for the position. But, desperate for bus drivers, the district told him to simply apply again with the charge disclosed. He did, and was hired. On Lamb’s route, there was a 9-year-old girl with disabilities who was often the only student on the bus. Lamb would pull off the side of the road to abuse her. He warned her not to tell anyone, but she bravely told her guardians regardless. The school promised to review the security footage on the bus but claimed they found nothing – even though the acts, in one instance, were plainly caught on camera. “They didn’t know how to use the system, or they didn’t look at all of the footage,” explains Ring, who handled the ensuing civil case with associate Brendan Gilbert. The abuse continued for months. Finally, after pressure from the victim’s family, the footage was turned over to the police, who found the proof. Lamb was arrested and sentenced to 16 years in prison. After the criminal trial, Ring was brought on board to sue the school district. They settled for $10M, which is one of the largest ever paid to a single plaintiff in a sexual abuse case against a school district in California.

John Ring

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Sometimes the defense refuses to settle, or gives a lowball offer. So, the firm is always ready to go to trial. Recently, partner Natalie Weatherford tried a case against Union School District in San Jose. A middle school band teacher with the district, Samuel Niepp, was accused of having multiple sexual

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relationships with students as young as 12 over a period of eight years. After Niepp’s criminal trial, Weatherford represented one of the two Jane Does in the civil case. Niepp’s abuse began in his first year of teaching. He began to groom Weatherford’s client, Jane Doe 2: paying her special attention, complimenting her, texting her late at night. Two years later, after she had changed schools, he invited her back into his classroom in the evenings, and the physical abuse began. She was in ninth grade. Of course, they never stop at just one. With reports of Niepp’s actions ignored or only mildly rebuked by school administration, Weatherford says, “He became emboldened. His abuse got progressively more severe the longer he was at the school, which is typical of perpetrators who are able to stay in one place, getting away with their abuse.” Jane Doe 1, represented by Lauren Cerri of Corsiglia, McMahon & Allard, was abused several years later. Niepp threatened Jane Doe 1 with posting her explicit photos online if she told anyone what he was doing to her – known as criminal sextortion. Nevertheless, she did come forward, which inspired Weatherford’s client to join the case. In the end, Niepp was sentenced to 56 years in prison, and Weatherford and Cerri’s united efforts against the school district resulted in a jury verdict of an astounding $102M. The case is now on appeal, but Weatherford is confident that juries understand what the district should have done differently and the depth of harm her client suffered. “[The district] swept it under the rug for eight years. And because of that, a lot of girls were abused,” she says.

A DEVELOPING CASE The most shocking aspect of these cases can often be the volume of information that the people in charge knew. One of the most staggering examples is in the cases Taylor is bringing against the Los Angeles Unified School District, representing multiple women who say they were abused while students at Cleveland High School. Taylor’s clients were a part of the high school’s humanities magnet program, called Core. Core operated like a separate school inside Cleveland High, with its own teachers and curriculum, lauded for their academic rigor and unconventional thinking. Core teachers were known for their egalitarian relationships with their students, more like friends; they 42

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John Taylor

Our culture has undergone a seismic shift; after the exposure of abusive priests in the Catholic Church and the rise of the #MeToo movement, more people understand that sexual abuse is pervasive, and that abuse is not the victim’s fault. We’ve instituted trainings for professionals, created mandatory reporting laws and fostered support networks for victims. Yet, the abuse persists, so the attorneys at Taylor & Ring continue to fight.

Everyone wants to feel special. Often, by the time they’ve been groomed, these children have lost the distinction between what’s appropriate and what isn’t. It’s up to the other adults in power to recognize that difference. At least, it should be.

WHERE SCHOOL DISTRICTS CAN FAIL Silence can be deafening. Silence defined all these cases – the silence of teachers, administrators and other adults in power who were required to report abuse and didn’t. In all three of these cases, the attorneys argue the districts had ample warning something was wrong. In the Lucia Mar case, despite knowledge of Lamb’s criminal background, reports from the family and video evidence, he remained employed and able to continue his abuse. The victim’s guardians say the transportation director looked the 9-year-old girl in the eyes and said, “I don’t believe you.” Natalie Weatherford

often spent time with students outside of school. “The idea was to teach students to push boundaries, to question and to be exposed to various social issues,” says Taylor. “It is a fine idea, except that it began to utilize abusive psychological exercises, and then crossed over into physical sexual abuse.” It became an open secret in the school that students and teachers were sexually involved. The first victim who came to Taylor & Ring alleged that two teachers, Chris Miller and Vivian Atkin, involved this student in their extramarital affair. After the first claim was brought, the firm received a flurry of supportive responses – and others who said, “The same thing happened to me.” Currently, the firm is representing five plaintiffs who are bringing abuse claims that span from 1992 to 2009 and name at least four teachers. In this case, part of the grooming process involved weaponizing the students’ intelligence against them. In an academic environment, especially one as rigorous as the Core program, the line between educational praise and sexual grooming becomes desperately blurred. Taylor explains: “A teacher could say, ‘You’re smart. You’re sophisticated. Your parents don’t understand this. Other teachers might not understand this, but the relationship that you and I have is special, and we can take these next, more sexually involved steps, because you’re sophisticated enough to be able to deal with it.’” 44

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In the case with the band teacher, parents flagged Niepp’s inappropriate actions just before his third year of teaching: In the fall of 2010, one student’s parents brought in printouts of inappropriate texts he had been sending their daughter late at night. By that point, Weatherford says, administrators already knew something was amiss – the principal admitted she had already had a conversation with Niepp about not texting students. After the parents came forward, the school conducted a confidential internal review – and claimed to find nothing. The review, Weatherford explains, concluded only that Niepp was having trouble adjusting to being a teacher and needed coaching and guidance. “This school district had a ton of information about this perpetrator being inappropriate with little girls, right from the time he started until the day the police arrested him in his classroom,” Weatherford says. He remained employed until his arrest. In the Core case, Taylor says parents brought their concerns to the school in at least six instances and, despite mandated reporting laws, in most cases nothing happened. When action was taken, it still didn’t raise the alarm bells. Years before this litigation, two teachers in the Core program were arrested for sexual abuse. One commissioned a student to pose nude for him between 2002 and 2003, and the other was arrested for having sex with a student in 2008. The latter victim told a school counselor, who did the right thing and reported the abuse. That victim

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now makes the fifth plaintiff in Taylor’s civil case against the district. Despite these arrests, Taylor says the school still did not increase supervision over the Core program. So, the abuse continued. “When you look at the number of teachers who were involved, sometimes with another teacher, over the length of time, it’s appalling,” he adds. “The inappropriate relationships, lack of boundaries, lack of supervision, was normalized by the teachers and by the school administrators, so nothing was done.” In fact, Taylor says that the cycle of abuse became so engrained in the program that a former student, Brett Shufelt, came back as a teacher and is now one of those named in the lawsuit.

WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE After decades of this work, the partners are attuned to the environments in which abuse thrives. Plenty of school districts, notes Ring, are doing an exemplary job and can serve as examples to those with systemic abuse problems. “It comes down to strong leadership and a strong school culture where this behavior is not tolerated,” he says. “In successful districts, the leadership is very visible – the principal or assistant principals are making their rounds around the school.” Weatherford agrees that surveillance is a key component to preventing abuse. “It’s the little things, like putting cameras in the school hallways so they can keep a lookout to see if one teacher is spending a lot of time with a student. If someone knows they’re being watched, they won’t try things,” she explains. And since, as Ring explains, teachers can change schools to one where it’s easier to get away with their abuse, the more districts that stay vigilant, the better. Ring adds that mandatory reporting training needs to increase, along with disciplinary actions when suspicions of abuse are not reported. “If there’s not enough training, people are afraid to report,” he says. “They don’t know the responsibilities for reporting, and there’s no teeth to it.” Taylor adds that the implementation of that training through a shift in school culture is vital. “The culture of the school must demonstrate to teachers that if they come forward, nothing will happen to them. Instead of being criticized or isolated for reporting abuse, they will be valued and respected.” The firm wants school administrations to understand they’re not powerless: Abuse can be stopped at its source with appropriate teacher training and support. 46

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HOW LITIGATION HELPS VICTIMS REGAIN CONTROL As with Ring’s first sexual abuse case back in the ‘90s, the attorneys at Taylor & Ring fight for their clients because they see the power a successful result has on victims’ healing. In Weatherford’s case against Union School District, her client is now a medical student at Yale, seemingly thriving, but still emotionally damaged from the abuse inflicted on her as a middle schooler. When the verdict came, Weatherford said that her client was initially shocked, then empowered. “She did not deserve what happened to her, and she blamed herself for the abuse for a really long time,” Weatherford says. “Going to trial and having a jury of 12 people tell her, ‘It’s not your fault,’ was the most rewarding thing.” That feeling is what keeps Taylor doing this kind of work. He says the most fulfilling aspect is “seeing survivors take back control. They’re not going to let this event define them or be the victim. It’s a step in their healing.” Ring agrees: “After a case, the victim tends to say, ‘Hey, thank you. This has really made an impact on my life, and I feel better about myself and about what happened.’ That’s the one constant that’s been really rewarding to everyone here – hearing that from our clients for the last 20 years.” Thanks to increasing awareness around the effects of sexual abuse, the partners believe that jurors are becoming more understanding and more likely to give awards that match the harm their clients suffer. “Jurors don’t want to hear victim blaming,” Ring says. “They want to hear how it could have been prevented.” The size of the awards the firm is securing now, like the Lucia Mar settlement and the Union School District verdict, are indicative of this shift: “As people are becoming more familiar with the impact sexual abuse has on a person, this is going to become the norm,” Weatherford explains. Taylor also believes that these kinds of cases can encourage more victims to come forward. “Drawing attention to the potential for abusive relationships hopefully develops an awareness,” he explains. However, he emphasizes, when it comes to preventing abuse, the onus is on the systems and individuals of the school districts. In all of these cases, the adults are the ones at fault: both those abusing students and those who turned a blind eye. Taylor & Ring is seeking to build a world where adults take responsibility in making students feel both special and safe – one case at a time.

STRENGTH

IN UNCERTAINTY Validity proves that economic uncertainty can broaden the appeal of litigation finance as a solution. BY JAMES LANGFORD

PORTRAIT PHOTOS PROVIDED BY THE FIRM.

hen the economy sours, Wall Street’s typical reaction is a wave of “risk-off” selling, moving money rapidly from unstable highgrowth securities to safe-haven assets like gold, Treasury bonds or utility stocks. Corporate America, meanwhile, faces its own challenges, with even strong companies attempting to conserve cash by cutting expenses, some shakier ones trying to save themselves through mergers with better-funded rivals and the weakest, possibly, collapsing altogether.

One profession that often fares better than the rest is the law because litigation is countercyclical – whether the economy is up or down, it will inevitably lead to lawsuits as businesses work to protect their financial interests. The same applies to the comparatively youthful field of litigation finance, in which investors provide funding for plaintiffs to pursue meritorious litigation of their legal claims. That pattern has held particularly true in the tumultuous years since 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic shut down huge swaths of the economy and snarled global supply chains. Since then, a labor shortage in the freight industry, a shipping accident that briefly shut down a key trade route, and inflation that touched a 40-year high have only compounded the initial challenges. Now, with the Federal Reserve trying to bring inflation under control through sharp increases in interest rates and some economists worried about a recession, it’s no longer just the under-funded Davids seeking resources to pursue their claims against Goliaths whose cases are making up the bulk of litigation finance firms’ business. A wider variety of corporations, commercial claimants, inventors and law firms than ever are pursuing funding as a business opportunity.

your real estate holdings are assets,” says Will Marra, a New York-based investment manager at Validity who joined Laina Hammond and Dave Kerstein, both co-founders and managing directors, and Chief Risk Officer Julia Gewolb in a roundtable interview with Lawdragon on the growth of both the firm and its industry during a period of rapid-fire economic shifts. “It’s always harder to justify pursuing litigation when money’s tight,” Marra explains. “When you realize that your legal claim is an asset, you can use litigation finance to secure financing against that asset – including the financing you need to bring your case in the first place.” But while companies embroiled in economic challenges may be more likely to sue than usual over broken deals and other financial fallout, there’s a flip-side: Economic challenges tend to make CEOs just as risk-averse as Wall Street, an attitude that extends to spending money on litigation where the outcome is unknown. “When times are good, it may be easier for companies to decide to overlook violations of company rights and move on, but when trying to fight for every bit of revenue, some companies are thinking harder about whether to pursue litigation to enforce their rights,” Hammond says. “The value of litigation funding is companies can do that without having to expend a large amount of capital to pay for outside lawyers and experts.” Lawdragon: One of the things that’s really been interesting about the economic uncertainty over the past two years is the breadth of challenges that have materialized. How has that affected the types of cases you’re seeing?

As they navigate both increasing workloads and budgets tightened by boards and company leaders insisting that they accomplish more with less, many corporate C-suite executives are realizing they can look at litigation as a way to transform their legal departments from a cost center into a profit center, according to investment and underwriting leaders at Validity Finance, a four-year-old firm that now has locations in New York, Houston, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles.

Julia Gewolb: Going into Covid, with the economic uncertainty that came with that, there were a lot of questions about how litigation funding would fare. As it turned out, in the first year of the pandemic we saw more, not fewer, opportunities for funding – largely because that same uncertainty incentivized folks to off-load expenses and litigation risk. We were able to grow the portfolio without growing our team, which positioned us well to take on new growth. We’re in a different economic moment today, but even now rising interest rates are presenting an obvious rationale for using funding to handle litigation fees and costs.

“What litigation finance teaches, essentially, is that your legal claim is an asset. It’s an asset similar to how your inventory, your intellectual property and

William Marra: Lawyers and increasingly companies are aware of litigation funding, and this awareness is coming at a time when companies have an es-

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pecially high need for it. Ralph Sutton, our CEO and founder, was one of the very first people to do this in the country over 16 years ago. Even when Validity was launched four and a half years ago, a lot of what we were doing was still educating lawyers about funding. That has changed significantly. Law firms have very high awareness of litigation funding. And increasingly, large companies and their general counsel do too. Those GCs need to deal with macroeconomic headwinds, and at the same time, GCs are being asked to do a lot more. For example, companies have to deal with more regulations at the state and federal levels. Those GCs are seeing their budgets cut too. So they’re being asked to do a lot more, what they’re being asked to do is more expensive, and they need to do more with less. Litigation is just one of a constellation of issues that GCs need to address, and we enable companies to offload some of the risk and the expense of that. Laina Hammond: General counsels also continue to be forced to bring a lot of work in-house because of the expense of outside lawyers. That work isn’t necessarily litigation, but GCs are having to handle more legal operations internally. LD: Does all of this mean there’s more or less of an interest right now in elective litigation? If the economy’s rougher, people might be more concerned about the expense, but if they’re using litigation finance, they might see this as an opportunity to leverage more of an asset that they didn’t necessarily think of as an asset in times past. Dave Kerstein: We have seen in the past that our industry can be a bit countercyclical, because as the economy worsens, sometimes there’s more inclination to fight over scraps, but yet not want to use your own capital to do so because of how costly that is. So that opens up opportunities for litigation finance companies like ours. WM: We fund a very small percentage of cases that we see, so we’re not encouraging companies to engage in litigation, and we’re not encouraging them to pursue weak cases. Whether in good times or bad, companies only want to pursue their strongest, most strategically important litigations – and those are the cases funders want to finance too. LH: The past couple of years have been a perfect storm because in addition to economic distress, companies have also faced a lot of supply-chain issues, ones we’ve heard a lot about in the news,

“What litigation finance teaches, essentially, is that your legal claim is an asset. It’s an asset similar to how your inventory, your intellectual property and your real estate holdings are assets.” William Marra and those issues have prompted many companies to be unable to fulfill their contracts. JG: One interesting trend we saw in the Covid era was an uptick in the number of patent cases. Patent is one obvious area where companies can monetize their IP assets through litigation. If a business holds a lot of patents, and realizes other people in the market are making products that infringe on its patents, then enforcing those assets through litigation can be well worth the cost. LD: Out of the array of economic issues facing businesses, are there particular ones that have been driving litigation more than others? JG: They tend to be industry- and location-specific. During Covid, there were a number of insurance claims, for instance, relating to businesses forced to close during Covid. There are a lot of open questions being litigated in the courts right now over insurance

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of the FTX crypto trading platform, for instance, and there will probably be legal reverberations from that. We’ve already seen an uptick in crypto-related funding opportunities over the past year or so. Sometimes they can be hard to fund, however, because while there can be clear evidence of wrongdoing or fraud, collection is often an issue in those cases. But now, with FTX, there is a large-scale bankruptcy that’s likely to generate a lot of potentially valuable claims, and I’m sure there will be other things related to that as well coming down the pike. LD: I’ve been curious about whether the lack of settled law in that area makes it a little more difficult to pursue those claims. If you’re touching on bankruptcy or obvious fraud, that’s one thing, but there have been many questions over who regulates crypto — the Securities and Exchange Commission, for instance, or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — and whether it’s a stock, a commodity or some kind of currency asset.

“In general, for large-scale cases that cost millions of dollars in fees and costs to pursue, companies must hire outside counsel and they want to hire the best. They don’t want to have to hire a specific lawyer or law firm simply because that’s what fits within their legal budget. Funding is a great way for companies to obtain that capital, use it to hire the top counsel, and not have to exhaust their budgets to do it.” Laina Hammond policies, which in some instances contemplated pandemics, and in others didn’t, because we had never really experienced anything like this before. The uncertainty over how the courts would rule on the issues – as well as the fact that the plaintiffs are businesses coming out of a difficult situation – made it an obvious case for funding. DK: There’s also a widespread expectation that we’ll see more claims coming out of developments in the cryptocurrency world. There are estimates of a million or more people impacted by the implosion 52

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LH: The absence of clear laws and regulations governing crypto may make it more challenging for claimants to succeed on claims against crypto companies, particularly for creditors trying to recover money through claims of wrongdoing by the company. A potentially relevant question is whether these crypto companies had any kind of insurance covering employee misconduct or wrongdoing. With fidelity bonds, a company can go to the insurer and ask them to cover the losses that the company suffered because of the high-level employees’ conduct. Because of the lack of clear regulation, however, crypto companies are not likely required to have insurance like that and may choose not to voluntarily purchase it, even if they were able to get an insurer to issue a policy. LD: It seems like valuation would be another tough issue, because crypto has been so volatile over the past couple of years. And with it being so new, how do you make a substantial claim about how much it’s really worth? JG: From the underwriting side, all of these issues contribute to litigation risk, which is a great justification for using funding. But it also makes us a little more wary of the risk, too. There’s a sweet spot where we’re probably a little less risk-averse because we have the cash, and this is what we do, and I think we’re pretty good at it. Then beyond that, there’s a spot at which the risk becomes too great for us, too. I’ve always been a little wary of crypto cases for that reason. When the value of the

case is tied to a volatile currency or asset, it raises questions for us as well.

business line. Large companies are thinking about this in a way that they may not have five years ago.

LD: Going back to Covid for a moment, are you still seeing a high volume of related funding requests because of the typical lag time between events and the start of litigation?

With a venture-backed company, for instance, if your investors give you $5M a year, they don’t want you spending $2M on your lawyers for litigation that’s going to resolve five years from now. They want you to invest it in your company’s core products. These are basic business principles that these companies have already embraced in other contexts, and it goes to the point that general counsels are being asked to be more business-minded, not just come to the table with legal ideas, but also to approach legal problems as business problems. This way, they can come to the table not only saying, “Hey, this is hugely important for us,” but also, “This is how we can pay for it.”

WM: There are two significant ways in which the economic challenges and Covid have driven litigation finance. The first is the content of the cases themselves, and there’s some of that, but I think that’s really a minority of the impact of the downturn. You do have some cases where because of the downturn or because of Covid, some legal dispute arises, and we have invested in some of those cases. A much bigger effect, though, is that in tough economic times, companies are now searching for new solutions to the longstanding problem of how to finance meritorious litigation, and they are now aware that litigation finance is an option. The economic challenges probably do drive a meaningful quantum of our business, even if the matters themselves aren’t related to economic challenges or to Covid. It’s also notable that litigation finance was becoming mainstream right as Covid hit. That probably has increased the number of requests we’ve received. We can fund at any stage of the case, and we’ve had people come to us in the middle of a case saying, “I’ve been paying my lawyers by the hour, but I can’t afford to do so any longer. I have better uses for this money.” I don’t know if we’ve actually funded a lot more because of that, but it has resulted in more requests.

LD: If GCs are bringing more work back in-house, do they sometimes turn to litigation finance when they want to pay for retaining experts in certain matters? WM: We had one deal we were looking at with a company that was doing a lot of their litigation in-house, but funding was a way to go out and hire outside counsel for some cases. While some companies make a strategic choice to handle litigation in-house, often that choice is made because of cost savings.

LD: In terms of the industries or economic sectors from which you’re seeing cases come, are there particular ones that stand out? WM: One difference that we’ve seen is in the size of the business. Historically, litigation funding has been the domain of Davids versus Goliaths – we were funding the impecunious litigants that otherwise can’t afford to bring a case. You could think of them as liquidity-constrained. They just don’t have the money. Without litigation funding, they couldn’t move forward. But this past year, we have had signed term sheets with companies that have a billion dollars or more in annual revenue. It’s not that these companies cannot afford the litigation, it’s that they are thinking about this as just another way to share the risk, the same way that they would go to the capital markets to fund research and development or to start a new

Dave Kerstein

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JG: I think we’re going to continue to do what we’ve been doing, which is search out the most meritorious domestic litigation, commercial opportunities and patent matters. There are a lot of exotic places funding could get into, but we as a company feel like there’s a lot of untapped growth and potential even in the bread-and-butter commercial disputes that we’ve specialized in, and probably will continue to specialize in.

Julia Gewolb

LH: In general, for large-scale, bet-the-company cases that cost millions of dollars in fees and costs to pursue, companies must hire outside counsel and they want to hire the best. They don’t want to have to hire a specific lawyer or law firm simply because that’s what fits within their legal budget. Funding is a great way for companies to obtain that capital, use it to hire the top counsel, and not have to exhaust their budgets to do it. JG: That’s the obvious case for funding. Also, historically, corporate counsel have viewed their litigation budgets more as a way to fund defensive action than going on the offensive and unlocking value. They’re thinking about how to manage their cash to defend in lawsuits. They may not even be thinking very hard about what litigation assets the company has that they could enforce, and funding is a great way for them to get in that mindset. If they win, that’s additional cash flow to the company and so the general counsel’s office is actually generating value, which is something a lot of in-house litigation attorneys don’t think about. And if they lose, it doesn’t affect their balance sheet because the funder takes the case on a non-recourse basis. It is in many ways a no-brainer. LD: Going forward, over the next two to five to 10 years, are there particular areas of focus for Validity in terms of taking advantage of the growth and expanding awareness of the industry? 54

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LH: We hope to further expand our team in key geographic markets where we’re seeing a lot of litigation and an increased interest in and demand for litigation finance. And we’ll try to go deeper into the markets that we already are servicing. As lawyers and companies become more aware of litigation finance, I think there are going to be a lot of opportunities for us and other funders to finance the types of commercial litigation that we’ve been financing all along. I don’t know that there’s going to be a real need to expand out into riskier types of investments, at least not in the short term, but that type of expansion may ultimately be on the horizon, too. DK: I think we’ll also focus a little bit on underserved markets, where we might not necessarily have fulltime people, places where funders don’t necessarily have boots on the ground right now, but there are still great lawyers that likely have great cases that could be ripe for funding. WM: In the end, we anticipate funding really becoming a third standard way of pursuing litigation. Everyone is familiar with the vanilla and chocolate of how to pay for litigation: You pay your lawyers by the hour, or your lawyers take the case on a full contingency. The problem is that not every company can afford to or wants to pay their lawyers by the hour, and not every law firm has the risk appetite to take cases on full contingency. We offer a third model. We pay a portion of the legal fees, we pay a portion of the costs, and there’s risk-sharing with the law firm and litigant. For the law firm, it looks like a hybrid or a partial contingency. For the client, it looks like a full contingency. And there are a lot of ways in which this third model better suits the risk appetite and the desires of both the client and the law firm. This didn’t really exist more than 15 years ago but I think increasingly it’s here to stay. Especially in this economic environment, this third model makes a lot of sense.

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KING’S GAMBIT:

Left to right: Jelena McWilliams, Jennifer Leete, Elad Roisman and Noah Phillips. PHOTO BY ELI MEIR KAPLAN

CRAVATH MOVES IN ON D.C. BY KATRINA DEWEY

The right people. The right place. The right time. How else to describe the masterpiece achieved by Cravath in Washington, D.C.?

Cravath is a standard-setter, a kind of holy grail of law firms,” says Jelena McWilliams, former Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Managing Partner of the office. She was previously Executive Vice President of Fifth Third Bank, Chief Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, and staff attorney at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors during the 2008 financial crisis. A widely respected financial institutions expert, she now heads Cravath’s Financial Institutions Group. But she remembers when she was in law school at the University of California, Berkeley, more than 20 years ago: “Cravath was a name that was borderline unachievable, even for somebody coming from one of the best public law schools in the country.” Fast forward through her mountain of achievements and she was, “frankly, a little startled” when the New York firm contacted her, looking to add an office in D.C., where it previously had one between 1924 and 1946. The firm, founded in 1819, opened a London office in 1973. “To have an opportunity to join Cravath, be part of an office opening in the nation’s capital, and to have that office entrusted to a partner joining from government was very surprising to me and definitely intriguing,” she says. McWilliams and her fellow D.C. partners – Noah Phillips, Jennifer Leete and Elad Roisman – have all built impressive resumes in the regulatory agencies that implement the broad intent of congressional statutes and executive orders into the specific: detailed standards governing how businesses interact with one other, the government, the consumers and the broader American public. Those organizations, from the Securities and Exchange Commission to the Federal Trade Commission to the FDIC and the Federal Reserve, have wide-ranging enforcement and regulatory authorities and regularly represent the government’s vanguard in the nexus of cutting-edge technology, finance strategies and policy positions that have yet to be written into law.

in the regulatory space in Washington as Cravath does in its New York office was irresistible,” says Leete, who was Associate Director in the Division of Enforcement at the SEC, where she served for more than 20 years. “They basically had me at, ‘Hello.’” Cravath has had an outsized impact on the nation’s legal affairs and regulation throughout its history. Government clients have included the Second Bank of the United States, an early version of a federal bank; the Inter-Allied Purchases Commission during the World War I era; and the U.S. State Department during the Iran hostage crisis. Cravath contested part of then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal during the Great Depression on behalf of a poultry firm, and fought censorship by the Postmaster General in the 1940s on behalf of Esquire magazine. Cravath was also instrumental in pushing for litigation that led to Miranda v. Arizona, the 1966 case establishing so-called “Miranda rights” restricting law enforcement’s ability to interrogate suspects without telling them that they have a right to an attorney. In recent years, Cravath has added significant dimension to its practice with the addition of Christine Varney, a former U.S. Assistant Attorney General and Head of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division; David Kappos, a former Under Secretary of Commerce and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; John Buretta, a former Principal Deputy Attorney General and Chief of Staff in the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice; David Portilla, a former senior policy advisor to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Stability Oversight Council; and Daniel Zach, a former Assistant Director of the FTC. Add to that esteemed group Roisman, a former Commissioner and Acting Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission; before that, he was Chief Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, counsel to a former SEC Commissioner, and in-house at the parent of the New York Stock Exchange. Throughout his career, he became increasingly familiar with Cravath.

Phillips began his legal practice as an associate at Cravath from 2006-2010. He went on to serve as Chief Counsel to U.S. Senator and former Assistant Majority Leader John Cornyn, of Texas, on the Senate Judiciary Committee, before being confirmed as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, where he served from 2018-2022.

“This is the sort of firm that, even in law school, you think of as the highest peak,” he says. “And Cravath continued to hold that reputation throughout my career, both in private practice and in the government.”

Moving back to the 203-year-old firm whose work helps “define the landscape of American law,” as Phillips describes it, was a logical progression.

Lawdragon: The chemistry that you four share as the foundation of this office is extraordinary. Tell me how you got to know each other.

“To be one of the founding partners in an office like this and to do the same kind of top-quality, cutting-edge work

Jelena McWilliams: Elad and I worked together with the Senate Banking Committee. We shared a wall and

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kept our doors open so we could just talk across without actually having to walk into each other’s offices. Then, over time, I got to know Noah, who worked with the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I remember being blown away by his intellect, his knowledge of the subject matter he was discussing, and beyond that, his curiosity about the world and ability to gather knowledge. Frequently, after meeting people who are really interesting, I think, “Oh, I would like to play Trivial Pursuit with this person.” Noah and I have yet to do that, so a Trivial Pursuit game will be in the office’s coffee area, for sure. And I met Jennifer and got to know her during the process of forming this office. I genuinely love this team: It already feels like family. Jennifer Leete: Elad and I didn’t work closely together at the SEC, but our paths did cross from time to time. And I have long been a fan, so when I found out that he was going to be one of the other partners, I think I leapt out of my chair with excitement. And it was Elad who told me about Jelena and said, “She’s a force of nature. You’re going to love her.” The three of us had dinner together, and we all just hit it off. Elad Roisman: After leaving the SEC, I wanted to make sure I went to a place where not only would the work be very interesting, but the people were good people who would be collaborative and work well together. That has borne fruit and been true as we have hit the ground running at Cravath. To me, this is as good a place to work as you can have in terms of collegiality, camaraderie, clients and interesting issues. It’s truly something I’m very happy about. Noah Phillips: The ability to work with great people is a joy. It’s also really helpful to allow us to think across subject matter areas, given there are all sorts of crosscurrents in our work, and collaborating adds a lot of value for our clients. I also can’t think of a better group of people with whom to start a new venture. And the D.C. office is absolutely a new venture for Cravath. To begin this journey, with the backing of Cravath; really, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. LD: One thing I’ve noticed about the practice of law in D.C. is how it has evolved and broadened so that every practice area touches on every other practice area and the flow of issues has become almost continuous for clients, rather than centering on a discrete matter involving a particular agency. JL: That’s been true for a long time. My first big case at the SEC, 20 years ago, was actually an antitrust case in which we worked closely with the Justice Department because the practice in question also violated a little-known SEC rule. And the trend has become even more pronounced over time as the agencies have ex60

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panded their scope and their reach, and the world has become more interconnected. The best way to deal with Washington is holistically, and that is certainly the approach we take at Cravath. ER: Every regulated entity has multiple regulatory overseers. Both during my time in private practice and in government, I was struck by how a business decision or market event had ripple effects for not only a company but for how multiple regulators interacted with that company. And when you deal with multinational corporations, especially financial institutions, they’re subject to an entire host of national and international cross-regulations. If you don’t understand how they all work together, you can’t really be effective in planning and helping your clients. Luckily for us, Noah’s antitrust expertise, Jelena’s banking expertise and the securities law expertise that Jennifer and I have cover much of the gamut of what our clients need. And just as we worked together throughout our careers in government, bringing our respective knowledge to the table, we’ll continue to use that same inter-disciplinary approach for client matters. NP: In Washington, from the perspective of regulators and the government, it doesn’t start with a silo or an area of law. It starts with a problem. And from the perspective of the regulator, it’s often a question of, “How do I solve that problem with the tools that I have?” There are all sorts of little eddies, nooks and crannies in the law. When regulators see an issue – whether it is blockchain, virtual reality or artificial intelligence – and they want to deal with it, they want to address the issue; they’re going to think across the board and they’re going to look at every tool in their tool set. JM: In this regard, D.C. is probably the most unique training you can get in the United States as a lawyer. Having spent some time in different agencies and on Capitol Hill, you pick up pieces of the puzzle in such a way that you don’t even know you’re collecting them. And then, at some point in your career, you have the “a-ha” moment, “I’ve got it, I understand how the puzzle works.” And no other place gives you that big picture as well as D.C. does. I started out as a securities lawyer in Silicon Valley working on early stage companies, initial public offerings and mergers and acquisitions, then came to D.C. and worked at a law firm on the public company side of the same issues. I joined the Federal Reserve right before the financial crisis and, all of a sudden, I had to learn consumer financial protection law, literally in the middle of the crisis. The first thing that landed on my desk was subprime lending. From the Fed, I went to the U.S.

Senate and had exposure to the Small Business, Senate Finance and Senate Banking Committees, where I met Elad. Then I met Noah and got exposure to the Senate Judiciary Committee. And we all had to collaborate in a multifaceted way about the law and the regulation, and learn from one another. There’s nothing that compares with the responsibility you have when you’re working in the Senate and you basically hold the pen on what the law will look like for the future. As you sit there, you understand the gravity of the situation. You could do this wrong. You could write law in a way that actually doesn’t work, results in unintended consequences or causes harm. When you’re tasked with that responsibility, you have to solicit all the knowledge you can: legal knowledge, market knowledge. And so, over time, you become an expert in a lot of things. And you can see the big picture in a way that, I think, a lot of other training regimes cannot give you. ER: We have a soup-to-nuts understanding of the regulatory landscape in a way that not everyone does. What we find when we talk to clients is that our insight is particularly impactful and helpful because they may lack context or be surprised by certain issues. Companies will always place importance on how they’re navigating the regulatory landscape. LD: It’s interesting how similar learning the whole puzzle in D.C. is to the formative process at Cravath. As I’ve interviewed Cravath lawyers over the years, I’ve noticed that the firm makes sure attorneys are trained as generalists to have experience in an array of practice areas and subject matters. JM: I couldn’t agree more. Cravath is exceptional among American law firms with respect to wanting well-rounded lawyers and giving this rotation system opportunity to each of the associates. Early on in this process, I told a Cravath partner, “I love that.” The opportunity to actually reinvent yourself within Cravath every 18 months or so, because of the training system, is remarkable. A lot of law firms don’t make investments like that. Because it’s certainly more time-consuming to rotate associates into different practice areas and give them this opportunity to figure out what they want to do throughout their careers. But it is a commitment that Cravath continues to make. ER: The lawyers at Cravath are exceptional, and one thing that appealed to me is that I get to work with, and learn from, them and then share some of my own views and expertise. We constantly need to learn new things, and that’s a benefit of the careers we’ve had, but also a benefit of

a place like Cravath, where clients have cutting-edge questions and you have to become an expert in those areas and constantly build upon your existing knowledge. In our previous roles, we had to make critical decisions that had large impacts on not just companies, but investors, industries and the broader economy. That helps put situations into context when we talk to clients and give them advice. It gives them comfort when we’re at the table. But that background and experience also helps us in grounding and right-sizing issues and solutions. Cravath is a firm that people come to when they’re facing bet-the-company issues and need solutions. We’re adding to the historical Cravath practices but giving them new context and insights from our recent and combined experiences. NP: There used to be a saying when I was a young associate at Cravath that it was the best law school in America. You would drop off the securities case and pick up the merger review, and then on to the patent trial; there is no better place to get that education. And for clients, whose issues continue to evolve, you don’t want a lawyer who’s stuck in one silo. You need advisors who are versatile, willing to collaborate with one another and who are eager to learn, because the issues will continue to evolve. In the past few years, you can look at AmEx, you can look at AT&T-Time Warner, and Cravath has been at the tip of the spear for the cases and the deals that, again, are setting the pace for what other companies do, for the rules that apply both to the companies and the government. Having the chance to be part of a storied firm that continues to handle landmark matters is such an incredible opportunity. LD: And bringing your perspective from the other side of where and how the law governing these transactions and disputes was formed gives you tremendous insight. NP: There are many, many great things about having a chance to serve the public and work in government, and one of them is that you see case after case, deal after deal, investigation after investigation. Seeing them all together, you understand how they interrelate and the common themes that develop: what goes well, what goes poorly. Making big decisions is partly an exercise in understanding failure, and judgment. JL: Judgment informed by experience is, perhaps, the most important thing the four of us bring to Cravath. I spent 23 years in the Enforcement Division at the SEC, making decisions about what to investigate, what cases to pursue, how to shape them and how to settle them. That informs my judgment, and each of us has similar but distinct experiences. We’re all tremendously excited to bring that to the firm.

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EXCEPTIONAL LEGAL JOURNALISM SINCE 2005

lawdragon.com

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WE’RE PROUD TO INTRODUCE THE 2022 LAWDRAGON GLOBAL 100 LEADERS IN LEGAL FINANCE.

Litigation funding is growing by leaps and bounds, providing an ever-expanding universe of fascinating professionals with backgrounds in business and law. The firms represented in this year’s 100 hail from London to Luxembourg, Sydney to Singapore and Chicago to New York. Those included represent the old guard – who are deeply entrenched in the professional organizations that have brought legal finance into the mainstream – alongside dozens of savvy entrants attracted by the profession’s huge opportunities. They provide access to justice for claimants who might otherwise not be able to pursue their cases alongside access to the potential for handsome returns for those who pick well. We selected the members of this guide through our time-homed procedure of independent research, submissions and evaluation by peers. In particular, we’ve had the opportunity to spend time meeting with new candidates to assess their achievements and longtime members of the 100 to get their take on the evolution of the field. We appreciate the many submissions as well as the time spent educating us on individual firms’ focuses with perhaps a sidecar of industry gossip. This guide is 31 percent female and 16 percent inclusive. Members of the Lawdragon Hall of Fame are noted with an asterisk.

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100 NAME

COMPANY

Cindy Ahn

Longford Capital

Chicago

Maximillian Amster

Veridis

Tampa

Jonathan Barnes

Woodsford

London

Jonathan Barnett

Nivalion

Wien, Austria

Isabelle Berger

Nivalion

Steinhausen/Zug, Switzerland

Eric Blinderman

Therium Capital

New York

Matthew Blumenstein

Statera Capital

Chicago

Christopher Bogart

Burford Capital

New York

Erik Bomans

Deminor

Luxembourg

Anastasia Bondarenko

Fortress Investment Group

Paris

Clive Bowman

Omni Bridgeway

Sydney

Simon Burnett

Balance Legal Capital

London

John Byrne

Therium Capital

London

Jiamie Chen

Parabellum Capital

New York

Dai Wai Chin Feman

Parabellum Capital

New York

Allison Chock

Omni Bridgeway

Los Angeles

Adrian Chopin

Bench Walk Advisors

London

Heather Collins

Omni Bridgeway

Sydney

Owen Cyrulnik

Curiam Capital

New York

Robin Davis

Woodsford

New York

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LOCATION

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(RE)BALANCING ACT:

LONGFORD CAPITAL’S 10-YEAR FIGHT TO EXPAND ACCESS TO JUSTICE BY JAMES LANGFORD

TIM FARRELL

MIKE NICHOLS

SURVEY SAYS: IT’S MAINSTREAM.

evolution to not only meet marketplace demand, but also to drive strategic thinking and efﬁciency across the legal system.

About 62 percent of U.S. lawyers have firsthand experience with the comparatively youthful litigation finance system, and 80 percent of those who haven’t worked with it yet would consider doing so, a 2022 industry analysis1 showed. Those statistics weren’t achieved overnight. Since the industry’s advent in the U.S. a decade ago, litigation funders have been working hard both to expand awareness of the innovation financing option and gain acceptance. As one of the country’s first and largest practitioners, Longford Capital has been in the mix from the beginning. Co-founders Tim Farrell and Mike Nicolas recently discussed with Lawdragon the industry’s

PHOTOS PROVIDED BY THE FIRM

Lawdragon: The two of you have had an insider’s view on a decade of very impressive growth. Can you share some of your unique perspective with us? Tim Farrell: When we ﬁrst entered this asset class in 2011, our focus was on single case investments, where we would fund a single commercial case against one or more defendants. The asset class was in its infancy. There were only a few players in the U.S., and the amount of available capital was much smaller than today. Since that time, the asset class has matured signiﬁcantly. You can see it in the increased number of

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LONGFORD AND A HANDFUL OF OTHER FUNDERS ENJOY CERTAIN ADVANTAGES BECAUSE OF OUR EXPERIENCE, SIZE AND REPUTATION. THESE THINGS MATTER. THE MOST SOPHISTICATED PLAYERS GET THE GREATEST DEAL FLOW, WHICH SUPPORTS OUR ABILITY TO DRIVE CHANGE AND INNOVATION. – TIM FARRELL funders, the amount of available capital, and the innovation in product offerings. A greater share of our investors are endowments, pension funds and other sophisticated institutions. And most recently we’ve seen the development of a secondary market. Funds are emerging that are entirely devoted to secondary investments. These are all signs of a maturing asset class. Mike Nicolas: The evolution and expansion of the asset class has really accelerated over the past five years. New product offerings have come on the scene, including law fi rm portfolio investments, where we partner with a law firm to fund a basket of matters for different clients; client-side portfolios, where we work directly with corporate claim owners on multiple lawsuits; and corporate monetizations, where we enable companies to monetize a portion of their contingent interest in future proceeds from a lawsuit. These types of monetizations became popular during the pandemic, when companies were facing unprecedented pressures to generate new sources of revenue to weather difficult and uncertain business conditions. TF: We have also found that being nimble and collaborative in the way we structure transactions has been a competitive advantage in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Because of the sophistication of our finance team, we are very comfortable providing creative financing structures that meet the ever-changing needs of our clients and their law firms. MN: In addition, over the past two years, we have seen a significant increase in interest from large insurers in participating in our asset class. As just one example, we have worked with some of the leading insurance carriers in the world to craft judgment preservation policies that protect positive trial judgments from the risk of reversal on appeal. Very

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recently, several large insurance carriers have begun to offer portfolio insurance wrappers, where the carriers will insure some or all of a litigation funder’s portfolio of investments, including a portion of the potential profits on those investments. This is a leap forward for our asset class, and another indication that litigation finance is here to stay. TF: And while all of this has happened, we’re still an emerging market. Demand for litigation funding far outweighs the supply. While there have been new entrants into the market, there are still high barriers to entry. Longford and a handful of other funders enjoy certain advantages because of our experience, size and reputation. These things matter. The most sophisticated players get the greatest deal flow, which supports our ability to drive change and innovation. LD: What changes in litigation finance were unexpected? MN: No one expected a global pandemic. With courts shutting down or significantly limiting their trial calendars, we faced delays in the pace of our investments that we had never previously encountered. With things finally returning to normal, we have seen a renewed interest on the part of the judiciary to move cases forward as efficiently as possible to trial. That said, only so much can be done to accomplish this objective. Criminal cases always come first, as they must under our constitutional system. The civil dockets of most jurisdictions remain significantly backlogged, with the earliest available trial dates being 18 or more months away. While we have seen some efficiencies emerge from the pandemic, most notably the ever-increasing use of remote court hearings and depositions, the court system remains relatively slow-moving, which is a reality that was only exacerbated by the pandemic.

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On the positive side, we saw a significant increase in the demand for our capital during the pandemic, undoubtably driven by companies’ desire to manage their legal expenses during an uncertain and volatile time, or to prevent Covid-19 from forcing them to abandon their legal rights or accept an otherwise unacceptably low settlement offer. Corporate portfolios, monetizations and other financing options helped companies manage their business at a critical time, and we are proud to have been able to provide these solutions to our clients. LD: Do you believe that litigation finance can drive systemic change, and make the legal system more efficient? TF: I do. We’ve always believed that our capital provides access to justice, leveling the playing field for companies that may lack the resources to bring a meritorious legal claim. And we’ve seen that happen repeatedly over the last 10 years. More recently, we’re starting to get feedback from defense counsel and in some cases the defendants themselves. When they learn that we’re backing a company, it impacts their decision making. They know that the case has been carefully vetted and is well-financed. MN: I agree. When defense counsel becomes aware that we are involved in a case, it can have a material impact on defense strategy. The tried and true “outspend and outlast” strategy that corporate defendants often deploy against smaller, less-established companies is not as likely to work. There is a growing acknowledgement among defense counsel that when a rational, sophisticated third-party funder has conducted a rigorous due

diligence examination of a company’s case and is willing to put capital at risk on a non-recourse basis, the case must be taken seriously. LD: What impact do you aspire to have going forward? MN: Our vision starting out was that we could help make the legal system more equitable. We provide access to justice, helping to ensure that the merits of cases drive outcomes rather than the depth of the parties’ pockets. After 10 years, we see evidence that this is happening, and Longford has played a vital role in making it happen. The widespread awareness of litigation finance, the evolution of investment types and deal structures, and the increasing sophistication of investors we believe have all contributed to the gains we’ve seen, and we have no doubt this will continue, especially as the disclosure of litigation funding becomes more prevalent. TF: Some courts that have considered the role of funders have decided that it is fair to disclose when a funder is involved in a case but that the funder’s agreement with their client is off limits for discovery on the basis that it is irrelevant to the underlying dispute. We believe this trend will continue and that as more defendants and their legal counsel understand the types of cases we support, they will conclude that there’s a more efficient way to resolve disputes than costly and protracted legal battles. Longford and other first-rate funders work very hard to invest only in what they believe to be the most meritorious cases. Defendants and defense counsel are taking note, thinking strategically about our involvement and taking steps to resolve disputes more efficiently.

WHEN DEFENSE COUNSEL BECOMES AWARE THAT WE ARE INVOLVED IN A CASE, IT CAN HAVE A MATERIAL IMPACT ON DEFENSE STRATEGY. THE TRIED AND TRUE “OUTSPEND AND OUTLAST” STRATEGY THAT CORPORATE DEFENDANTS OFTEN DEPLOY AGAINST SMALLER, LESSESTABLISHED COMPANIES IS NOT AS LIKELY TO WORK. – MIKE NICHOLS 1

Source: 2022 Litigation Finance Survey Report published by Lake Whillans and Above the Law.

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100 NAME

COMPANY

LOCATION

Marla Decker

Lake Whillans

New York

James Delaney

Erso Capital

London

Christopher DeLise

Delta Capital Partners

Chicago

Brandon Deme

Factor Risk Management

London

Patrick Dempsey

Burford Capital

New York

Matthew Denney

LCM

London

Simon Dluzniak

Therium Capital

Melbourne

Kirstin Dodge

Nivalion

Steinhausen/Zug, Switzerland

Lee Drucker

Lake Whillans

New York

Joe Dunn

Fortress Investment Group

New York

Susan Dunn

Harbour

London

Timothy Farrell

Longford Capital

Chicago

William Farrell

Longford Capital

Chicago

James Foster

LCM

London

Steven Friel

Woodsford

London

John Garda

Longford Capital

Dallas

Oliver Gayner

Omni Bridgeway

Sydney

Adam Gerchen

Gerchen Capital Partners

Chicago

Julia Gewolb

Validity Finance

New York

Adam Gill

GLS Capital

Chicago

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100

BRANDON DEME

BY JOHN RYAN

OF ALL THE LEGAL ROLES SERVED BY AN

entrepreneurial spirit, litigation finance and insurance has to be near the top. For Brandon Deme, combining that spirit with a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck has paid off handsomely for his career and legal teams in need of critical assistance as they pursue their claims, often against bigger adversaries. The 29-year-old co-founder of London-based Factor Risk Management is one of the youngest owners of a legal insurance brokerage in Europe. A diehard “Suits” fan, Deme never became a lawyer himself but instead has thrived on leveling the playing field in complex disputes from outside the courtroom. Lawdragon: Can you describe for our readers the types of services you and Factor Risk provide? Brandon Deme: As a broker, we provide litigation funding and After-The-Event insurance solutions to lawyers and their clients. Ultimately our aim is to mitigate the cost exposure risk for our clients and assist when we can in sourcing finance, allowing them access to justice. LD: How did you first become interested in the finance and insurance side of the law? BD: It kind of found me. As a university graduate I applied for a number of roles and insurance broking (originally professional indemnity) is what stuck. I was fortunate to join a small firm that was broking ATE insurance and funding whilst the industry was still in its infancy. Over time and as the industry grew, I really enjoyed it and the rest is history. LD: What do you enjoy about it? BD: Firstly being able to deliver! I enjoy having a task, a goal and getting it done. Deal making and bringing credible solutions to my clients’ problems is very satisfying to me. To know that I played a small role in helping people get justice or ultimately win their cases makes me happy. With this being a very niche market, professionally I am able to learn a lot in two sectors that I find fascinating. With each case and all of the counsel opinions and case law we get to read, I learn about the law. With the growing litigation funding industry, I get also to learn more about the finance side by working day-to-day with individuals far more intelligent than me. LD: Are there any trends you are seeing in litigation finance these days?

PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE FIRM

BD: Definitely, the utilization of litigation funding in cases. More and more law firms and clients are using this as a means to pursue cases which they may not have been able to otherwise. Whilst litigation funding does have its inefficiencies and isn’t suitable for every case, advising on funding terms, structuring deals and catering for the demand for it keeps us at Factor very busy. LD: Please discuss your career path. Did you ever work as a lawyer? BD: Once upon a time a long time ago, I wanted to be a lawyer. Maybe I was heavily infl uenced by watching seasons upon seasons of “Suits” and other law shows but during my A levels studying law I realized it was way more reading than the glamour of these shows highlighted. I went on to study business management and marketing at university instead with the goal of having my own business one day. My first professional job just so happened to be in this sector so I guess I’m lucky

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ANYONE WHO KNOWS ME KNOWS THAT I LIKE TO KEEP THINGS SIMPLE, I THINK SOMETIMES WE ALL OVER COMPLICATE THINGS. IN TERMS OF FOLLOWING A SIMILAR CAREER PATH, FOR ME IT WAS: ONE, WORK TO GET TO THE HIGHEST ROLE WITHIN MY COMPANY; AND TWO, TRANSITION THAT INTO SOME TYPE OF OWNERSHIP. to a certain degree to be able to do something within the legal sphere even if I am not the Harvey Specter in the courtroom. Can’t have it all I guess. LD: Do you have another graduate degree? BD: Whilst working full-time I obtained a diploma from The Chartered Insurance Institute. I thought if I’m going to be brokering insurance, I should really know a little about it, right? Jokes aside this was very useful for me to not only understand insurance and its many nuances but also to be able to properly advise my clients and even use this knowledge to get better terms for them. Once I completed that in 2018 I also went to Warwick University to study for my MBA, which I felt would be useful in enhancing my knowledge to run an organization. I graduated in 2020. LD: What advice do you have now for students or young professionals who wish to have a similar type of career? BD: I think the key is perseverance. There are going to be roadblocks along the way, but if you have a goal, the ability to adapt and strong desire, I genuinely believe you will reach your goal. These things always sound so cliche but for me it’s true. Very few people at any age let alone younger have it all ﬁgured out, and you don’t have to. As long as you strive to be great at whatever you are doing, opportunities will present themselves and you just have to follow your instinct. Anyone who knows me knows that I like to keep things simple, I think sometimes we all over complicate things. In terms of following a similar career path, for me it was: One, work to get to the highest role within my company; and two, transition that into some type of ownership. LD: Can you discuss some early mentors for you in the ﬁeld? BD: I’ve been in the industry for 10 years now. I think my biggest early mentor would easily be my

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partner and co-founder Tom Davey, who earlier was my boss at another ﬁrm. As he would say, he “polished a diamond up a little,” and that is very true. He gave me the technical knowledge I was lacking at the time. Being an industry veteran who has really seen it all, he helped me avoid a lot of mistakes a young ambitious kid would make. I certainly wouldn’t be where I am, as fast, without him. I remember he would take me to his meetings with major law ﬁrms, and I know they were sitting there like “Who is this kid?” or “He must be the note taker.” But he would ask me for my input and questions in the meetings to make sure I was switched on and engaged and this helped me gain respect within the industry and build relationships. Outside of this there are a number of known people in the industry whom I quietly observe, and they probably don’t know they mentor me, but they do. I’ve always been a fast learner, so wherever I can get knowledge I take the opportunity. LD: Is there a matter or client in your career that stands out as a “favorite” or one that is more memorable for certain reasons? BD: Obviously I love all my clients, so it’s hard to single one out in particular. I guess now that she has retired, I can mention Boz Michalowska who gave me an opportunity on my first big case, which turned out to be a great success. I owe a lot to her for giving me that opportunity, she is amazing! There are also people within the industry who are not necessarily clients who have helped me without knowing and I highly respect. For example, Susan Dunn, Adrian Chopin, Stephen Bolster and Rob Rothkopf. These are all people who I work with or in some cases compete with. Since I was a tadpole in the industry, they always had time for me, took meetings and probably unknowingly helped me understand the litigation funding and insurance market more through our discussions.

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I remember running into Adrian’s office unannounced trying to convince him to do a case as a hungry 23-year-old and he actually didn’t kick me out! Calling Rob maybe 10 times in a day to try to close out a matter. From an entrepreneurial standpoint watching how Susan grew Harbour Litigation Funding to what it is, is incredible and also Stephen Bolster starting his own Insurance MGA really inspired me and he in particular has believed and supported me and the business from the beginning. I guess the moral of the story is I like people who tolerate me! LD: What characteristics does it take to thrive in your area? BD: Drive and resiliency! That’s it. Everything else can be learned, but you have to be driven and resilient. LD: Where do you see innovation fitting into your area of the legal industry? BD: I think in any industry innovation is important. I hate being stagnant. As brokers we are uniquely placed to see how both the insurance and funding side works in aiding clients and law firms. We are constantly trying to develop new products utilizing one or both of these to deal with the inefficiencies in the market. Our ultimate goal is to provide quality solutions to our clients, and if we see an issue we try to solve it. Mitigating our client’s risk and helping them achieve affordable access to justice is our main aim. LD: Why did you decide to start your own firm?

BD: As I said before, I’ve always had the entrepreneur bug and I have always wanted to be in control of my destiny. I’m sounding like a “Star Wars” movie now, but honestly this is it. I wanted to be able to make decisions hopefully more right than wrong that could have an impact or influence, and that could bring change. I think the additional pressure of having your own firm works well for me and my partners as it brings the best out of us. There are no excuses, and there is no ceiling for our success. Either we win or we fail and that is what drives me. Again, I’m a simple guy. LD: What are some current challenges in your leadership role? BD: One of the major challenges is hiring people. Coming to the realization that we as management cannot do everything and be everywhere is really apparent as the business grows. I was reading a book the other day and it said one of the most important decisions a business owner has to make is who to hire and when to hire. Over the coming months, we will be bringing more people into our business but like with anything you want to make the right decisions. LD: What do you do for fun when you’re outside the office? BD: I am a keen traveler, I love to visit new places, try new food and learn about other cultures. I attempt very badly to learn new languages; my goal is to be fluent in 5 ultimately. I am an avid sports fan but my teams haven’t been doing so good lately so they will remain nameless.

I THINK IN ANY INDUSTRY INNOVATION IS IMPORTANT. I HATE BEING STAGNANT. AS BROKERS WE ARE UNIQUELY PLACED TO SEE HOW BOTH THE INSURANCE AND FUNDING SIDE WORKS IN AIDING CLIENTS AND LAW FIRMS. WE ARE CONSTANTLY TRYING TO DEVELOP NEW PRODUCTS UTILIZING ONE OR BOTH OF THESE TO DEAL WITH THE INEFFICIENCIES IN THE MARKET.

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100 NAME

COMPANY

Tom Glasgow

Omni Bridgeway

Singapore

Stuart Grant*

Bench Walk Advisors

Wilmington, Del.

Chris Hagale

Lake Whillans

New York

Laina Hammond

Validity Finance

Houston

Oliver Hayes

Balance Legal Capital

London

Louise Hird

Therium Capital

Melbourne

Rosemary Ioannou

Fortress Investment Group

London

Charles Jeffery

Harbour

London

Nick Johnson

Locke

London

Sarah Johnson

The D.E. Shaw Group

New York

Aaron Katz

Parabellum Capital

New York

Jim Kearney*

Lake Whillans

New York

David Kerstein

Validity Finance

New York

Mark King

Harbour

London

Thomas Kohlmeier

Nivalion

Munich

Zachary Krug

Signal Capital Partners

London

Christoph Kuzaj

Therium Capital

Dusseldorf

John Lazar

Burford Capital

New York

Alex Lempiner

Woodsford

Spring House, Pa.

Cayse Llorens

LexShares

Boston

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LOCATION

100

NAME

COMPANY

LOCATION

Ayse Lowe

Bench Walk Advisors

London

Andy Lundberg*

Burford Capital

New York

Jamison Lynch

GLS Capital

Chicago

Ellora MacPherson

Harbour

London

William Marra

Validity Finance

New York

Timothy Mayer

Therium Capital

London

Kevin McCaffrey

Law Finance Group

New York

Hugh McLernon*

Omni Bridgeway

Perth, Australia

Yasmin Mohammad

Fortress Investment Group

Paris

Jonathan Molot

Burford Capital

Washington, D.C.

Charlie Morris

Woodsford

London

Hassan Murphy

TRGP Capital

New York

Rosie Murray

Orchard Global Asset Management

London

Jack Neumark

Fortress Investment Group

New York

Angela Ni

Parabellum Capital

New York

Michael Nicolas

Longford Capital

Chicago

Stephen O'Dowd

Harbour

London

Emily O'Neill

Deminor

London

Kory Parkhurst

Harbour

Wichita

Molly Pease

Curiam Capital

New York

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100 NAME

COMPANY

LOCATION

David Perla

Burford Capital

New York

Rein Philips

Redbreast Litigation Finance

The Hague

Nick Pontt

Locke

London

Neil Purslow

Therium Capital

London

Robert Rothkopf

Balance Legal Capital

London

Michael Rozen

TRGP Capital

New York

Nick Sage

Bench Walk Advisors

New York

Andrew Saker

Omni Bridgeway

New York

Charles 'Chad' Schmerler

Pretium

New York

Grant Schrader

Law Finance Group

San Francisco

Howard Shams

Parabellum Capital

New York

Eva Shang

Legalist

San Francisco

Ajit Singh

Law Finance Group

San Francisco

Emily Slater

Burford Capital

New York

Cristina Soler

Ramco Litigation Funding

Barcelona, Spain

David Spiegel

GLS Capital

Chicago

Ruth Stackpool-Moore

Omni Bridgeway

Singapore

Tom Steindler

Exton Advisors

London

Tania Sulan

Omni Bridgeway

Adelaide, Australia

Ralph Sutton

Validity Finance

New York

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OLIVER GAYNER

LITIGATION FUNDING COMPANIES ARE FINDING

new ways to provide finance and related legal risk management services to companies, law firms and other professional advisers, individuals, governments and more around the world. Omni Bridgeway’s Managing Director and Co-Chief Investment Officer in the Asia-Pacific region, Oliver Gayner, has a deep passion for the work, having worked in the industry since its nascency. Gayner previously worked for leading law firms Freshfields and Olswang as a lawyer, and Burford

PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE FIRM

BY ALISON PREECE

Capital and IMF Bentham as a funder. “I learned huge amounts from each experience,” he says. In 2019, ASX-listed IMF Bentham and Europe-based Omni Bridgeway merged, combining enforcement and merits funding specialists, and civil as well as common law expertise. At the time of the merger, Gayner was IMF Bentham’s Head of EMEA, and was a key player in the deal. He now has his sights set on a new development that will improve efﬁciencies and increase funding opportunities for lower value claims the world over.

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100 “Much of our work is public interest, particularly when it aligns with ESG principles,“ says Gayner.

LD: Those are the ones where it’s all worth it. What trends are you seeing in litigation ﬁnance these days?

“Our business enables clients of any description to enter the justice system on an equal footing,” he says. “No individual can save the world, but at least I can help improve things case by case!”

OG: Litigation finance is continuing to grow and evolve in the core litigation markets around the world such as London and New York. Within Omni Bridgeway, I am responsible for managing the Asia Pacific region along with my friend and colleague Tom Glasgow. In terms of trends we are seeing in our region, in Australia litigation finance has traditionally been associated with insolvency and class action cases, but is now being taken up by the corporate market (SMEs and even large multinationals). Across South East Asia, there is huge potential for growth as jurisdictions like Singapore have permitted funding of international arbitrations and insolvency litigation, and other jurisdictions look to follow suit. There are also many judgments and awards going unpaid, which creates the need for our enforcement finance business.

Lawdragon: What drew you to litigation finance? Oliver Gayner: I practiced law for a decade in London before moving into litigation finance in 2012. At that point, litigation finance was in its infancy in the UK and I thought there was huge potential for growth. The legal sector has historically not been explored by the banks, and I thought there was a huge untapped asset class. I also liked the idea of working in a hedge fund type environment, after 10 years at the coalface in law firms! LD: What do you like most about the work? OG: For me the most satisfying projects are those that combine important points of principle with generating investment returns. In an ideal world, everyone should have equal access to the civil justice system, and if they did their cases would be decided purely on legal merit and not according to who has the best connections or deepest pockets. I find that a very motivating goal, and we are very fortunate that our business can combine both principle and profit. LD: Is there one case you’ve been able to fund that stands out as particularly memorable? OG: As a funder I have been fortunate to work with a wide range of meritorious claimants in the UK, Asia and Australia. When I first moved to Australia in 2015, I started work on my first ever class action, for a small community in regional New South Wales that had woken up one morning to a nightmare: Their homes and businesses had been declared part of a contamination “red zone,” resulting from decades of firefighting foam containing toxic chemicals called PFAS which had polluted the groundwater around the Williamtown Air Force Base. Groundwater is a precious resource in Australia, but our clients were faced with more immediate problems – as well as the health risks, they could not sell or mortgage their homes, or farm their land, or fish their waters. Four years later, we achieved a settlement of $212.5M for Williamtown and two other regional communities. The outcome was a game changer for the clients – it gave them a voice as well as enabling them to move on with their lives. It was legally, politically and socially a fascinating and important matter. 76

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LD: How has your firm changed since the merger between IMF Bentham and Omni Bridgeway in 2019? OG: The result is a uniquely global and full-service platform. At the time of the merger, I was IMF Bentham’s Head of EMEA and I worked intensively on the M&A process, which was a new but ultimately very rewarding experience for me. Since the merger, we can now provide assistance to clients facing legal issues at any stage of their process – from pre-litigation to post-judgment, and across each of our three main operating regions (North and South America, EMEA and APAC). That breadth is a very valuable and distinguishing factor. LD: What do you see coming down the line for the industry? Any predictions? OG: I am reluctant to try and predict the future! My focus is very much on being the first-choice funder across Asia Pacific, which involves spotting and developing opportunities, employing and developing the best people, and partnering with the right firms and clients. LD: How did you first decide to pursue a career in the legal industry? OG: I came to law relatively late, having graduated with a degree in English literature and started out in journalism. I find a good deal of overlap between the professions – legal cases involve a degree of narrative and storytelling, and whilst many of our cases are confidential there are some which are socially important and end up being reported by the media.

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I CAME TO LAW RELATIVELY LATE, HAVING GRADUATED WITH A DEGREE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE AND STARTED OUT IN JOURNALISM. I FIND A GOOD DEAL OF OVERLAP BETWEEN THE PROFESSIONS – LEGAL CASES INVOLVE A DEGREE OF NARRATIVE AND STORYTELLING, AND WHILST MANY OF OUR CASES ARE CONFIDENTIAL THERE ARE SOME WHICH ARE SOCIALLY IMPORTANT AND END UP BEING REPORTED BY THE MEDIA. We also in some cases use social media campaigns where it assists the strategic goal. You sometimes need to be creative as a legal financier – I was taught from an early age that you can’t win a race just by following everyone else! LD: What advice do you have for current law school students? OG: My advice is to try a few different options when you are young and see what fits best. Shadow some senior people, which will help you figure out where you want to end up with your career – Judge, partner in a law firm, board director or whatever. And then work backwards – what are the necessary steps to achieve that goal? LD: How has your profession changed since the early part of your career? OG: When I entered legal finance in 2012, it was a startup industry, in the UK at least. Now it is mainstream and global. The journey has been fascinating. LD: What characteristics does it take to thrive in this industry? OG: My clients tend to value a hard work ethic and determination for them to succeed. However, legal finance is a high risk and unpredictable asset class, and you need optimum risk analysis and decisionmaking processes. As Barack Obama has said, a sound, consultative and logical decision-making process allows you to make difficult decisions and still sleep at night. LD: What advice would you give potential clients in terms of how to most productively work with a funder? OG: Bring the funder in as early as possible, so that you jointly devise the case theory and strategy to pursue.

LD: Can you share some strategic plans for your firm in the coming months or years? OG: I have been working on a global project to help improve the efficiencies in our investment process. One aspect of that is devising a more streamlined, tech enabled and time efficient way to provide funding for higher volume, lower value claims – this is something we hope to take to market by the end of this calendar year. LD: How have management challenges changed since the start of your career? OG: There is now increased competition, both from other funders operating in the same markets, and for the most talented employees. LD: What do you do for fun when you’re outside the office? OG: I am fortunate to live in Sydney, a beautiful city and a great place to bring up a young family. On Friday nights after work I go sailing around Sydney Harbour with a team of mates who have a racing boat – it is an amazing way to close off the week. LD: Do you have a favorite book or movie about the law? OG: Yes – “Exposure” by the U.S. attorney Rob Bilott, which was turned into the movie “Dark Waters” starring Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hathaway. Bilott first exposed PFAS contamination in the U.S. and his story is heroic. LD: If you weren’t in the legal industry, what would you be doing now? OG: As a kid I dreamed of playing football or cricket for England, but now am very happy coaching my children and their local teams in Sydney!

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100 NAME

COMPANY

Raymond Tellini

Delta Capital Partners

Chicago

Harshiv Thakerar

Asertis

London

Sean Thompson

Parabellum Capital

New York

Marjolein van den Bosch-Broeren

Omni Bridgeway

Singapore

Raymond van Hulst

Omni Bridgeway

Geneva

Ross Wallin

Curiam Capital

New York

Marcel Wegmüller

Nivalion

Steinhausen/Zug, Switzerland

Boaz Weinstein

Lake Whillans

New York

Wieger Wielinga

Omni Bridgeway

Amsterdam

Aviva Will

Burford Capital

New York

Katharine Wolanyk

Burford Capital

Chicago

Andrew Woltman

Statera Capital

Chicago

Allen Yancy

LexShares

New York

Louis Young*

Augusta Ventures

London

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LOCATION

In a recent survey, 70% of corporations indicated they had abandoned litigation because of cost. Validity can help. We empower companies to achieve their litigation goals while managing legal spend, and enable law ﬁrms to take on more cases, increasing revenue and realization rates. To learn more, download our Guide to Litigation Finance here:

Validity is a leading commercial litigation finance company dedicated to fair funding practices that build trust. Clients and law firms count on Validity for reliable capital, strategic help, and risk minimization. For more, visit www.validityfinance.com

TRUSTED PARTNERS. GLOBAL PLACEMENTS. Lippman Jungers LLC is a global legal recruiting firm focusing on top tier partner and practice group placements and new office openings. Collectively, we have placed more than 500 partners and have opened more than 20 offices for law firms in new markets throughout the US, Europe, Asia and Latin America. We partner with firms and candidates nationally and globally. From offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, Milwaukee and New York, our domestic recruiting practice focuses on: California, Chicago and New York, as well as Washington DC and Texas and our international recruiting practice focuses on Greater China and London.

L I P P M A N J U N G E R S L LC • 8 1 8 . 9 0 7 . 5 7 0 0 • W W W. L I P P M A N J U N G E R S . CO M

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WE ARE DELIGHTED TO PRESENT OUR 6TH ANNUAL LAWDRAGON GLOBAL 100 LEADERS IN LEGAL STRATEGY & CONSULTING. The 6th annual Lawdragon Global 100 Leaders in Strategy & Consulting represents the crème de la crème of the legion of advisors who assist firms in recruiting, crisis communications, diversity and inclusion, marketing, management and even historic reconstruction. While they are geographically wide ranging, their largest imprint is in London and New York with healthy contingents in California, Washington, D.C., and increasingly Texas. Strategic and crisis communicators are major players advising attorneys – as evidenced by the 36 slots they own on this guide. Notable among them is the nearing combination of Finsbury Glover Hering with Sard Verbinnen. The market for lateral attorneys, too, has never been hotter, as reflected by the 33 all-star recruiters recognized from Macrae; Major, Lindsey & Africa; Lippman Jungers Bala; Johnson Downie; and others. The 100 were selected through our unique process of independent research, submissions and peer consulting. We spend time every day of the year tracking who’s up, who’s down and what’s happening that’s of the moment through the eyes of attorney clients and competitors. We appreciate all the numerous submissions as well as the time many of you invest with us ensuring we get it right. This guide is 48 percent female and 13 percent inclusive. Members of the Lawdragon Hall of Fame are denoted with an asterisk.

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100 FULL NAME

ORGANIZATION

LOCATION

CONTRIBUTION

Jacob Aitken

Kidd Aitken

London

Media – Directory Maven

Mike Androvett

Androvett

Dallas

Marketing & Communications

Scott Atlas*

Atlas Counsel Search

Houston

Professional Recruiting

Divya Bala

Lippman Jungers Bala

Los Angeles

Professional Recruiting

Louise Beeson

Bell Yard

London

Crisis Communications

Deborah Ben-Canaan

Major, Lindsey & Africa

Washington, D.C.

Professional Recruiting

Brandy Bergman

Reevemark

New York

Crisis Communications

Dan Binstock

Garrison & Sisson

Washington, D.C.

Professional Recruiting

Howard Breuer

Newsroom PR

Los Angeles

Media & Communications

Robert Brigham

Major, Lindsey & Africa

Palo Alto

Professional Recruiting

Cari Brunelle

Baretz Brunelle

Huntersville, N.C.

Marketing & Communications

Hugh Burns

Reevemark

New York

Crisis Communications

Paul Caminiti

Reevemark

New York

Crisis Communications

Delia Cannan

Reevemark

New York

Crisis Communications

Jennifer Simpson

Carr Furia Rubel Communications

Doylestown, Pa.

Marketing & Communications

Robert Clemons

Miles Partner Placement

Tustin, Calif.

Professional Recruiting

Jeffrey Conta

Lippman Jungers Bala

Chicago

Professional Recruiting

Timothy Corcoran

Corcoran Consulting

Charlottesville, Va.

Management Consulting

Michael Coston

Coston Consulting

New York

Marketing & Communications; Diversity & Inclusion

Silvia Coulter*

LawVision

Manchester, Mass.

Legal Consulting

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FULL NAME

ORGANIZATION

LOCATION

CONTRIBUTION

Angelica Crisi

Coston Consulting

New York

Marketing & Communications; Diversity & Inclusion

Lanny Davis*

Trident DMG

Washington, D.C.

Crisis Communications

Ray DeLorenzi

Rebuttal PR

New York

Crisis Communications

Jamie Diaferia

Infinite Global

New York

Media & Communications

Justine Donahue

Macrae

Washington, D.C.

Professional Recruiting

Lauren Drake

Macrae

Washington, D.C.

Professional Recruiting

Jesse Dungan

Infinite Global

San Francisco

Marketing & Communications

Kelsey Eidbo

Infinite Global

San Francisco

Marketing & Communications

Deborah Farone

Farone Advisors LLC

New York

Strategic Marketing Consulting

Jeremy Fielding

Kekst CNC

New York

Crisis Communications

Jonathan Fitzgarrald

Equinox Strategy Partners

Beverly Hills, Calif.

Strategic Marketing Consulting

Valerie Fontaine*

Seltzer Fontaine

Los Angeles

Professional Recruiting

Evan Fox

Long Ridge Partners

New York

Professional Recruiting

Joele Frank

New York

Public Relations & Investor Relations

Jason Gart

History Associates Incorporated

Rockville, Md.

Historical Detective

Robert Gemmill

Argyle

Washington, D.C.

Strategic Communications & P.R.

Philip Hall

Portland

London

Crisis Communications

Risa Heller

Risa Heller Communications

New York

Crisis Communications

Bruce Hennes*

Hennes Communications

Cleveland

Crisis Communications

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Sabina Lippman LIPPMAN JUNGERS (LO S ANGELES)

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SABINA LIPPMAN WHEN A MANAGING PARTNER OF A TOP TIER law ﬁrm needs a new rainmaker, they only need to make one call: Sabina Lippman.

The reason is simple – Lippman, co-founder of partner recruiting firm Lippman Jungers Bala, is efficient, laserfocused and tapped into the best talent on the market. Her track-record speaks for itself. She recently placed Nicole Brookshire, ranked by Deal Point Data as the top IPO issuer-side tech lawyer on the East Coast, at Davis Polk; Anthony Norris and Christopher Rile, highly respected partners in private equity, at Sidley; and leading capital markets lawyers Rick Kline and Sarah Axtell into the Silicon Valley offices of Latham & Watkins. Just to name a few. With an engineering degree and MBA from MIT and a J.D. from Michigan Law, Lippman is known by colleagues for her development and use of effective systems. (Fun fact: The United States Air Force is still using several of the information systems that Lippman created.) Lippman has the ability to understand the needs of the busiest and most profitable firms in New York, California, Texas and elsewhere in the U.S. and globally. Lippman is in regular communication with law firm leadership and top-tier attorneys in the hottest practice areas. In all these deep relationships, clients and candidates alike respect her ability to cut to the chase. “The time of the partners we work with is their most precious resource and I try hard not to waste it,” she says. “When we reach out to a client or a potential partner candidate about an opportunity, we make sure that it is firing on as many cylinders as possible.” She and her husband, Mark Jungers, founded their firm in 2011 and brought on Divya Bala two years later. The firm handles partner and practice group placements and new office openings, focused on top lawyers and the most heavyweight firms. Lippman Jungers Bala has grown dramatically since we last spoke with Lippman seven years ago, particularly in the ever-crucial New York market. We sat down with her recently to get her insights on hot practices and markets, from her front-and-center view on the movement of the world’s best legal talent. Lawdragon: What are the hottest practices areas in terms of placements these days?

PHOTOGRAPHY BY AMY CANTRELL

BY ALISON PREECE Sabina Lippman: Private equity, public M&A, cap markets. On the litigation side, white collar, antitrust and high stakes trial work. Anything connecting to life sciences, especially health care, both M&A and regulatory. One trend we’re seeing is that the top-tier firms in terms of profitability are opening up an increasing lead in attracting the star players these days. This is because of two things, primarily – a bigger compensation delta compared to firms the next tier down, and their strength in practices that are difficult to grow from scratch (or close to it). That can be hard to compete with. LD: Is there a way for the mid-tier firms to stay competitive for top talent? SL: Typically we’re in the business of helping people move upstream. Partners recognize that a firm may be paying to get them in the door, but if the overall balance sheet and fundamentals aren’t there, it might not be sustainable. But we occasionally will have a search where a firm that may not be top of AmLaw in terms of profitability will have a unique opportunity where there is a real 1+1=3. The best way to succeed in these cases is to get as personalized as possible. We look for synergies, with industries or clients, where a person would have an advantage with a firm that has expertise in a particular area. For some candidates, it’s attractive to be able to put their fingerprints on the glass, to lead and build a practice. If they feel like a cog in the wheel of a big operation, they may want to move to a firm where they are part of the growth effort, perhaps joining as head or co-head of the practice, even if that firm is lower in profits per equity partner, as long as they are paid fairly and attractively. LD: Is there a trend towards more practice specialization or are firms valuing more generalist partners these days? SL: It depends on the practice area and whether the specialization is based on industry or type of work. People in public M&A often work in a number of different industries, such as consumer products, tech or real estate. High stakes trial lawyers are attractive in and of themselves as generalists and often don’t play in any particular ponds, so they’re working across

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100 entertainment, tech, financial services, etc. – although some will focus in one of these areas. Similarly with private equity, because those clients will have investments in all different kinds of specialty areas. That said, you occasionally find someone who focuses in, say, real estate or energy-related private equity, but more likely it’ll be someone who’s working with private equity firms who invest in many different kinds of industries. In terms of specialists within a particular practice area, there is increasing interest in someone who has built a reputation in a particular niche in a hot practice area like PE or life sciences. You might have someone who specifically does benefits work in the context of private equity or who does debt finance work or private equity tax. Or in life sciences, someone who does regulatory, litigation, tech, transactional, M&A, or something even more specialized such as someone who focuses on life sciences regulatory work supporting private equity firms, and so on. Cap markets is getting more specialized. We’re seeing clearer differentiation around, are we looking for someone who’s on the bank side, the issuer side, someone who has a tech specialty? Once firms have their general practices set up, they want to hone in on what areas are most strategic. LD: Do you find that firms’ diversity and inclusion initiatives are impacting partner recruiting at all? SL: Yes, we’re getting there. I’ve had the good fortune over the past several years to work with a much greater number of female and diverse partners. They’re seeing real receptivity, not just lip service to those initiatives. In the past there was more of a focus on overall numbers and percentages that would often not translate into really meaningful roles, but now firms are saying, we would like to see female and diverse partners in leadership roles on litigation and deal teams. The percentages of our female and diverse placements compared to past years are pretty staggering, which is really exciting and encouraging. LD: That’s fantastic. Do you find yourself giving advice to female lawyers or lawyers of color who might have trouble marketing themselves or building their books of business? SL: I tend to give more advice to female partners, partly because I can speak from that perspective, and also because that’s often where you find the biggest confidence or risk-taking gap. I also care a lot about the wage gap issues and as they relate to female and male partners.

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I always want to make sure my candidates understand all the opportunities that are open to them, both based on their strengths and what they can bring from a diversity standpoint. I help them see the full landscape, including opportunities that they might not have known existed. There’s a famous study that men apply for a job when they meet only 60 percent of the qualifications, but women apply only if they meet 100 percent of them. Of course the wage gap is impacted by employer discrimination, conscious or unconscious, but the confidence gap is a very real factor. So that can mean there’s less of a likelihood for a woman to jump to a new firm, even if that change means a more significant opportunity in terms of practice building, compensation, leadership and taking her practice to a new level. It’s very gratifying for me to be able to counsel a woman through that process and get her to where she deserves to be. And we’re moving in the right direction, for sure. I’m seeing recently, as I’m placing women and people of color into better positions, then others in their circle realize what’s possible, they see there’s a sincere interest at the top of these firms in increasing diversity, and they become ready to make those moves themselves. LD: How about new office openings? Any trends coming out of the pandemic? SL: We’ve seen a few markets becoming more popular, for a variety of reasons. Centers of tech like Northern California, Miami and Austin have seen a number of openings as that becomes a strategic part of firms’ practices. Part of all this movement was sped up by the pandemic because you often can now work out of an area where your firm may not have an office. People are seeing that being remote is not all that bad. They can hop on a plane when they need to. Miami has become particularly hot lately in part because, in addition to the existing strong talent market there, you have New Yorkers who have really always split their time between the two because they thought, pre-Covid, they needed a New York presence, and that’s shifting. LD: What would you like law firms to know before working with Lippman Jungers? SL: We are not out to waste your time and we work very hard to exceed expectations. If you share with

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us your needs and give us more color on the culture and the specific type of person you’re looking for, we’ll be able to laser focus on that. We can understand what is said, and more importantly what is not said, and find you a candidate who is really on point. We’ve done it again and again, for the pickiest firms in the world. LD: And what would you like candidates to consider before working with your firm, or another recruiting firm? SL: Do your research. There are no entry barriers to this profession; you don’t need a specific degree. Our people all have law degrees or significant legal industry experience, but that’s not always the case in this industry and while it’s useful, it is one of many important data points. So, even if you get a call from a recruiter whose timing is really good, because you’re having a rough day, you’re questioning your place at your firm, and you’re inclined to listen to their pitch – still, do your research to make sure they are a legit player. Your career is probably the most important thing in your life next to your family, so don’t put it in the hands of a practitioner who’s not at your level. LD: You’re obviously at the top of your game. What would you say it takes to really thrive in the partner recruiting space? What makes Lippman Junger Bala so successful? SL: Work ethic, credentials and a high EQ. You’re working with people who have incredible resumes, but they’re practicing law most of the time; they haven’t been through this process of hiring or trying to be hired for over 20 years. While they may have close friends at many firms, they typically will not know the intricacies of those firms’ processes. So, they often need some coaching. You need to really know your stuff if they’re going to feel comfortable listening to you. The EQ comes in because you need to truly understand what somebody wants, what would motivate them, including the things that they’re not necessarily articulating. My partner (and husband) Mark Jungers has been a key player in this field for over twenty years and is someone who has the highest EQ of anyone I know. He can spend 20 minutes with a partner candidate or a client, and know what makes them tick and what the universe of interesting firms or partner candidates would look like for them. Our partner Divya Bala, who joined us in 2013, has been an absolute rockstar and has an extremely impressive

placement record. We are very fortunate that a good friend, who is also a partner I placed, introduced Divya to us and saw that she was special. I’m very excited about the team we have now. We have a really competitive group of folks, who I think can be real forces in the ﬁeld on a national level. Jeff Conta leads our Asia practice and works with me and Mark predominantly in Chicago and New York. Mary Copeland, in our New York ofﬁce, has been instrumental in identifying and working with a number of stellar candidates. Success builds on itself. There’s no way around it, you need to prove yourself in this business. Starting out over twenty years ago, we did all the cold calls. We now are fortunate to have the track record and the recognition such that, aside from all our standing relationships, we now get calls ourselves, from really meaningful players. We get incredible referrals. It takes time, and it takes being really good at what you do. There’s no way around it: If you want to play in the biggest sandbox, you need to be the best.

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100 FULL NAME

ORGANIZATION

LOCATION

CONTRIBUTION

Angela Hoague

The Levinson Group

Washington, D.C.

Crisis Communications

Paul Holmes

Finsbury Glover Hering

New York

Crisis Communications

Vivian Hood

Jaffe

Jacksonville

Crisis Communications

Kay Hoppe

Credentia

Chicago

Professional Recruiting

Melba Hughes

Major, Lindsey & Africa

Atlanta

Professional Recruiting

Stacy Humphries

Pye Legal Group

Houston

Professional Recruiting

Natasha Innocenti

Macrae

San Francisco

Professional Recruiting

Terry Isner

Jaffe

Washington, D.C.

Crisis Communications

Martin Jenewein

SMJ Partners Consulting

Vienna, Austria

Crisis Communications

Clint Johnson

Johnson Downie

Houston

Professional Recruiting

Jennifer Johnson

Calibrate Legal

Austin

Management Consulting

Mary Jummati

Morae

Chicago

Management Consulting

Mark Jungers

Lippman Jungers Bala

Chicago

Professional Recruiting

Suzanne Kane

Macrae

San Francisco

Professional Recruiting

Karen Kaplowitz*

New Ellis Group

New Hope, Pa.

Business Development Advisor

Daniel Kidd

Kidd Aitken

London

Media – Directory Maven

Jacquelyn Knight

Major, Lindsey & Africa

New York

Professional Recruiting

Sang Lee

Thine

Brooklyn

Professional Recruiting

Ann Lee Gibson*

Ann Lee Gibson Consulting

West Plains, Mo.

Management Consulting

Molly Levinson

The Levinson Group

Washington, D.C.

Crisis Communications

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FULL NAME

ORGANIZATION

LOCATION

CONTRIBUTION

James Leviton

Finsbury Glover Hering

London

Crisis Communications

Jon Lindsey*

Major, Lindsey & Africa

New York

Professional Recruiting

Sabina Lippman

Lippman Jungers Bala

Los Angeles

Professional Recruiting

Harlan Loeb

Argyle

Chicago

Crisis Communications

Andrew Longstreth

Infinite Global

New York

Media & Communications

Jennifer Loven

Finsbury Glover Hering

Washington, D.C.

Crisis Communications

Jeffrey Lowe

Major, Lindsey & Africa

Washington, D.C.

Professional Recruiting

Joe Macrae

Macrae

San Francisco

Professional Recruiting

Marcel Maijer

Johnson Downie

Houston

Professional Recruiting

Tim Maltin

Maltin PR

London

Crisis Communications

Myron Marlin

FTI Consulting

Washington, D.C.

Crisis Communications

Stefanie Marrone

Stefanie Marrone Consulting

New York

Social Media

Jeff McAndrews

Finsbury Glover Hering

Los Angeles

Crisis Communications

Ian McCaleb

Blue Highway Advisory

Washington, D.C.

Crisis Communications

Amy McCormack

McCormack Schreiber

Chicago

Professional Recruiting

Eleanor McManus

Trident DMG

Washington, D.C.

Crisis Communications

Bobbie McMorrow*

McMorrow Consulting

Summerland, Calif.

Professional Recruiting

Deborah McMurray

Content Pilot

Dallas

Marketing, Branding & Technology

Ryan McSharry

Infinite Global

London

Media & Communications

Gary Miles

Miles Partner Placement

Tustin, Calif.

Professional Recruiting

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100 Gary Miles and Robert Clemons MILES PARTNER PLACEMENT (TUSTIN, CA)

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BROTHERS IN LAW: GARY MILES AND ROBERT CLEMONS IN THE LEGAL RECRUITING WORLD, CONNECTIONS

span across industries and even continents. To stay up to speed on shifting global markets, many of the top recruiting firms employ upwards of 50 recruiters in offices across the country. But Gary Miles and Robert Clemons, co-founders of California-based Miles Partner Placement, tackle the legal search world with a team of just five powerhouse recruiters. When brothers-in-law Miles and Clemons decided to start their own recruiting firm, they had a vision of how they wanted their practice to look: One where recruiters were less headhunters and more counselors. A practice for the elite, not the everyday. One where there was no move too large, even for a small team. Like a family. It’s fitting: For co-founder Gary Miles, the law has always been a family affair. With two lawyers for parents, the dinner table frequently became a hotspot for legal debate. Miles’ father is still a practicing lawyer in Western Mass.; his mother was a senior staff attorney for Justice John Greaney – and it goes back even farther than that. Miles comes from three generations of attorneys on his father’s side. His maternal grandmother, meanwhile, graduated second in her class at Columbia Law School, in only the second class that admitted women – several years before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg did the same. Despite being born into the legal industry, when it came time to choose a career, Miles shifted gears. He felt passionately about the impact he could have in the public school system and spent 15 years as a middle school teacher and high school basketball coach for low-income students. He started a family of his own. The law wasn’t part of his life. But one more member of his family had roots in the legal industry. His uncle, Alan Miles, while not a lawyer, was developing a successful legal recruiting practice in Santa Monica. Miles’ uncle spent years asking him to come over. Finally, in 2007, Miles agreed. Immediately, Miles proved himself adept at the profession. Within his first couple of years, he was heading high-profile transactions and took the firm,

PHOTOGRAPHY BY AMY CANTRELL

BY EMILY JACKOWAY

Alan Miles & Associates, to the national stage. In 2008, he closed more than 20 separate partner and group transactions and generated more than $6M in revenue for the firm – a staggering number for someone in their second year in the field. From the outset, Miles found that building strong relationships was the key to the recruiting business. In his first year as a recruiter, Miles got in on the ground floor with global law firm Reed Smith. The law firm was just beginning to be recognized as a national and international powerhouse, but the legal industry didn’t yet recognize its full potential. Miles did. He worked closely with Reed Smith’s leadership to understand the firm’s story and to share it with candidates, bringing elite partners to the firm’s west coast locations and opening new offices. Building that relationship with an emerging law firm set Miles’ career in motion. “I think that the deal with Reed Smith was transformational for my career in that it established me as a recognizable brand, and it also expanded me into various markets successfully,” he reflects. Since then, Miles has placed more than 100 partners at elite firms including Paul Weiss, Kirkland & Ellis and Cooley and has opened offices for firms like Orrick and Brown Rudnick. Miles also spearheaded efforts in firm mergers, a then-largely untapped market for legal recruiters. In 2009, just over a year into his practice, Miles facilitated Bingham McCutchen’s headline-grabbing acquisition of McKee Nelson. “Truth be told, I don’t know a recruiter prior to the Bingham McKee Nelson merger that was involved in another AmLaw 100 acquisition of an AmLaw 200-size firm. Most of those were consultants,” Miles explains. Now, Miles identifies firm mergers as an increasing trend in the legal recruiting market. With his feet under him, it was time to expand the family business. Back when Miles was still teaching, one more lawyer entered the family tree: When Miles married his wife, Jena, he gained a brotherin-law in lawyer Robert Clemons. Later, steadfast in his belief that Clemons would be an excellent recruiter, Miles followed in his uncle’s footsteps and spent years convincing Clemons to try his hand at

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100 recruiting. In 2012, Clemons took the leap. He left his legal practice and joined Miles at Alan Miles & Associates. Their partnership flourished: Just two years later, Miles and Clemons struck out on their own, and Miles Partner Placement was born. The new firm proved their capacity for heft early on. They facilitated the move of most of Norton Rose Fulbright’s healthcare practice over to Reed Smith, including components in Washington D.C., New York, Houston and Dallas and opened the firm’s Austin office. Their smaller placements remain just as high-profile. In 2020, the firm spearheaded energy M&A duo Timothy Moran and Philip Corsello’s transition to Holland & Knight’s D.C. and New York offices. In 2021, they led single-partner placements for prominent partners at Kirkland & Ellis and Greenberg Traurig. No matter whether they’re placing a large group or a single elite partner, Miles, Clemons and the rest of their team thrive on high-pressure, highreward transactions. “It’s about doing what I call the ‘tombstone deals,’” Miles says. “Those are the market deals where, if folks were speaking at a eulogy in front of a community of recruiters, they would focus on those transactions.” Yet, while they take on large group placements, the firm itself has remained significantly more compact than its peers in the field. In addition to Miles and Clemons, the team at Miles Partner Placement includes experienced recruiters Doug Memel, Vadim Malikin and Spencer Villaseñor. With just five recruiters, they use their small size to their advantage. “Our true distinction is we’re small and nimble,” Clemons explains. “But that means we might have to work three times harder than any given shop that has who knows how many recruiters all over the country. But we will still cover the same ground.” Excelling in such a complex industry with a small team requires tireless dedication – challenges both Miles’ career as a teacher and Clemons’ as a lawyer have prepared them for. In addition to their tenacity, the pair say that recruiting requires looking at each deal individually, like a student or a case. “In the partner game, from single partners onto significant multifaceted groups, every deal is its own organism – its own life force. So, it has its

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own unique intricacies. You have to be amazingly organized,” Miles says. Being a successful recruiter, like being a successful lawyer, also requires around-the-clock focus. Miles recalls a time when he and his family were in Hawaii, but he was up at 2:00 a.m. with Clemons (who was in Tahiti) calling a client on the East Coast. “You’re not a doctor on call 24/7, but you have to function like one if you’re going to play at that level,” Miles says. “If you’re going to be a concierge to both sides of the transaction – the elite – that’s what this job entails.” Often, that commitment to high-caliber results expands beyond borders. Because Miles Partner Placement partners with elite international firms, they have to be up to speed on not only the intricacies of legal markets worldwide, but on how a given country’s political and financial climate influences those markets. “You have to have an understanding of the geopolitics happening around your dealmakers,” explains Miles. “When we take that approach, it makes us consultants versus just mere headhunters.” The team understands that issues happening at any given time in Europe, the Middle East or Asia can have a serious impact on the lives and practices of the attorneys with whom they are working. Regarding the climate here at home, Miles and Clemons recognize the nationwide calls for diversity and inclusion as vital to progress in the legal industry. “Skilled people come from everywhere, and that’s the beauty of what we’ve learned in the last few decades,” Clemons says. This year, Miles is speaking on an equity and inclusion panel at the National Association of Legal Search Consultants Fall Symposium in Washington, D.C. He’ll be hosting a discussion with Kanarys, a business started by two Black women who have developed a data-driven platform for fi rms to self-assess how successful they’ve been in upholding D&I initiatives. When asked what makes recruiting fulfilling, Miles’ answer harkens back to his basketball coaching past: He views every placement as a victory. “The beauty of this business is you get to play for a championship multiple times a year,” he starts to say. “Every day,” Clemons cuts in. “Every day,” Miles agrees. “Some you win, some you lose, but whether you win or lose, you’re preparing for the next championship.”

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IRIS JONES

BY ALISON PREECE

IN AN INCREASINGLY COMPETITIVE FIELD,

a smart and effective marketing team can make all the difference for lawyers and ﬁrms. Iris Jones is one of the best in the ﬁeld, leveraging technology and the evergreen power of relationships to position attorneys for long-term success.

Jones comes at the work with a firsthand understanding, as she is an attorney herself: She previously served as an assistant attorney general in Texas and also worked in private practice. She found she most enjoyed the business side of law, particularly client relationships and retention, so she made the move into business development. She now serves as Chief Marketing and Client Development Officer at Akerman, a national law firm with 24 offices across the country. Jones brings a forward-looking approach to client development, utilizing video messaging, social media and other digital content to help lawyers and firms connect with clients and position themselves as thought leaders. After two decades in the field, she remains a student, always looking for new ways for attorneys to have an impact. Jones was inducted into the Legal Marketing Association’s (LMA) Hall of Fame this year, a much-deserved recognition that is only bestowed on a select few. Lawdragon: How did you decide to make the move from practicing law into business development and marketing? Iris Jones: Even as a young lawyer, I was drawn to business development and high-level client service. When the opportunity arose to instruct Client Development/Relationship Management, I jumped at the chance. Working at the WJF Institute under Bill Flannery honed my client development skills and taught me how to launch client service team initiatives while making contacts nationwide. The training I, in turn, provided for AmLaw 100 firms across the country and in the UK led to my first in-house role as the client development and team building leader. LD: In what ways do you leverage technology and/ or systems in the work you do? IJ: Akerman is disseminating our attorneys’ voices and messaging by launching permanent in-house

PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE FIRM

video studios in three of our law offices (Chicago, New York and Miami). Continuous contact and engagement increase retention among clients and business relationships. Most marketing professionals agree video is significantly more effective than text as a messaging tool. Studies show viewers remember 95 percent of a video message and video connects us with our audience on a more personal level than the written word. We are also leveraging existing advances in technology with regard to the development and promulgation of RFPs (Request for Proposal). Databases allow us to select target audiences for specific messages and media outreach technology helps us deliver our news to select journalists instantaneously. LD: Do you have any “quick and dirty” tips for lawyers who want to raise their profile? IJ: I encourage all lawyers to regularly review their bios/profiles on their firm website and on social media platforms. Keeping your online presence up to date with your latest notable work and achievements is essential. Clients hire you not only for your

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100 pedigree, but for your achievements and legal savvy. Using these tools effectively is itself a sign that an attorney is keeping up to date. LD: What tips do you have for law firms and/or lawyers who want to leverage the power of social media? IJ: My tips are as follows: First, provide the attorneys hands-on training to improve their knowledge, comfort and social media acumen within these platforms. Next, each platform has its own style, lexicon and culture. I encourage firm leaders and lawyers to lean on their Marketing and Client Development team for guidance and support to ensure success and to use each platform in the most effective ways. It’s important to properly staff and budget necessary activities to keep the firm and its lawyers in a top-of-mind position. I also highly recommend that attorneys research current information about their clients and prospects by following and connecting with them on social media. Finally, I encourage content-rich postings deliberately focused on intended clients or prospective clients. Motivate others to retweet or share firm content and use the social media platforms to receive information, not just to transmit. We all need to be better listeners than talkers, in every forum! LD: You’ve long been an advocate for diversity and inclusion in the legal industry. How do you think the industry is doing in that regard? IJ: The legal industry has improved greatly from several decades ago when there was zero accountability for steps taken and progress made in recruiting, retention and promotion of women and people of color. We are well aware that many law firms continue to face challenges in retaining lawyers due to the talent wars that are more fierce than ever. Have we made progress toward a more diverse staff and attorney head count? Absolutely. However, the numbers and statistics still speak volumes about the work we have yet to accomplish. When law firms are asked to describe their Diversity, Equality and Inclusion initiatives, they often have a compelling story to tell but when it comes to actual goal-setting and accountability for achieving same, there are way too few voices heard. Akerman is the most diverse firm I’ve ever worked for, and I am honored to serve as its Chief Marketing and Client Development Officer. Our firm is proof that a diverse group of lawyers produces greater results. The power in our diversity is evident from the

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courtroom to the deal room, and our achievements are held in high esteem by our clients because Akerman’s commitment to diversity and accountability is authentic. Our high ranking with the Mansfield Rule Certification 5.0 Plus shows 75 percent of Akerman lawyers promoted to equity partner in the last year were members of historically underrepresented groups. Additionally, 41 percent of lawyers serving on our firmwide board of directors are from diverse backgrounds. As the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding. LD: What advice do you have for female and/or BIPOC lawyers who may find it more challenging to build their book of business? IJ: I advise women and attorneys of color to retain and/or build strong relationships with friends, neighbors, colleagues, fellow law school/undergraduate alumni and alumnae, and to connect with smaller firms for referral sources. Business is about the give and take, so remember not only to encourage and receive referrals but refer work to others; offer ideas for collaboration and possible joint ventures. Be proactive by volunteering for stretch assignments and offering to participate on firm client, business development and research teams. This allows you to actively seek and share cross-servicing opportunities within multiple practice areas, to expand your knowledge base and to increase your visibility within the firm. LD: Did you have mentors when you were first starting out in the field? IJ: I’ve been blessed to have more than a few outstanding mentors since my early days practicing law. The immense positive impact mentorship had on my life is one of the many reasons I advocate for mentorship to accelerate growth for young professionals. One of my first and longtime mentors was Gabrielle K. McDonald, my law professor, practicing attorney and the first Black woman appointed to the Federal Court in Texas. She later became the Presiding Judge over the War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, in the Hague. I had the honor of trying a case before her and the opportunity to witness a court proceeding in the Hague at which she presided. While working as a Senior Litigator and Deputy City Attorney for the City of Austin’s law department, Barney Knight (then City Attorney and my direct supervisor) mentored me by affording me stretch assignments and empowering me with challenging

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I ENCOURAGE ALL LAWYERS TO REGULARLY REVIEW THEIR BIOS AND PROFILES ON THEIR FIRM WEBSITE AND ON SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS. KEEPING YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE UP TO DATE WITH YOUR LATEST NOTABLE WORK AND ACHIEVEMENTS IS ESSENTIAL. projects and responsibility leading the litigation department. His support and mentorship led to my appointment as the first woman and first Black City Attorney for the City of Austin. After my work for the city, during my early years working in a law firm, the late Larry Langley was a great mentor, leader and friend. As Chairman of the Board, his spirit of fairness and inclusion, in large part, led me to high level first chair trial experience and ultimately a promotion to Shareholder in less than one year. There are too many mentors who were instrumental in supporting my career trajectory and I encourage everyone to consider seeking out mentors at every stage of one’s career. Becoming a mentor is also quite rewarding. LD: What role does mentorship play in your life now? IJ: After decades in the legal industry, I still work with mentors. At this stage in my career some are younger than I. We can learn from people of just about any age. Recent technological advances have taught me the importance of broadening my thinking about its potential application in driving innovation for the firm. My shining example of reverse mentorship was with Toshiko Nelson, a former associate producer at a local news station, whom I hired to launch the digital marketing program at a former firm. She provided tremendous insight into digital marketing and the importance of video messaging for law firms. Toshi now serves at The Hershey School as a Senior Communications Director. LD: How has legal marketing changed since you first started in the industry? IJ: Twenty years ago, legal marketing was straightforward and a somewhat simplistic profession. Marketers were primarily order-takers and executed small-scale, limited projects that lawyers felt were necessary, largely irrespective of their effectiveness. Today, the top marketers are seen as innovators and

leaders. We must be proactive and assertive. It’s our job to go out and find the best new tools and people to grow our firms’ business and visibility. We are competing and operating at a much higher level – it’s an exciting time to be in legal marketing. LD: What do you think are the keys to success for an in-house BD or marketing team to function well and best serve the lawyers and the firm? IJ: A well-functioning Marketing and Business Development team needs ongoing communication and collaboration. A successful team respects and understands each member‘s roles. At Akerman, we make every effort to bring the nationwide marketing team together in monthly meetings to interface and interact virtually. The key to successfully serving our firm’s lawyers is to treat them as internal clients. Understanding what our lawyers do positions us to serve them proactively. Fostering relationships yearround builds comfort and collaboration between firm lawyers and their marketers. LD: What did it mean to you to be inducted into the Legal Marketing Association’s Hall of Fame? IJ: It was a tremendous honor to be inducted into the LMA Hall of Fame in 2022. Over the years, nineteen to be exact, I have been actively involved with the organization, as a presenter, panelist and moderator, and I’ve served on and chaired numerous committees. Receiving this distinction is the highlight of my legal marketing career. I will always strive to live up to all that it stands for and will continue to mentor and support the careers of LMA members and newcomers to the marketing field. LD: What do you do for fun outside of the office? IJ: I am an avid reader, lifelong learner, movie and theater aficionado, and enjoy all genres of music. I am happiest in the garden, attending wine tastings or wine education courses. My passion is creative writing, and I am currently working on my fourth screenplay.

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100 FULL NAME

ORGANIZATION

LOCATION

CONTRIBUTION

Patty Morrissy

Morrissy Legal Search

New York

Professional Recruiting

Ellen Moskowitz

Brunswick

New York

Crisis Communications

Seelin Naidoo

Frontline

St. Louis

Legal Technology & Operations

Victor Neary

Robert Half

St. Petersburg, Fla.

Professional Recruiting

Sydney Ann Neuhaus

Finsbury Glover Hering

New York

Crisis Communications

Kathy O'Brien

Rubenstein

New York

Marketing & Communications

Zach Olsen

Infinite Global

San Francisco

Media & Communications

Ruth Pachman

Kekst CNC

New York

Crisis Communications

Lloyd Pearson

Pearson Communications

Brighton, United Kingdom

Media – Directory Maven

Peter Pochna

Rubenstein

New York

Marketing & Communications

Charlie Potter

Brunswick

London

Crisis Communications

Nick Pournader

P&C Global

Toronto

Management Consulting

Blane Prescott

MesaFive

San Francisco

Management Consulting

Pat Rafferty

Androvett

Dallas

Media & Communications

Melanie Riley

Bell Yard

London

Crisis Communications

Allan Ripp

Ripp Media & Public Relations

New York

Media & Communications

Jane Roberts

Macrae

Washington, D.C.

Professional Recruiting

Gina Rubel

Furia Rubel Communications

Doylestown, Pa.

Public Relations

Andy Russell

Macrae

London

Professional Recruiting

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FULL NAME

ORGANIZATION

LOCATION

CONTRIBUTION

Aidan Ryan

Edelman

Washington, D.C.

Crisis Communications

Joy Saphla

Morae

Houston

Strategy & Business Performance

George Sard

Sard Verbinnen

New York

Communications

Dawn Schneider

Schneider Group Media

New York

Media & Communications

Elonide Semmes*

Ravir

New Orleans

Marketing & Branding

Michael Short

LawVision

Washington, D.C.

Legal Consulting

Michael Sitrick*

Sitrick

Los Angeles

Crisis Communications

Warren Smith

Smith Legal Search

Vancouver

Professional Recruiting

Renée Soto

Reevemark

New York

Crisis Communications

Michael Talve

The Expert Institute

New York

Litigation Consultant

Jeffrey Taufield

Kekst CNC

New York

Crisis Communications

Jon Truster

Macrae

New York

Professional Recruiting

Paul Verbinnen

Sard Verbinnen

New York

Crisis Communications

Kaye Verville

The Levinson Group

Washington, D.C.

Crisis Communications

Melinda Wallman

Macrae

London

Professional Recruiting

Larry Watanabe

Watanabe

Solana Beach, Calif.

Professional Recruiting

Dan Wilson

Mercury

Washington, D.C.

Crisis Communications

Gulam Zade

Frontline

Nashville

Legal Technology & Operations

Sara Zahoryin

Johnson Downie

Houston

Professional Recruiting

Kent Zimmermann

Zeughauser Group

Chicago

Management Consulting

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8 RECRUITERS NAMED GLOBAL 100 LEADERS IN STRATEGY & CONSULTING

(Macrae is the most-cited company on the list and home to 1 in 3 law firm-focused recruiters honored)

GROWING LAW FIRMS AND PARTNERS’ CAREERS IN THE 4 LARGEST GLOBAL MARKETS (London, New York, Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Bay Area)

1 TRAILBLAZING SEARCH FIRM (Powered and United by Collective Intelligence)

Suzanne Kane (San Francisco)

Jon Truster (New York)

Melinda Wallman (London)

Andy Russell (London)

Jane Sullivan Roberts (Washington, D.C.)

Joe Macrae (San Francisco/NYC/London)

Justine Donahue (Washington, D.C.)

Lauren Drake (Washington, D.C.)

500

Hall of Fame Among this year’s inductees are the nation’s greatest corporate litigators, plaintiff powerhouses, innovators who established new areas of law practice and individuals whose dedication to a sometimes precarious legal system are unsurpassed. Among them is Cravath partner Evan Chesler, whom we first met shortly after we founded Lawdragon in 2005. He was among a handful of lawyers in those early years who helped us define our aspirations of those we sought to write about, whose careers and achievements could inspire others. His tenacity and intelligence leading corporations through their toughest battles is the best a lawyer can be. We present to you 58 new additions in 2022, as well as Lawyer Limelights with a sampling of the honorees who have made the Hall of Fame since we first launched it in 2015. It’s a great honor to write about them and have the opportunity to simply say: “Thank you for all you’ve done. You inspire us and so many others.”

PHOTO OF EVAN CHESLER BY ANNIE TRITT

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Lawdragon is proud to present Hall of Fame Lawyer Limelights this year with the following members. MARY ALEXANDER

STEVEN KAZAN Kazan McCLain

Mary Alexander & Associates Category: Litigators

Category: Litigators

DAVID KIRBY Edwards Kirby

LYNN BERNABEI Bernabei & Kabat

Category: Plaintiff Trial Lawyers

Category: Litigators

FRANK PITRE Cotchett Pitre & McCarthy

BRAD BRIAN Munger Tolles Category: Litigators

JIM FITZGERALD The Fitzgerald Law Firm Category: Plaintiff Trial Lawyers

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Category: Litigators

HARRY REASONER Vinson & Elkins Category: Litigators

AARON FREIWALD Freiwald Law

RON SAFER Riley Safer

Category: Plaintiff Trial Lawyers

Category: Compassion

JAY GOFFMAN Teneo

TODD A. SMITH Smith LaCien

Category: Dealmakers

Category: Litigators

STUART GRANT Bench Walk Advisors

DEBORAH WILLIG Willig Williams

Category: Innovators

Category: Litigators

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500

2022 Inductees NAME

FIRM

CATEGORY

Stuart Liner

DLA

Innovators

David McClain

Kazan McClain

Plaintiff Trial Lawyers

Craig McClellan

McClellan Law Firm

Plaintiff Trial Lawyers

Bobbie McMorrow

McMorrow Consulting

Consultant

Ron Mercaldo

Mercaldo Law Firm

Plaintiff Trial Lawyers

Robert R. Michael

Shadoan Michael

Plaintiff Trial Lawyers

Ted Mirvis

Wachtell

Litigators

Ann Oldfather

Oldfather Law Firm

Plaintiff Trial Lawyers

Isaac Pachulski

Pachulski Stang

Dealmakers

Joe Power

Power Rogers

Litigators

Harry Reasoner

Vinson & Elkins

Litigators

Ron Safer

Riley Safer

Compassion

Dick Sayles

Bradley Arant

Litigators

Frederick Schenk

Casey Gerry

Plaintiff Trial Lawyers

Todd Smith

Smith LaCien

Litigators

Robert Spohrer

Spohrer Dodd

Plaintiff Trial Lawyers

Neil Sugarman

Sugarman

Plaintiff Trial Lawyers

Fred Thompson III

Motley Rice

Plaintiff Trial Lawyers

Charles W. Whetstone Jr.

Whetstone Perkins

Plaintiff Trial Lawyers

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MARY ALEXANDER CELEBRATED PERSONAL INJURY ATTORNEY

Mary Alexander views the law with a scientific eye and her clients with a compassionate heart. A former environmental health and toxicology scientist, Alexander entered the legal field more than 30 years ago and has been fighting for consumers in California and nationwide ever since. She has litigated tirelessly on behalf of victims of negligence, with clients ranging from victims of preventable car crashes to survivors of sexual abuse. In the latter area, she is widely recognized for her work representing victims of childhood sexual abuse by clergy members – cases that are emotionally and logistically difficult to bring to court. But Alexander knows the importance of being heard. In all her cases, she has one goal: Make perpetrators pay.

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BY EMILY JACKOWAY

Alexander’s unique scientific expertise enables her to represent her clients with a depth of knowledge not only of the law, but also of the medical and biological implications of her clients’ injuries. In one such case, she was one of the lead attorneys in a twenty-year litigation against multiple paint companies whose lead-based paint had been used in California homes. After those two decades of battle and team effort, Alexander and her clients were rewarded with a staggering $1.15B bench verdict. But money isn’t everything. With successful cases like these, Alexander generates not only monetary beneﬁt for her clients, but policy changes that aid untold numbers of California residents and stop injuries before they happen.

PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE FIRM

500

Out of the courtroom, Alexander has been elected to high-ranking positions in multiple bar associations. She has served as president of both the Consumer Attorneys of California and the American Association of Justice, where she has continued to advocate for consumer rights on a nationwide scale.

a minor in chemistry. So, I like to think they can’t pull the wool over my eyes.

Alexander was inducted into the Lawdragon Hall of Fame in 2021.

LD: One of the things that stood out to me about you and your ﬁrm was your motto that you measure success in lives changed, not in dollars earned. Can you tell me about any particular cases where you feel you were really able to make an impact in somebody’s life or in a policy change outside of a verdict or a settlement amount?

Lawdragon: Tell me a bit about the founding of your ﬁrm.

MA: One of those cases was actually an almost 20year case.

Mary Alexander: Well, my ﬁrm, in its current form, started in about 2001. Before that I was with larger ﬁrms until I went out on my own.

LD: Right, the lead paint litigation.

LD: Why did you decide to start your own firm? MA: I thought that it would be very exciting to have my own firm and work on the cases that I wanted to do. We do general personal injury, but we’ve also done mass torts. Right now, for instance, I’m working on the clergy cases. In California right now, we have a window open for people who were abused by priests or somebody in the Catholic Church to come forward, no matter how long ago it was, and bring an action. It’s very satisfying to help these people who suffered for many years to get compensation and justice. So, that’s an example of the matters I’ve focused on that have been important to me. LD: When did you first become interested in practicing personal injury law? MA: It was when I was in law school, trying to decide if I wanted to be a scientist with a law degree or a lawyer with a science degree. Before law school, I was a scientist with a career in environmental health toxicology. I worked for a number of years at Stanford Research Institute in environmental and occupational health. So then, when I wanted to study law, I thought I could continue in the area of regulation as a lawyer. But the question was: Did I actually want to be a lawyer that was litigating and representing people? In the end, I thought it would be most satisfying to help individuals. I wanted to make a difference in the world and thought I could do that more by being a lawyer than by doing research.

MA: Exactly. We sued the lead paint companies for nuisance in our homes, because lead paint was not banned until 1978 in California. In the nine public entities that we represented, there were thousands and thousands of houses that still had lead paint. The goal was to protect children from lead paint poisoning and to get the lead out of the houses. So, we went on appeal numerous times, we finally had a trial, and then it settled. That was a very long, hard battle, but it was satisfying to make a difference, to try to protect children from lead poisoning. LD: Wow. How did that case begin? Could you tell what a battle it was going to be? MA: Well, we knew it was going to be a battle, but we didn’t know it was going to last that long. The City and County of San Francisco asked me to come in because of my background in toxic chemicals. In fact, I’d even done research on lead during my career in the laboratory. LD: Another use for that science background. Then, tell me a bit about your firm. You’ve kept it pretty tight-knit. Has it grown in the way that you expected over the years? MA: The firm has grown in the way that I had hoped it would in terms of the cases that we do. In addition to the cases that I’ve mentioned, we also do pharmaceutical cases. For example, we’re currently doing talcum powder cases against Johnson & Johnson. We’ve done increasingly more work on mass torts, but it is still the individuals that we’re representing. We want to make a difference in their lives, and we’d also like to make a change in the world.

LD: How do you feel that scientiﬁc background informs the cases that you try now?

LD: How have you seen those changes manifest themselves?

MA: I use science every day, all the time – particularly if I take a deposition with a scientiﬁc expert. I’ve had training and experience not only on the biology and the health side of things, but I took physics and had

MA: One thing that I’ve found, even in my individual cases, is that we can make a real change. For example, in an automobile case we tried where there was no wall dividing a highway, a truck came over the line

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500 and killed my client’s husband. The trial made a difference for her, but not only that – after the case was over, up went a wall. In another case, a man was hit by a train and he survived, but lost his leg. They had said, “Oh, we couldn’t possibly put up a fence to keep people from crossing there.” After the trial, a fence went up right away. There are numerous examples of policies that have been changed because of a case that I brought when they said they couldn’t possibly make that change. So, these cases really can help keep the public in general safe. LD: Those real-world impacts are so important. Speaking of which, you mentioned the clergy sexual abuse cases. I know sexual abuse cases are at the forefront of your practice. Tell me about how you got involved in that practice area, and how you help support clients who are in such a vulnerable position. MA: I started doing child sexual abuse cases at the very beginning of my career – so 35 years ago now. My ﬁrst case was a child who was molested by a janitor in an afterschool program, and I’ve been doing them ever since. I ﬁrst represented people in clergy cases when there was a one-year window that opened in 2004, and then we now have this additional three-year window, which is going to close at the end of 2022. It was that early case that made me realize how important it is to help people who have experienced child sexual abuse. Sometimes, it takes people into their 50s or 60s before they can even talk about it, and they’ve never told anyone. Without a window of statute of limitations available, there’s no redress for them if they choose to come forward. It is hard when they’re going through it. You have to really support them through the whole process of the case – support them in a way that helps them heal and helps them feel like they’re getting justice and getting their power back. They felt powerless as children and that feeling often carries through until they get access to justice.

LD: I imagine it must be very different working on cases where the crime happened so far in the past. MA: It is different than trying to litigate, say, an auto accident that just happened. Witnesses have passed away or other witnesses’ memories have faded. But the memory for the child – now adult – who suffered the abuse has not faded. I think it’s important that the Church takes responsibility and compensates these people. LD: Absolutely. Are there any other landmark cases that stand out in your memory? MA: One of the important cases in my career was a bicycle case, an accident that happened in the Yosemite Valley. A woman came into the park and rented a bicycle from the Curry Company. She rode downhill, her brakes didn’t work, and she crashed into a tree. She broke her neck and was on a breathing machine for life. That case was difﬁcult because we had to prove that the brakes didn’t work, bring in eyewitnesses, perform tests on the bicycle and go through lots of depositions. But it ended in a great verdict for her. That verdict meant that we were able to get her the funds to get out of the hospital – she’d been in the hospital for two years – and get care at home. So, to have her own home, to have her own nurses, where she didn’t have to wait for a sip of water or the care that she needed – that was really satisfying. And it changed the way things were done in Yosemite Valley. In another major case, a husband and wife were walking home from having dinner two houses down from their neighborhood. They were holding hands and, in the dark, a drunk person came along, ripped him out of her hand, hit him and killed him. It was a very dangerous roadway. Even though this was the residential area, there was no sidewalk – no place to walk except just on the side of the road. The city knew that the road was a problem. And

“ONE THING THAT I’VE FOUND, EVEN IN MY INDIVIDUAL CASES, IS THAT WE CAN MAKE A REAL CHANGE. THERE ARE NUMEROUS EXAMPLES OF POLICIES THAT HAVE BEEN CHANGED BECAUSE OF A CASE THAT I BROUGHT WHEN THEY SAID THEY COULDN’T POSSIBLY MAKE THAT CHANGE. SO, THESE CASES REALLY CAN HELP KEEP THE PUBLIC IN GENERAL SAFE.”

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500 “I USE SCIENCE EVERY DAY, ALL THE TIME – PARTICULARLY IF I TAKE A DEPOSITION WITH A SCIENTIFIC EXPERT. I’VE HAD TRAINING AND EXPERIENCE NOT ONLY ON THE BIOLOGY AND THE HEALTH SIDE OF THINGS, BUT I TOOK PHYSICS AND HAD A MINOR IN CHEMISTRY. SO, I LIKE TO THINK THEY CAN’T PULL THE WOOL OVER MY EYES.” one of the reasons was the school right there. Kids were doing the same thing. Children were walking to school along the road with no sidewalk, and with rocky terrain in certain areas. So, we were able to proceed against the city for a dangerous roadway and settle that case for money to compensate the widow and their two children who were teenagers. Also, there has been a change in the road now. LD: That seems to be a common theme with all your cases. Yes, there’s a verdict or a resettlement, but there’s that real-world impact, which is so important. How about recent cases – what kinds of matters have kept you busy lately? MA: We’ve also focused on toxic chemical cases that fit right into my background. Benzene cases, for example, have been big lately. Benzene is found in petroleum products. I tried a case for families of two men who worked in a factory in Arkansas, but they were exposed in California. We were able to get a $22M verdict, which of course is on appeal now, but I find those cases really interesting. I get to use my science background, as well as to get justice for families who’ve lost their loved ones through no fault of their own. They weren’t warned and had no personal protection on the job. It is really important that the companies responsible are brought to justice. LD: Are there any cases that have exposed you to areas of science that you hadn’t researched in your previous career? MA: I have worked in some new areas. For example, some pharmaceuticals have whole new diseases and mechanisms of action. But I find that I’ve been reading scientific articles my whole adult career and being able to know the language – to know the principles of, for example, a dose response – is vital for the whole gamut of scientific cases. LD: How would you describe your style as a lawyer? I’m sure your science background feeds into that.

MA: I would like to think that I represent my clients vigorously but am still civil to the other side. I also like to make sure that the case proceeds in a timely manner so that we get it to trial as fast we can. I think it’s important to move the case along as quickly as possible for the beneﬁt of the client. LD: You’ve also served as president of multiple bar associations. Tell me a bit about that. MA: I was president of the California Trial Lawyers Association, now called the Consumer Attorneys of California. When I was president, we fought three anticonsumer initiatives that would’ve really hurt people’s ability to bring cases, and we were successful. Then I was also president of the American Association of Justice, which is nationwide. When I was president there, we were facing a medical malpractice bill that would have reduced people’s ability to bring medical malpractice cases – and we defeated that bill, as well. So, I have spent a lot of my time and energy in bar associations to help make a difference for consumers across the country, not just in California. LD: How do you have fun outside of work, to get a break from so many emotionally trying cases? MA: The joy of my life is my grandchildren, and I really enjoy being with them and being with my whole family. I also do volunteer work, particularly for my church. So, in that way I do have an escape from my work. LD: Over the years, you’ve received so many awards, accolades and leadership positions. To what do you attribute your success? MA: Well, if I’ve been successful, I think it’s not only from hard work, but really from caring about clients. Very early on, when I was a brand-new lawyer, one of my mentors said, “The lawyers who do well are the ones that care about their clients – not just about the money”. That stuck with me, and that’s really been a part of my entire career and my approach to the law.

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to AIDS back in the ‘80s and is currently litigating cases related to Covid-19. With the widespread effect of the pandemic, Bernabei’s clients have been diverse: anyone from doctors and nurses speaking out about the lack of personal protective equipment they’ve been afforded, or vulnerable individuals who have been ﬁred after prioritizing their own safety over returning to the ofﬁce. Badly behaving employers often believe their size or wealth can allow them to silence potential whistleblowers. But as long as workers’ rights continue to be violated, Bernabei and her team will work to help individuals stand up for themselves, their colleagues and the public at large. Bernabei was inducted into the Lawdragon Hall of Fame in 2021.

LYNN BERNABEI BY EMILY JACKOWAY

AS AN EMPLOYEE, FIGHTING FOR YOUR

Lawdragon: How did you ﬁrst become interested in employment and civil rights litigation?

For decades, Bernabei has fought to uphold the rights of whistleblowers and victims of workplace discrimination and harassment, and to help forge a path for the country’s most revolutionary workers. In doing so, she has built a word-class ﬁrm, Bernabei & Kabat, which specializes in civil rights, discrimination and employment litigation, as well as whistleblower law. A lifelong activist, Bernabei knows that her clients’ actions take bravery and risk. She supports them in every way she can – tackling major corporations, governments and public entities to initiate social change and make sure her clients’ voices are heard.

Lynne Bernabei: I’ve always been an activist. I was a child of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, and we did a lot of organizing, especially in anti-war work. I also always saw myself as somewhat of an outsider because of the way I grew up. I grew up working-class, but went to upper-class high schools in Chicago’s North Shore, which eventually led to Harvard. I always felt like I was in the community, but not quite “of” the community. Outsiders always appealed to me. Most of the time, the people who make effective change are outside the system – women, people of color, whistleblowers. That is how, psychologically, I got into the area.

rights isn’t easy. Lynne Bernabei makes it easier.

With the current reckoning with racial prejudice and workers’ rights across the country, Bernabei and her team are instrumental in helping shift policies to those that are more equitable, inclusive and progressive. In one current case, Bernabei represents a whistleblower from an anti-sex trafficking organization. Her client, a survivor of sex trafficking herself, was one of many employees fired as a result of the group’s allegedly racist practices. In a progressive city like D.C., Bernabei says, “It’s shocking to see an organization so ravaged with racial discrimination.” Her clients’ cases are often closely tied to current events: She litigated precedent-setting cases related

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LD: Did you know that this was the area that you wanted to focus on from the start? LB: No, not at all. I didn’t even want to be a lawyer originally. I had been a reporter for a couple of years, but I was too much of an activist. I always wanted to do certain kinds of stories, and, unless you own the newspaper, you really couldn’t do those stories. I ended up in law school, and I was really lucky because I had a clerkship with a wonderful judge, Judge William Bryant – a real pioneer. Seeing his life story and what he’s achieved led me into public interest and discrimination law.

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LD: Tell me about founding your firm. LB: Well, I used to be with a partner, Debbie Katz, for almost 20 years. The idea was that we’d take the sorts of cases that would make a difference. Obviously, we’re totally client-oriented, so whatever the client wants is what we do. We have a mix of cases, both discrimination and whistleblower cases, that get resolved early on. Then there are cases that go on for years and years of litigation. Those tend to be the cases where there’s a significant public interest goal involved, and they hopefully lead to some change. LD: The impact your cases have had is incredible. Tell me, for instance, about the case involving sexual harassment and workplace discrimination for unpaid interns. LB: That was a fascinating case. We had 11 plaintiffs, who all worked at the largest satellite broadcast entity from China. All of our clients were Chinese nationals. The women in the organization started bringing up claims of sexual harassment, and there were a number of men down in the D.C. office who supported the women in their claims. They had two offices on the east coast: one in New York and one in the District of Columbia. Of course, all the men who supported the women got harassed, pushed out or fired. Then the clients got sued, and I got sued for representing them.

young woman who had HIV was mistreated at Howard University Hospital. They didn’t have universal precautions, so they basically isolated anybody that they suspected of having HIV or AIDS. They would just put them in rooms alone. She almost committed suicide, and then was very mistreated by security. It was horrendous. We sued them for discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act because they had failed to treat all kinds of patients, including those with HIV or AIDS, in all wards of the hospital. The hospital basically segregated them. It was really a wild case; they fabricated documents and threatened our expert. Eventually, we succeeded in a settlement, and got them to adopt universal precautions. It was really a very rewarding case. LD: I’m sure. Was there a breakout case at the start of your career that propelled you forward into more of these high-proﬁle cases? Or did your caseload kind of build up over time? LB: I guess it built up over time. I worked for a public interest group that represents whistleblowers, so we did a lot of high-proﬁle nuclear cases, both for whistleblowers and against some dangerous nuclear plants.

We discovered that the owner of the network, one of the wealthiest men in China, had designed a retaliatory plan to ﬁre everybody, sue us, sue our clients and stop us from carrying on with the case.

I also worked with housing groups trying to uphold the constitutionality of the Rental Housing and Conversion Act, which was enacted a long time ago in the District of Columbia to protect people who were being displaced as a result of the massive conversion efforts that were going on around the city.

One of our clients was a student intern in New York, so she wasn’t paid when she worked there. The laws – even the laws in New York at that time – didn’t protect interns very well. So, the judge kept the case in court, but he also said that New York law does not protect interns.

The developers created a strategy to declare the law unconstitutional. Of course, the people who cared about the law didn’t have a lot of money. They were basically poor people who had lived in rental buildings for their whole lives who were being displaced, and there wasn’t good low-cost housing available.

That decision created a ﬁrestorm with the mayor, with the city council, and with the state legislature. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of unpaid interns in New York City. They weren’t protected. You could do anything to them. So, they passed legislation to protect unpaid interns as a result of this judge’s decision.

Over the course of the case, which took 10 years, we represented the tenants’ associations in four different buildings. The city, in the meantime, got lots of campaign contributions from developers and stopped defending the law. We went to court on behalf of the tenants, and the city would not show up to defend.

LD: I love that so much of your work helps individual people, but also helps the public at large. LB: Another was a case we did in the early days of HIV and AIDS, when medical professionals were afraid of treating people with HIV. We had a case where a

Eventually, we succeeded in upholding the constitutionality of the law, and it exists today. It’s been watered down in some respects, but it’s substantially in the same form it was back then. LD: What kind of cases have been keeping you busy lately?

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500 LB: We had a number of cases involving the pandemic. The pandemic revealed a lot of things, including the lack of equity in our healthcare system and the lack of protections for doctors and other healthcare workers. We tried to develop a number of cases – and some of them are still active – representing healthcare workers who were not given appropriate personal protective equipment, or employees who got fired when they asked for a safe workplace. The problem in a lot of whistleblower cases is that there’s no legislation that protects them. So, you’re really relegated to wrongful discharge, and that’s not very plaintiff-friendly law. You have to prove all these conditions as to why they got fired that are unrelated to the whistleblowing. We did a couple of those cases. We did succeed in helping some individuals, but the gaps in the legal protections for people who complain about their working conditions became very apparent, and still exists to this day. However, in this line of work, even when we lose a case, I think we push things along further. For instance, I had a case at my old firm against Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital, which was a public mental hospital. We were involved with a coalition of D.C. homelessness groups, including doctors that worked at Saint Elizabeth’s and other community activists who cared about mental health issues. In D.C., and probably in many other communities, the mentally ill make up most of the homeless population. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a movement to deinstitutionalize mentally ill people, because there were too many people in public mental hospitals. While that was a great idea, the concept was that they would do better in community mental health centers. But those were never created. The hospital entered into a consent decree with the Mental Health Law Project to basically get everybody out of the hospital. Then, the mayor at the time wanted to sell off the land which had been deeded for the mentally ill, to build condominiums. So, we came in and we said, “No, no, that’s for the mentally ill. That’s why it was deeded to the city.” We tried to intervene in a case where everybody was happy with the status quo of emptying out the hospital, rendering more people homeless. Everybody seemed happy with this because everybody got fees from it. The judge on the case said, “Everybody’s doing fine. You can’t intervene on behalf of the people who the interest groups are supposed to serve.” We were not allowed to intervene. But it did lead to a change in leadership in the public interest group.

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Now they’re taking some additional steps to make sure there’s better public mental health care in the District of Columbia. LD: I’m sure it has a long way to go, but just speaking about those issues is so important. You’ve also spoken publicly about other hot button issues lately, like the #MeToo movement and the Amazon workers who were killed in the tornado last year. LB: We work with a lot of activist groups, public interest groups and whistleblower groups. We are counsel to people doing campaign reform, working to get money out of politics and other similar areas. There are a fair number of groups that we support. It’s not our mainline practice, and we don’t advertise it, but if they have a problem, we try to help them. We also work on appeals with some groups. We try to help out in those kinds of issues when we can. It’s not hard to find good cases; it’s just that we’re pretty small and the cases in litigation take an enormous time and effort. We can only do so many at any time. LD: Are you working on any right now? LB: Right now, we have quite a few, actually. We just settled a whistleblower case at a naval hospital where a nurse reported the unnecessary death of a pediatric patient because the hospital lacked appropriate procedures. Then we have the case of a police officer, Charlotte Djossou, who is a sergeant in the Metropolitan Police Department. Charlotte protested the targeting of young Black men in minority communities. The police department actually had a whole operation called the “Snake” where they would go into minority, low-income communities and just shake down young, primarily Black men. LD: They had a name for it? LB: They did. Of course, they retaliated against her. They wouldn’t give her a promotion and they gave her a bad performance appraisal that she had to fight. So, we have a whistleblower case against the Metropolitan Police Department to get her a promotion and get her career back on track. These are the voices that are helping to reform the police department. LD: With all these moving stories, what do you find most meaningful about your career? LB: I think what I find most rewarding is the people and groups I represent, because they have really taken big risks to do what they’ve done. I’m just happy to be a part of that, to help push along the social and political goals that they’re seeking.

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FRANK BRANSON

THE LAW OFFICES OF FRANK L. BRANSON FRANK BRANSON LEARNED HIS CRAFT

watching the greats of Texas courtrooms, lawyers whose achievements and exploits stood out even in a state known for its larger-than-life swagger.

One was John Wilson, Branson’s mentor, who tried only workers’ compensation cases but handled them so well that he was an undisputed master of his specialty. Another was Richard “Racehorse” Haynes, who never shed the nickname conferred by a childhood football coach and was labeled as one of the nation’s best lawyers by Time magazine. And of course, Warren Burnett, known for riding motorcycles, shredding airtight criminal cases and, generally, afﬂicting the comfortable. A former prosecutor who sent one suspect to the electric chair, Burnett subsequently left for the defense bar and won acquittal for an 18-year-old athlete in the “Kiss and Kill” murder case that made headlines in the 1960s. “It’s hard now to get young lawyers into the courtroom,” muses Branson, who made it a point, especially at

PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE FIRM

BY KATRINA DEWEY

the beginning of his career, to observe the best of the best in that arena and ﬁgure out which of their tactics he might adopt. “Warren was fascinating to listen to and told great stories,” he recalls. “And Joe Jamail, who was a character in his own right, had the ability to be likeable and prepared, yet knew how to punch holes in cases and the weaknesses of his opponents.” Branson still remembers “stopping work one day and going down to watch Percy Foreman, who was a great defense lawyer, defend a client here in a Dallas courtroom.” Branson says that some of the other lawyers who inﬂuenced his career were Buddy Low of Beaumont; Ronnie Krist of Clearlake, who represented family members of three of the Challenger astronauts; and Franklin Jones, Sr. and Franklin Jones, Jr., who were partners of renowned trial lawyer Scott Baldwin. “After I had been trying cases for a decade, more of them became good friends,” Branson says.

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500 Add one more name to that firmament: that of Branson himself. A gentleman who defines courtesy, he has etched his name in the stars as one of the nation’s very best trial lawyers. He speaks softly, but beware the bear inside who is always more prepared than anyone else in the courtroom. He has run his own practice alongside colleagues including his wife, Debbie Dudley Branson, for four decades, notching victories that include a $242M product liability trial verdict, which was reduced to a $200M judgment affirmed by the Dallas Court of Appeals and was settled while pending at the Texas Supreme Court to the satisfaction of all parties; $7M for a college soccer player whose leg injury in an SUV rollover ended his sports career; and a remarkable $21M to an 83-year-old widow, whose husband was killed by a cocaine-addled trucker. His experiences along the way – and the lessons of his mentors – offer a virtual primer on what attorneys in earlier stages of their careers need to do to succeed: Prepare meticulously, master the courtroom environment, call witnesses in an order that makes it easy for the jury to follow the case narrative and remain authentic. The importance of preparation, in particular, was drilled into Branson by his football coach father. The beginning of trial, he says, is a bit like the opening kickoff. “Once you’ve got the ball in your hand, everything seems to take care of itself, and the same thing is true in a courtroom,” he says. “But more than the ball being in play, you have to have spent enough time in courtrooms both doing things the wrong way and seeing things done the right way to understand that nobody’s going to bite your head off and that you need to do the best you can. And the more courtrooms you’ve been in, the easier it is to do.” Lawdragon: The amount of care and thought that goes into what great lawyers do, I think, can be underestimated and it shouldn’t be because that’s really one of the big differentiators between you and people who might aspire to be like you. Frank Branson: Succeeding at trial definitely involves lots of preparation. And you’re right, there are things that occur that hopefully don’t look like you spend a lot of time on them because they go very smoothly. Lots of times, they’re not complicated things. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of preparing your batting order of witnesses so that you present what happened to your client in an order that’s easily digestible by the 112

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jury. Some of that, you have to learn by trial and error or watching other lawyers. The jury can understand the bad things that a defendant has done, but they need to hear the story in order, I think. LD: I know you’ve always worked very, very hard, even after your law degree, going back and getting another degree so you could improve your understanding of injuries. Could you talk a little more about the attention to detail, the care and, really, the devotion to the craft of being a lawyer that’s required to consistently deliver the best results for clients? Because there really are no shortcuts. FB: No, there aren’t. Some of the habits that have helped me, I learned growing up. When I didn’t do something right, my father had a tendency to make me do it over until I did do it right. My mentor, John Wilson, was a strong lawyer and with him, I had the chance to watch how it was done right. The cases he tried were always against the workers’ comp insurance company, and they’d always done things like deny medical claims and not treat the injured party properly. And so John would try the insurance company. And if the insurance lawyer got in the way, he’d try the insurance lawyer. And then sometimes the judge would take sides, and he’d try the judge along with all them. I found out that when I tried cases, I wasn’t John Wilson and had to be myself before the jury. And that took some trials for me to realize that copying what he did wasn’t the way to do it. I realized eventually that once you’ve been there enough and ﬁnally understand the process that the jury needs to see that, and you need to be the same person throughout the trial. That last bit is really important. I saw a defense lawyer once make a move that I thought cost him the case. We’d been in trial for several days, and he’d been close to being a sycophant with the judge and jury, Mr. Goody Two Shoes. Then, during a lunch break, he discovered his paralegal hadn’t done something right, and he really gave her a hard time, unmercifully. And the jury wasn’t locked up, because it was lunch, and unbeknownst to him, there were two jurors standing in the back of the courtroom. And they didn’t respond as well to him for the rest of the trial. People expect you to be courteous, pleasant. As the trial goes on, if the conduct of the other party or the other witness is really bad, I think the jury understands it if you get a little tougher with them, because the jury’s getting angry at them also. But you can’t start

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out that way because they haven’t seen the conduct you’ve seen. LD: Juries need to believe in you to believe in your client. FB: That’s right. LD: If you’re presenting one face when they’re sitting in the jury box and then being unkind to somebody when you think nobody’s looking, it reflects on the client. There’s no way around it. FB: It does. More than that, it reflects on the credibility of the lawyer and the client in the case. When you look at what good lawyers do that perhaps the average lawyer doesn’t do, it really comes down in many instances to persuasion. To persuade, you’ve first got to be likable, credible and prepared. LD: I like that: likable, credible and prepared. It brings together so much about you: your own background, your father being a coach and, I think, one of your brothers being a coach also? FB: Yes, he rose to the level of a college coach. He now works for us in investigation and does a good job. My brother’s a really nice guy and he can talk to a rock – he’s a very affable man and a good guy. So when we’re investigating a case, people will talk to him who wouldn’t talk to a lot of former police officers. LD: You know, you embody some of those same traits yourself, and I do think that that’s a real differentiator in the courtroom. FB: I’ve had cases as a young lawyer where a lawyer on the other side would just irritate the dickens out of me in discovery. But if you begin trying the case in that manner, it turns off a lot of jurors, justifiably, because they don’t understand why you’re angry, and by the time you get around to showing it, they’ve already made their minds up. Most jurors, I think, enter the jury box with an open mind about what’s going on. They see the lawyers on both sides, see the witnesses, the quality of the experts, the quality of the plaintiffs and defendants and they begin to form their opinions about the people and the conduct that caused the people to be there and the law firms they have. All of that has to play out in a logical sequence, I think. It’s like going to the movies. The movie has to tell you a story and if they put the ending at the beginning, it’s pretty hard to follow. LD: Tell me more about some of the lawyers who’ve been mentors or role models in the courtroom.

FB: There are a lot of great lawyers that I’ve enjoyed watching and learning from, people like Scott Baldwin from Marshall, Texas, who was a president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. Warren Burnett – who was a great storyteller – he was from MidlandOdessa and was truly an outstanding trial lawyer. In fact, one time, back in the late ‘50s, the doctors and lawyers of the Midland–Odessa area got to fussing as those two professions are prone to do sometimes, so they decided to have a bury-the-hatchet party. They made two mistakes: They invited Warren to speak on behalf of the Bar Association and they had the party at the Midland–Odessa Country Club. Warren’s speech – after a few cocktails – was, “As I watched the doctors and their ladies arrive in their chauffeurdriven limousines with looks upon their faces as though their heads contain knowledge unknown to mere mortal man, I was reminded that over 100 years ago, when our forefathers were drafting such immortal documents as the Constitution and Bill of Rights for these United States, their forefathers were placing big leeches on George Washington’s ass.” And it is rumored that shortly thereafter, one of the young doctors arose from Warren’s table and a fistfight broke out. LD: And as you were coming up as a trial lawyer, you had the opportunity to see some of these Texas legends in action and learn. FB: I did. And I made it a point to. Racehorse Haynes, in fact, became a friend of mine. He was a real character. I asked him one time where he got the nickname and he said, “In junior high school, I was making a long run on the football field and my coach said, ‘Look at that race horse run,’ and it stuck.” LD: You’ve talked before about the sheer number of cases you worked on, which is something so many great lawyers say helped them develop their craft. If you take on a bunch of insurance defense or workers’ compensation cases – any area that involves large quantities – they all involve people, right? And so you learn about the interaction of people and the law. FB: When I was a young lawyer, I worked for a year in Grand Prairie, then was made an offer by one of the largest Dallas plaintiffs’ firms, which had a large volume of small cases. So after carrying John Wilson’s briefcase for a few years, I got an opportunity to put what I’d seen into practice and we’d try a lot of lawsuits, but they were small lawsuits, $3,000 to $5,000 to $10,000. But I got to see all kinds of conduct, good and bad, in a courtroom from witnesses,

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500 lawyers, and judges and grew experienced enough to spot trouble and duck instinctively when I needed to. My ﬁrst year of law practice, I was sent to get a document signed at a probate court in Fort Worth. And I was handing the judge the document, and he spit tobacco on my brand new poplin suit. And it just ran, ran down the fabric. And I looked at him and he said, “You learned a good lesson here today, son: Never get in between a man and his spittoon.” And I haven’t since. And then we tried a case one time, and there was a juror who may not have actually been with the process. And so he, somewhat early in the case, liked our side and every time we’d make a point, he would cheer and clap. So we had to have a conference with the judge, and we asked that he be excused. Sometimes that’s not the best for your side of the case. LD: But that’s what they don’t teach you in law school. Right? The law only matters when it’s applied with people, and people are different. FB: No kidding. And courtrooms don’t get the credit they deserve for the work and the justice that comes out of them. It’s hard to fully appreciate that until you’ve been in them and see things go right and wrong, both. There are all kinds of entertaining and educational things that happen in court. And the longer you’re around them, the more you realize they’re going to occur in virtually any trial. I had some doctor friends who worked at a hospital, for instance, some 40 years ago and the hospital had a rule that required podiatrists to have a physician stand in during any foot surgery. The hospital’s reason for doing that was that the procedures often relied on nurse anesthetists and without a physician, there would be nobody licensed to do a tracheostomy if there were a problem. Well, the podiatrists took offense and sued them and my surgeon friends convinced me to represent the hospital. In the middle of the trial, with the chief of staff on the witness stand, one of the jurors – who had a pacemaker – had a heart attack. The chief of staff was summoned to the judge’s chambers to examine her, and he said, “Look, she needs to get to a surgeon, somebody who is a cardiac surgeon, who treated her in the past. My getting involved is not going to help her. It might hurt her.” The lady, unfortunately, died. The jury then returned a large verdict against my client because one of the jurors somehow overheard that conversation and told the others that she died 114

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because my hospital’s chief of staff wouldn’t provide care. When the appellate court looked at the case, it said something like, “The first 41 motions for mistrial Mr. Branson made were good and should have been granted.” So they granted a new trial. But the juries, a very, very high percent of the time, do the right thing. And when they don’t, there’s usually a reason that comes up during trial that one of those lawyers didn’t know about. LD: It’s a marvelous system. It really is. And we’re lucky to be a part of it. FB: We really are. The competitive aspect of litigation and jury trials, I think, is one of the forces that drives me. I really enjoyed athletics as a young man. And carrying a football across a goal, or having a jury find for my client, have always been things that were very exciting to me and gratifying. LD: That’s the good stuff, isn’t it? That’s why you do what you do. FB: The bad stuff, of course, is that I really hate to lose. It always takes me a while to dissect the case – to try to see why we lost, how we lost and how I can fix it the next time. We’ve been very fortunate, overall, and we have a great team. Four of our lawyers have gone on and become presidents of Texas Trial Lawyers; Debbie [Dudley Branson] is one of them. Some of them, I think, are in the International Academy, which is a really great honor. All of our trials are really a team effort, with Debbie and me and one or two of the other lawyers, and it’s been very enjoyable. And it’s great to see these lawyers develop. Some of them have had their own firms, and some have come out of defense firms, and one or two out of the prosecutor’s office. Obviously we’re looking for bright young lawyers, but I really want them to want to win and accept our work ethic. LD: Of course. You don’t want a lawyer who’s like, “Well, I did my best.” Right? FB: Right. LD: Obviously, at the end of the day, the lawyer has to learn to live with losses, but you want a lawyer who says, “I’m the quarterback. I’m taking this. I’m putting it on my shoulders. And I’m going to get in the end zone for you.” FB: Exactly. One whose attitude is, “I want to win at all costs within the rules.” And the entire team has to work toward that.

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BRAD BRIAN

BY JAMES LANGFORD

WANT A REFRESHER ON SOME OF THE

Despite his success, however, the law isn’t the career Brian initially imagined for himself.

One way to get it is running a Google search for cases handled by veteran national trial lawyer Brad Brian, the chairman of Munger Tolles & Olson.

The son of a high school baseball coach, he gave up an opportunity to play professional baseball to attend Harvard Law, where he earned his juris doctorate in 1977.

biggest headlines of the past several decades?

Among his achievements is representing MGM Resorts International in settling literally thousands of claims arising from the mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas in October 2017. Brian also orchestrated a historic, multi-jurisdictional settlement on behalf of Paciﬁc Gas & Electric Co., California’s largest utility, in litigation stemming from large wildﬁres that burned in Northern California in 2019 and 2021 and won a trial verdict in favor of drilling company Transocean after the Deepwater Horizon disaster that poured millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. After a multi-month trial, the court found that BP bore indemnity obligations for the millions of barrels of oil discharged, not Transocean.

PHOTO BY AMY CANTRELL

“I didn’t know what to expect when I started law school, as I had no background at all in law or business,” he recalls. “Frankly, until then, my life had focused on two things: sports and schoolwork.” Harvard changed all of that. It was there that Brian realized he wanted to become a trial lawyer, and he went on to work in the U.S. Attorney’s Ofﬁce in Los Angeles before joining Munger Tolles. During the more than four decades since, he says, the legal profession has changed dramatically on the surface – not least during the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw a meteoric rise in video hearings – but remains the same at its core. “The legal profession has evolved,” Brian says. “As many others have said, what was once a profes-

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500 sion has become a business. The business of law is more complex and sophisticated than ever. But what was so satisfying about being a lawyer four decades ago still exists today. It’s the opportunity to help people solve their problems, and to work with great teams to do so.” Lawdragon: Speaking of the pandemic, you’ve been chair of Munger Tolles for three years now, during a period of tremendous upheaval in the law as well as life as we knew it before Covid-19. How has that affected your own practice and the firm’s operations? Brad Brian: The short answer is that my firm and I adapted and, once we did, the Covid pandemic didn’t affect my practice or the firm’s practice at all. Because of our firm’s one-to-one partner/associate ratio and the non-bureaucratic way we govern ourselves, our firm has always been able to pivot quickly. We are rigorously committed to hiring and promoting only the best lawyers. From day one, lawyers here are given early responsibility and treated like owners. This has imbued an ownership-focused mindset among our lawyers, which is central to our firm’s success and ability to be nimble.

From paper exhibits to digital displays For me personally, I have continuously adapted to changes throughout my 40-year career as a trial lawyer. I started trying cases when “publishing” an exhibit to the jury meant physically passing around the document to the jurors in the jury box. Over time that changed to using overhead projectors, then ELMOs [a brand of visual presentation equipment], and now computer operators who display and highlight documents on screens in the courtroom. None of this has changed the fundamental truth that the best trial lawyers are storytellers – they distill down complex facts into a coherent and persuasive story for the jury. It was fascinating to try a “hybrid” arbitration during the pandemic, meaning that the lawyers and arbitrator were together in a large conference room and some witnesses testiﬁed in person, but others appeared by Zoom. We won the case, but I must admit that it was harder to control a witness on crossexamination through Zoom. I also think something is lost when people in the courtroom are wearing masks. When I’m examining a witness, I want to be able to see the person’s face and at the same time gauge the reactions of the judge and jury. It’s much harder to do that when people are wearing masks. And it’s harder for the judge or jury to assess the 116

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credibility of witnesses whose faces are partially hidden behind masks. There was one significant redeeming virtue of the pandemic: The modes of communicating with clients expanded. Although I missed the regular in-person contact with clients – and sought out every chance to meet with clients – the video technologies did enable us to connect with clients, rather than relying mainly on emails, text messages and even phone conversations, which in my view have become too much of the norm. Regular client communication remained at the forefront – and in a perverse way was enhanced – while we adjusted to new state, local and national Covid-19 mandates. I should note that our firm’s leaders – our Co-Managing Partners Hailyn Chen and Malcolm Heinicke, our Chief Operating Offi cer Kevin Posterro and management team – were relentlessly committed to supporting our workforce throughout the pandemic. They were incredibly thoughtful and careful as they thought about supporting our colleagues and serving our clients as effectively as we have for the past 60 years. LD: What changes during the pandemic do you expect to become permanent features of the way firms and courts operate in the U.S.? BB: Much of what was brought forth by the pandemic will become the new normal. I expect remote hearings to happen more regularly in many courts. By eliminating commutes – especially long distance travel – video technologies solve a lot of the logistical difficulties of getting a bunch of lawyers to the same place at the same time. I found that many lawyers are actually more comfortable speaking by video than they are in in-person hearings. Although I personally prefer in-person meetings, I expect many routine conferences will proceed by video. I expect many law firms will continue operating in a hybrid work model, allowing lawyers and professional staff to work remotely as well as in the office. Separate from that, I think video conferencing will continue, both firm-wide and with clients, to connect people working in different offices of different cities. I have mixed feelings about all of this. There is no more satisfying experience than going to trial with a team of lawyers, paralegals and other support staff. That satisfaction derives in part from the sense of community that’s been built up among the team members. But it’s harder to do that when people are working remotely and not interacting with each other face-to-face.

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I also expect many clients to limit in-person meetings and conduct more video conference calls. They’re less expensive and they enable more people to participate. But the attorney-client relationship is built on trust, and I’ve always thought you build trust by rubbing shoulders with each other in person.

Pandemic-related cases LD: What changes has the pandemic created in the types of cases clients are bringing you? BB: The types of cases we handle didn’t change during the pandemic. Munger Tolles is known for representing companies facing large crises that involve civil and criminal litigation, government investigations, regulatory work and challenging public relations issues. Companies faced many of the same issues during the pandemic, and we managed to get our share of those challenging cases. We are privileged to represent some of the largest, most respected companies in the country – Berkshire Hathaway, PG&E, Intel, Bechtel, Southern California Edison, Bank of America, Google, MGM Resorts, Fortress and Wells Fargo, just to name some – and we continued to work for all of them during the pandemic. That said, many of our clients saw an increase in activity in pandemic-related areas ranging from PPP litigation for ﬁnancial services clients, to force majeure disputes for real estate clients, to labor and employment litigation. We also saw an uptick in investigations as well as an increase in professional responsibility matters, perhaps because the pandemic led many people to want to blame others for their problems. Personally, I was privileged to be retained by the court-appointed receiver responsible for administering health care to inmates in the California prison system. My charge was to advise the receiver on whether to recommend a mandatory Covid-19 vaccination for all staff entering the California state prisons. Ultimately, the receiver made that recommendation, the federal district judge adopted it, and I argued in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in support of that order. Although the 9th Circuit ruled against the order, it was a privilege to handle this and so many other socially and historically important issues. Our ﬁrm has always been committed to pro bono causes and, if anything, that commitment got even stronger during the pandemic. Our work on behalf of incarcerated persons has become a blueprint

throughout the country to protect medically vulnerable inmates. We have assisted lower income tenants who faced eviction during the pandemic. We also joined forces with other law ﬁrms, bar associations and legal aid organizations to launch LA Represents – a pro bono initiative that provides free legal services to Los Angeles residents facing hardships caused by the pandemic.

Bigger isn’t necessarily better LD: What are the biggest challenges and opportunities facing lawyers/law firms today? BB: When I first started practicing law, a “big firm” had 100, perhaps 150, lawyers centered in one, maybe two offices. At that time, many firms viewed geographic and headcount growth – often by merger or lateral hiring – as the biggest opportunity to build a successful law firm. And many firms were very successful with this strategy. At Munger, Tolles & Olson, we decided many years ago to take a very different path. Our growth has remained intentional and this has allowed us to preserve the cultural cohesion and extraordinary quality that is central to our service model. For many years we had only one office. We now have offices in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., in addition to Los Angeles, not because we wanted to expand our geographic footprint – we already had a national practice – but because we had an opportunity to bring in exceptionally talented lawyers who happened to live in those cities. Throughout our firm’s history, we have viewed hiring and promoting the most talented people as the most important underlying value of the firm. That principle guides us today. Perhaps because of that principle, we’ve often been called upon to help guide companies through some of their most challenging problems and crises – including our work for Salomon Brothers in the Treasury bond scandal more than 30 years ago in New York; for Allstate Insurance Company in the thousands of claims arising from the 1994 Northridge Earthquake in Southern California; for Transocean in the Deepwater Horizon tragedy off the coast of New Orleans; for Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings, or TEPCO, handling lawsuits brought by plaintiffs who alleged they sustained injuries related to the 2011 nuclear disaster in Japan; for MGM Resorts International in resolving claims by more than 4,000 victims of the horrific terrorist shooting in Las Vegas in 2017;

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500 and for PG&E now in the criminal and civil litigation arising from wildfires in Northern California. Our relatively smaller size has never prevented us from taking on large matters – including international investigations. We have developed strong relationships with colleagues outside our firm and often find ourselves partnering with other law firms and lawyers in big cases. I have found those relationships deeply fulfilling, as I always learn from working with the best lawyers in the world, regardless of where they work. LD: Your career has included both government work and private practice. What skills did you learn at the U.S. Attorney’s Office that benefited you when you moved to Munger Tolles? BB: I went to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles because Andrea Ordin, the first woman U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, was working to build something special there. Before joining her office, I interviewed with a number of law firms at the time, though Munger Tolles was the only law firm in Los Angeles that thought going to the U.S. Attorney’s Office would be a good move. They said it would be a great job for me because I would learn how to build cases, get trial experience, and broaden my overall experience in the law and the community. They were right. I tried 17 cases in three years, learned how to build cases and focus on what matters and built friendships that have lasted a lifetime. Our firm continues to hire lawyers out of government service and to encourage others to give back through government service. My partner in Washington, D.C., Don Verrilli is the 46th solicitor general of the United States. Countless Munger Tolles alums are serving in the courts and in government, including six on the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, one as a federal district judge and 19 as state trial judges, the latest of which is my partner Brad Phillips, whom Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed to serve as a judge on the Los Angeles Superior Court on March 14. There are also three Munger Tolles alums in the White House Counsel’s Office, and 22 in U.S. Attorney’s Offices around the country. LD: What advice would you give someone considering a similar path, especially regarding timing? Is it better to start in private practice and then go into the public sector or vice versa? 118

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Client is job 1 BB: There’s no magic formula. I was fortunate enough to land a job at the U.S. Attorney’s Office right out of a clerkship. Others take government jobs after a few years in private practice. Still others become judges at the end of their careers. Everybody is different, and what works for one person might not work for another. But I will offer this: Everything we do as lawyers should start and end with the client in mind. I recommend that junior lawyers pursue any opportunities that broaden their understanding of client needs and teach them how to solve problems. Early in my legal career, I joined the Board of the Joffrey Ballet when it was co-based in Los Angeles and New York City. It was a difficult time for the company because its founder, Robert Joffrey, had just died and half of the board resigned over the company’s financial problems. I unexpectedly found myself running the company while practicing full-time at Munger Tolles. The organization was deeply in debt, so I had to make tough financial and managerial decisions with help from a team of outside lawyers. This gave me a client’s vantage point early in my career and helped me learn firsthand what high-quality client service truly means. I credit my role with the Joffrey and my work at the U.S. Attorney’s office as the two experiences that most shaped who I became as a lawyer. I learned to exercise my judgment and to make decisions based on the best information I could get. I learned that client service is paramount, and that lawyers should give back to the communities in which they live and practice. I must say that trial experience – whether gained through private practice or public sector work – gives lawyers an accelerated understanding of what clients need and how to solve problems. We have a number of fabulous trial lawyers at our firm – Greg Stone, Glenn Pomerantz, Carolyn Luedtke, Hailyn Chen, Bethany Kristovich, Laura Smolowe, Bryan Heckenlively and Craig Lavoie all come to mind – who got their first experiences trying cases at our firm and not the Justice Department. The bottom line is that lawyers must take advantage of the best opportunities available. For some lawyers, that will be private practice, and for others it will be public sector work. LD: What cases are you working on now, and what trial is next for you?

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BB: I’m continuing to work on great cases, both civil and criminal. I’m spending a lot of time leading the defense of PG&E in both criminal and civil litigation arising out of wildfires in Northern California. I really enjoy those cases both because the client is terrific and because the cases involve issues of national importance as climate change and drought create challenges for utilities, government and private landowners alike. I’m also continuing to represent law firms in defense of legal malpractice and other claims against them. I love representing lawyers because I care deeply about the legal profession and the role we as lawyers play in resolving disputes in a democratic society. Over the past 30 years, I have been privileged to represent some of the largest law firms in the country in their most challenging problems. I am very humbled by the fact that my peers in the profession have often looked to me to help them in their times of need. Last year, my partners Bethany Kristovich, Laura Lin and I geared up for trial for a major law firm facing hundreds of millions of dollars of exposure. The case settled literally on the eve of trial. Earlier this year, I was brought in to work as cocounsel with Elena Baca of Paul Hastings in defense of broad allegations of gender discrimination. The case is set for trial in February of 2023. I’m also leading a number of investigations for major companies in response to government subpoenas and investigations. I feel very fortunate that my practice has remained as broad, diverse and challenging as it was thirty years ago. LD: How has your career path differed from what you expected when you gave up an opportunity to play pro baseball to go to Harvard Law School? BB: My life and legal practice are incredibly fulfilling, so I don’t regret giving up my chance to play professional baseball for the opportunity to go to law school. I learned how to think like a lawyer, to analyze a problem and to come up with a solution. I also met a broad range of enormously talented people like Susan Estrich (the first woman President of the Harvard Law Review), Attorney General Merrick Garland, and my lifelong friends Steve Naifeh and Greg Smith, who introduced me to theater, music and art, and who later won the Pulitzer Prize for their biography of Jackson Pollock. It was in my third year at Harvard Law School that I realized I wanted to be a trial lawyer. I got good grades during my first two years of law school, but

I didn’t really enjoy law school. But in the second semester of my third year, I took an intense trial advocacy program, and was able to learn from such gifted trial lawyers as the late John Payton, Linda Listrom, and Jane and Norm Moscowitz. I was hooked. From there it was an easy decision to apply to the U.S. Attorney’s Ofﬁce in Los Angeles when my wife (an investigative reporter) got a job at the Los Angeles Times. When I left the U.S. Attorney’s Ofﬁce in late 1981 and joined what was then Munger, Tolles & Rickershauser, I didn’t know what to expect. I hoped I could continue trying cases in both the criminal and civil arena.

Indigent defense Right from the start, it was clear that Munger Tolles was a firm that would provide me the opportunities to pursue my passion. Less than a year after I joined the firm, I and two of my colleagues, Bill Temko and Rush Fisher, took on a death penalty appeal to the California Supreme Court for a convicted man who was in fact innocent. After hundreds of pages of briefs and an intense oral argument, the Supreme Court reversed the conviction in a 4-3 vote and remanded the case for a new trial. The second jury failed to convict our client, and he was released. The firm also gave my partner Greg Stone and me the opportunity to serve on the Federal Indigent Defense Panel, where each of us tried a number of criminal jury trials to verdict. In 1985, we were asked to represent Svetlana Ogorodnikova in a very highprofile espionage case that seems to have been the inspiration for the TV show, The Americans. My practice took a major turn a year or so later after Congress amended the federal False Claims Act to provide much higher economic incentives for private plaintiffs to file qui tam suits on behalf of the Federal Government. Most of the early cases were filed against defense contractors in Los Angeles, and I was fortunate enough to be hired to represent many of those contractors. By the early 1990s, I had handled dozens of cases under the False Claims Act, and had developed significant expertise in this area. Perhaps ironically, it was my False Claims Act work that led to the more than 200 legal malpractice or malicious prosecution cases I have handled for dozens of major law firms. In many of my early False Claims Act cases, I partnered with other firms and

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500 developed close and lasting relationships with some very able lawyers at those firms. When unfortunately those firms got sued, they looked to me to represent them in defense. That led to my law firm defense practice which I have maintained ever since. In 1994, I got an opportunity that literally changed my life, both professionally and personally. Tom Spiegel, the CEO and Chairman of Columbia Savings & Loan Association in Beverly Hills, had been indicted on more than 100 counts of bank fraud, embezzlement and other charges. Tom was represented by one of the best white-collar lawyers in the country (based in New York City), but decided he wanted somebody else to try the case for him. I was one of the dozen or so lawyers he interviewed. He gave me a half-hour for the interview, but we ended up spending four hours together in that first meeting. He hired me the same day.

including my friend and mentor Ron Olson, former partners like Alan Bersin, Carolyn Kuhl, Jerry Roth, Allen Katz, Susan Nash and Bart Williams, and some wonderful lawyers at other ﬁrms like Jamie Gorelick, Ted Wells, Dick Sauber, Deb Yang, Mary Jo White, Kerry Miller and Kevin Orsini. All of them have made me a better lawyer, and I’m truly humbled by the chance to work with them and with some of the best in-house lawyers in the country. LD: How has your background in sports inﬂuenced/ informed your approach to cases? BB: My father, who died in 2018, was the longestrunning high school baseball coach in the history of the state of California. As both a coach and a parent, he instilled in me the values of working as a team, striving for excellence, and respecting your opponents.

Together with two great lawyers – my partner Mike Doyen and our co-counsel Rich Marmaro – we had a 10-week jury trial in late 1994. The judge threw out some of the charges at the end of the government’s case, and the rest went to the jury. The trial was very emotional, and the Los Angeles Times recap noted, “some in the packed courtroom gallery [were] brushing back tears” as I closed my two-hour summation to the jury. Tom was acquitted on all charges.

The same values apply in litigation. I work hard every single day to do the very best work I can, to encourage my colleagues to do the same, and to try as hard as possible to get the best possible results for our clients. Regardless of how hard I push, I always respect my opponent and of course the court and its staff. As a mentor to junior lawyers, I do my best to pass along those values in the next generation of attorneys.

‘Crisis’ casework

LD: What do people considering a career in the law today need to know before going into it?

The verdict changed everything in my practice. I kept doing False Claims Act cases, and I expanded my law firm defense practice. But the Tom Spiegel case enabled me to get into what I call “crisis” cases – for Allstate in the thousands of cases arising from the 1994 Northridge earthquake; for the construction companies Shea-Kiewit-Kenny in litigation arising from the collapse of the temporary support tunnel for the Los Angeles subway; for a national law firm in defense of literally hundreds of lawsuits filed by taxpayers claiming they had received fraudulent advice from a former partner who was later convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison; for Transocean in the Deepwater Horizon tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010; for MGM Resorts in defending thousands of claims from victims of the 2017 terrorist shooting at the Mandalay Bay Hotel; and for PG&E in the civil and criminal litigation arising from the tragic wildfires. When I started out, I didn’t expect any of this to happen. I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to learn from some of the best lawyers in the country, 120

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BB: The ﬁrst thing they need to know is that practicing law at this level is hard work; there’s no sugar-coating that. You need to be smart, but it’s not enough. When we hire new lawyers, we look for people who, through a combination of brainpower and their life experiences, will exercise good judgment and be willing to take responsibility for communicating those judgments to clients, judges and opposing counsel.

The three Rs I often stress to lawyers at our ﬁrm the value of the “3 Rs” – reputation, relationships and responsiveness. To build a successful practice these days, you need to show all three of these. You need to build a reputation among clients and your peers. You need to develop relationships of trust and conﬁdence. And, particularly in this era of electronic communication, you need to be responsive. LD: How would you describe your style as a trial lawyer?

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BB: I pride myself on being better prepared than anybody on the other side. Nowadays cases are tried based more on the documents than on witnesses’ recollections of in-person meetings and phone calls. To be an effective trial lawyer these days, you need to know all the key documents and be nimble enough to use those documents to impeach witnesses who stray from them. If you know the documents well, you’ll also enhance your chances of maintaining your credibility with the jury. I think credibility with the jury is critical. As a trial lawyer, I want the jury looking to me as the source of truth so that when I ask a question on cross-examination, the jury thinks I have evidence on which I have based that question. A lot of people believe jurors make up their minds after opening statements. I’m not sure that’s right, though I’m sure many jurors say that in post-trial interviews. But regardless of whether they actually make up their minds after opening statements, it’s clear that first impressions matter with jurors – much like they matter in your first appearance before the judge or in your first meeting with your client. So not only is your opening statement critical, but the first 5-10 minutes of your opening statement are critical. Tell them in simple, direct words what the case is about and what the key evidence will show. And if you have a smoking gun, mention it early in the opening statement and then weave into your more detailed account later. I try not to be flashy or over-the-top at trial, though people who have seen me try cases likely would say that I can be pretty forceful during my crossexaminations of hostile witnesses. I’m fond of saying that every case is about credibility. What I mean by that is that witnesses have their own personal biases and agendas, and those biases and agenda can affect the way they frame their answers, the tone of their voice, or even their body language while they’re testifying. Make sure to listen during trial. Many lawyers think they are great orators, but the best trial lawyers are really good listeners too. You cannot be a great cross-examiner if you don’t listen to the witness’s answers. I have seen too many lawyers tied to their scripts during witness examinations. Sometimes those lawyers completely fail to follow up on an answer they didn’t expect, even if that answer is very helpful to the lawyer’s case.

LD: Can you tell us about a few of your most memorable experiences in the courtroom? BB: By far the most memorable experience happened in 1994 during my defense of Thomas Spiegel, the CEO of Columbia Savings and Loan. The main government witness testiﬁed for a day and a half on direct examination. I then cross-examined him for a half-day. When I got back to my ofﬁce late that night, I saw a message from someone who claimed to know the witness and said he could “help.” Even though it was after 10:30 p.m., I called him back. He asked me to meet with him the next morning, and stressed that he had evidence that would really hurt the government’s witness. I didn’t know what to make of it, and of course I couldn’t meet with him the next morning because I was continuing the cross-examination. So I asked my partner Mike Doyen to meet with the informant. What happened next changed the case, led to Tom’s acquittal, changed the course of my career and reshaped at least some of our firm. To make a long (and very interesting) story short, the informant had secretly tape-recorded the witness and gave us a tape where the witness, between profanities, said: “I’m the biggest thief I’ve ever met,” and “I’ve never met a man I couldn’t con.” The second statement captured our trial theme perfectly – that this witness had conned Tom into believing that the false financial statements the witness had submitted to the savings and loan association were in fact accurate. As you might guess, when I asked the witness on the stand whether he had made the statements recorded on the tape, he denied them. I then played the tape and asked him if that was his voice on the tape recording. After he sheepishly said “yes,” I stared at him for 30-45 seconds and announced that I had no further questions. The jurors gasped. The trial effectively was over. LD: Are there any other points you’d like to touch on that we haven’t covered? BB: I love being a lawyer. I love trying cases. I love helping clients. And I love working as part of a team. The legal system in our country is the best legal system in the world, and is a key part of our democratic system for making decisions. I remain proud to be part of it. I hope others feel the same way.

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JIM FITZGERALD TRIAL ATTORNEY JIM FITZGERALD

doesn’t have to imagine what his clients have been through. He’s lived it.

The renowned trial lawyer came of age far away from the world of desks and lawsuits that ﬁll a typical lawyer’s past. Raised and still living in Wyoming, Fitzgerald worked his way through college by “roughnecking” on an oil rig. “You’re working with hardworking people, but it’s a hard life,” Fitzgerald explains. “The derrick hand, for example, had a wife and four children and lived in a tar paper shack. If something happened to him, who was going to take care of that widow and children?” That lived experience has translated into a passion for representing the powerless and voiceless that is matched only by Fitzgerald’s prowess in the courtroom. Fitzgerald began his legal practice in 1975 – not right out of college, but after attending Ofﬁcer Candidate School and serving in the Vietnam War. In 1982, he and his wife, Sharon, began their own practice: The Fitzgerald Law Firm.

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BY EMILY JACKOWAY

In the decades since, Fitzgerald’s dedication to difﬁcult cases has seen him win record-setting verdicts, including the largest award for a wrongful death case upheld on appeal in the state of Wyoming. Similarly, Fitzgerald represented a coal miner who was paralyzed and suffered a brain injury due to culpable negligence of mine management. That verdict came to an incredible $22M, the largest verdict for physical injuries in Wyoming history. But he doesn’t solely represent workers: Fitzgerald has fought on behalf of those who have been injured by defective drugs and other products, semi-truck accidents and in other instances of negligence and malpractice. Fitzgerald’s son has joined him on his mission: In 2015, Michael Fitzgerald joined the firm. Fitzgerald’s wife, Sharon Fitzgerald, passed away too young, but Michael’s presence ensures the firm stays a family venture. Together, the pair of them take on some of the largest personal injury cases in the west and around the country. In 1998, Jim and Sharon Fitzgerald began the Fitzgerald Foundation for Children. The organization works to

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promote public safety for children, particularly those in Wyoming. Jim Fitzgerald was inducted into Lawdragon’s Hall of Fame this year. The award recognizes him for his dedication to those workers and children, widows and loved ones, who have been impacted by injuries or deaths caused by powerful corporations and entities. Armed with compassion and a deep understanding of what it means to be a worker, Fitzgerald gives a voice to those who need a champion. Lawdragon: Take me back to the beginning of your career. How did you get into your practice area? Jim Fitzgerald: Before I limited my practice to injury and death cases, a federal court appointed me to represent a young man in a criminal trial. Long story short, the jury found him not guilty. It was the ﬁrst not guilty verdict in years in that court. Word got around. Then, a lawyer recommended me to a family whose son was charged in the federal court. The jury found him not guilty. So, early in my career, I wound up trying serious felony cases and became known, and I started trying civil cases.

“I’d like to go to Colorado College.” In his typically gruff way, he said, “Well, that’s too expensive. You can’t afford it. You’re going to be paying for college yourself, so think about the University of Wyoming.” It was a state school with low tuition for in-state students. My father didn’t provide anything except some meals along the way. So, I know what it’s like to be out working. I worked as a welder’s assistant on a pipeline. We moved from one town to another doing that, and I had no place to live. The boss’s son and I got to be friends, they loaned me a truck, and I slept in the truck. LD: This was while you were in college? JF: Yes. I also did highway construction. I “roughnecked” on an oil rig, which is very dangerous and hard work. The law of product liability was not developed in those days. If somebody got hurt, worker’s comp provided the only remedy, which was a minimal remedy. I could see how these people were good, hard-working people who had bills like anybody else. LD: Do you see some of those people you met back then in your clients today?

Ultimately, I decided to limit the practice to civil cases because Sharon and I were starting a family. It’s hard to plan your time as a criminal lawyer. If you’re going to do criminal cases, you must be available at any time. I still worked weekends, but at least I could plan the time.

JF: Sure, because the people who get injured – aside from motorists – are generally people out working. A product breaks when it shouldn’t. Or, because there’s inadequate supervision and training, a 100-pound object falls from 40 feet and hits somebody in the head and wrecks their life. Those are the kinds of people I like to help.

LD: When you knew you wanted to focus on civil cases, what led you speciﬁcally to personal injury and wrongful death claims?

LD: You now work alongside your son, as well. How would you say that your styles complement each other?

JF: I had a friend whose cousin was blinded in one eye by a defective product, and I agreed to take on that case. This man worked in construction, so this was a problem for his livelihood. I wound up suing what was then International Harvester [now Navistar] for the defect in its product that led to the blindness. It was what we call a no-offer case, so winner-take-all. When the jury found in favor of the worker, I thought, “This is really fulﬁlling and meaningful.”

JF: He’s more careful and thoughtful and he has a very analytical mind. I’m sort of a “right and wrong” guy, so it helps that we practice together.

Because that case turned out well, it led to more civil cases. I liked to help people who were down and out – or on their way to being down and out if they didn’t get some help. LD: I know you worked in industries like his through college. How does your background enable you to make a personal connection with your clients? JF: Well, when it came time for me to go to college, my father said, “Where do you want to go?” I said,

LD: How would you say that “right and wrong” style shows up in trial? JF: Well, we’re fortunately in a position where we can pick and choose cases where we can make a big difference in someone’s life. As I mentioned, I like to take cases for the down-and-out. So, I look at cases to see where there was a defective product, or a careless person that caused the problem – a death, or partial blindness. I’ve found it fulﬁlling to represent widows, widowers and children. I also like to do things that have a beginning and an end. My father had a friend who was a prominent lawyer, and he did all kinds of natural resources work but was never in a courtroom. I talked with him before I went to law school. He’d had one

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500 client for 20 years working on various projects. I said, “Well, that’s admirable, but it’s not for me. I want to start something, finish it and move on to the next thing.” LD: Speaking of your cases, I know you’ve had some incredibly large verdicts, including the largest verdict for wrongful death upheld on appeal in Wyoming. Why is having verdicts upheld on appeal so important to you, especially in your practice area? JF: Getting a verdict isn’t easy and keeping it on appeal can also be a big challenge. Here’s what happens. People take a case to trial, the jury’s outraged and they render a large verdict. Then it’s up on appeal. The court of appeals has got to have good grounds if they’re going to afﬁrm it; they’ve got to have information in the record that’s persuasive to them. So, we do our best to do our homework and get the information into the record that needs to be there to support our verdicts. LD: Are there any cases that particularly stick out to you in your memory? JF: Well, there are categories of cases. I enjoy product liability cases because it’s usually a matter of a corporation not using enough foresight to realize that there’s going to be a problem with the product. Or they start to learn that their product is harming people and they don’t do anything about it. Early on, one of the cases I was fortunate to work on was a case against Caterpillar Tractor Company. I did a lot of leg work on the case, and I enlisted a friend who’d won a case against Caterpillar. One of the things that I found that others who had brought suits against the company had not yet found was a witness who had once been the Vice President for Engineering of Caterpillar Tractor Company. I found an article at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in which this gentleman – and he was a gentleman – had written that heavy equipment manufacturers needed to quit blaming the operators for rollovers and ensuing deaths. Equipment can roll over; it does roll over. It can do that without any carelessness on the part of the operator, such as when there is a large gravel slide. What was lacking were strong, rollover protective structures. So, I ﬁgured I needed to get this man’s testimony. Nobody else had ever gotten it. Long story short, the man, Mr. Burkes, came to his deposition in Illinois. I had this article, and when I walked into the room I said, “Thank you for showing up.” He took a check out of his pocket and handed it to me. It was the 124

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check I had sent for his witness fees and travel. He said, “Your widow needs this more than I do.” His testimony provided the backbone for upholding that verdict on appeal, which at the time was the largest wrongful death verdict in the history of Wyoming. It’s still the largest that withstood appeal. Mr. Burkes testified that rollover protective structures were necessary, feasible and available. With that in the record on appeal, the Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed. LD: You’re right; he was a gentleman. What kinds of cases are you working on now? JF: We recently finished a case where we represented a woman who was sexually and serially assaulted by a certified nursing assistant in a hospital. My son did a lot of work on that case and argued it on appeal. In our investigation, we found that there was video evidence of this certified nursing assistant leading the patient into a room and not coming out for an hour. In this woman’s life, the certified nursing assistant was a powerful presence who had authority, and he took advantage of it serially. So, we got justice in that case. It was fulfilling. LD: How do you go about choosing new cases? JF: We have criteria. We study the damages someone has suffered. If there’s a death case and we can find a remedy, we’re going to do it. If someone’s paralyzed and we can find a remedy, we’re going to take that case. If someone’s blinded or an amputee, et cetera, those kinds of things, we will do what we can to find the remedy. Sometimes the remedy is clear, and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it takes a lot of engineering understanding to put the case together. Not that I’m an engineer, but one of my mentors was, so that helped. LD: Which mentor was that? JF: His name was Russ Dunn, and he just passed away recently. He was very sharp, under-stated and strong. He’d been an officer in the Marine Corps and then went to law school. He was a very capable man – ethical, honest and hardworking. I’ve been fortunate to have several mentors who have taught me a lot. LD: What advice would you give to somebody just starting out as a lawyer now, especially in your practice area? JF: I think it’s much harder to start out as a lawyer now and to build a practice, but if somebody wants to be a trial lawyer, the best way to learn how to do

500 SINCE STATE LEGISLATURES AND CONGRESS CAN BE – AND HAVE BEEN – PERSUADED TO CUT BACK ON INJURED PEOPLE’S RIGHTS, IT’S IMPORTANT FOR US ALL TO REMEMBER THAT WE REPRESENT PEOPLE WHO DON’T HAVE A VOICE IN THESE LAW-MAKING INSTITUTIONS. INDUSTRY DOES; TOURISM DOES; CORPORATIONS DO. BUT AVERAGE PEOPLE DON’T. SO, IT’S IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER THAT WE SHOULD BE PRESERVING THIS SYSTEM FOR ORDINARY PEOPLE. that is to try cases. If you’re going to go out on your own and be able to put food on the table for families, you’re going to have to learn the game. One of my favorite sayings is from Winston Churchill: “Play for more than you can afford to lose, and you will learn the game.” Of course, trials are not games but they can be risky, so hard work and dedication are essential. LD: Why would you say it’s harder to start out now? JF: Well, one of my pet peeves is lawyer advertising. Anybody can walk out of law school and put an ad in the yellow pages saying that they do product liability and wrongful death cases and so forth. I just think that is misleading and too often results in clients whose lawyers are not the best for the cases. LD: What’s the best way to get cases? JF: Doing a good job and getting referrals through word of mouth. LD: Your ﬁrm celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. How does it feel to hit that milestone? JF: Well, I look at it case by case and day by day. The time has accumulated, but I’m not wedded to the notion that we’re anything special just because we’ve been doing it for so long. You still must work hard and do a good job on every case. LD: You’re also a member of so many different trial organizations, and you’ve been President of the Inner Circle of Advocates. What do you enjoy about those organizations? JF: Well, to start, if you’re a young lawyer, it’s a good idea to get involved with your state’s Trial Lawyers Association. Those are the people who may be looking at a potential case and decide it’s not one they want or that it doesn’t ﬁt their criteria, and they could send the case to you.

What I like about the Inner Circle of Advocates is, for one, you cannot apply to join. Membership is by invitation only. Potential members are heavily screened. Membership is limited to 100 lawyers around the country, and the meetings are very instructive. I won’t break my arm trying to pat myself on the back, but aside from me, let’s just say everybody in there is exceedingly well-qualified. It’s wonderful to have that resource to learn from and to share ideas and so forth. So, it was a privilege to be invited to join the Inner Circle of Advocates. LD: What do you feel are some of the pressing issues in the legal profession at the moment? JF: Well, since state legislatures and Congress can be – and have been – persuaded to cut back on injured people’s rights, it’s important for us all to remember that we represent people who don’t have a voice in these law-making institutions. Industry does; tourism does; corporations do. But average people don’t. So, it’s important to remember that we should be preserving this system for ordinary people. People who don’t even know it yet are essentially relying on us to keep the system of fairness going for them. A lot of my time, especially early in my career, was spent working to preserve that access. That’s a difficult task, but we need to be doing it so that the system’s there for the next set of widows, orphans, paralyzed and blinded people. LD: You’ve certainly been very successful, so that must be fulfilling. JF: Well, my heart has been in it. I’m lucky; my son is lucky, and we’re all privileged to do this work. Think of it: We’re the only profession that has the power to command somebody to show up and give testimony. Think of the power of that process. With huge power comes huge responsibility.

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American countries that have claims against U.S. companies and that want to bring civil cases in U.S. Courts. In one case that is a model for the work Freiwald Law is doing in this area, Freiwald successfully represented two of Mexico’s largest egg-laying chicken breeders in a multimillion-dollar action against an American animal health company over a defective animal vaccine. “We can represent companies from Mexico and elsewhere on a contingent-fee basis, which completely changes for the better the risk assessment any company makes before deciding to bring a lawsuit for business losses caused by another company,” Freiwald explains. “Hiring a big commercial defense ﬁrm is prohibitively expensive for many companies, but a contingent-fee arrangement can make a lot of

AARON FRIEWALD BY EMILY JACKOWAY

AT FIRST GLANCE, AARON FREIWALD’S

career seems to defy a single definition. Originally an investigative journalist, then an author and now a celebrated trial lawyer, Freiwald’s career has certainly had twists and turns. But a single, bold line runs through every facet of his work: a devotion to the pursuit of justice. The thrill he finds in forging his own path allows him to continue finding the next way he can obtain justice for those who need it most.

For more than 25 years, Freiwald has used that passion for justice to build a renowned plaintiffs’ law practice, ensuring his clients have access to the care and compensation they need and are owed. He has tried high-proﬁle litigation against major companies in cases related to medical malpractice, chemical exposure, defective products, auto accidents, victims’ rights and more. He has prevailed in numerous multimillion-dollar settlements and jury verdicts against hospitals and health systems, insurance companies, chemical and consumer product companies and more. Even within his work as a trial lawyer, Freiwald draws upon his past to continue broadening his horizons. Freiwald’s early work as a foreign correspondent mirrors a new division of his ﬁrm, an initiative to represent companies in Mexico and other Latin

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sense for companies considering litigation in the United States,” he adds. Freiwald also draws on his journalism background in producing his legal podcast, “Good Law | Bad Law,” in which he speaks with the foremost experts on legal issues relevant to today’s sociopolitical climate. Past discussions have included bail reform, immigration law and the future of the Supreme Court. This year, Freiwald was inducted to Lawdragon’s Hall of Fame – a fi tting recognition for a lawyer with a tireless work ethic, an eye for creativity and a staunch commitment to what’s right. Lawdragon: Tell me a bit about your first career as a journalist. Aaron Freiwald: I started as a writer all the way back in high school, when I was editor of my high school paper. Then, I was editor of my college paper, which was a daily newspaper. Ultimately, I spent about eight years in journalism as an investigative reporter, editor and author. LD: Right, as an author, too – tell me about your book, “The Last Nazi.” AF: “The Last Nazi” is a nonfiction history about one of the last major Nazis ever to be brought to trial. He was extradited from Argentina to Germany right around the time the Berlin Wall came down. There were a lot of changes happening in Europe,

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500 EVEN WITHIN HIS WORK AS A TRIAL LAWYER, FREIWALD DRAWS UPON HIS PAST TO CONTINUE BROADENING HIS HORIZONS. FREIWALD’S EARLY WORK AS A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT MIRRORS A NEW DIVISION OF HIS FIRM, AN INITIATIVE TO REPRESENT COMPANIES IN MEXICO AND OTHER LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIES THAT HAVE CLAIMS AGAINST U.S. COMPANIES AND THAT WANT TO BRING CIVIL CASES IN U.S. COURTS.

and really around the world – so, it was a powerful statement to bring someone to accountability after decades. LD: What led you to that story? AF: At the time, I was writing about law and politics in Washington and then in New York. I was becoming very interested in the ways in which the law and justice are part of history, and how those come together in important historical moments. I thought this was one of those milestone moments. LD: How did the book and your journalism experience lead to your transition into the law? AF: When I finished my manuscript for the book, I didn’t immediately have an idea for the next one. I was really ready to be around people again. I had always hoped that I might one day go to law school, so at that point I said to myself, “If I don’t go now, I’m not going to.” LD: When you graduated from law school, how did you find your practice area – being a trial lawyer handling major civil cases? AF: I started out very briefly at a large law firm and quickly realized that was not for me. LD: What made you realize that? AF: I was an older new lawyer at that point. I wasn’t really good at corporate life. I had carved a pretty unconventional path for my career, so that just wasn’t for me. On the other hand, experiencing the creativity of being a plaintiffs’ trial lawyer, figuring out how to put the story of a case together – that was for me. A lot of what we do as trial lawyers is storytelling. That was something that I had been doing in a

very different way for a number of years already. So, I think it was the storytelling, the creative parts of putting a case together, that really drew me to plaintiffs’ trial work – as well as the social justice component of representing people and companies that have been wronged. I knew that if I could take my skills and the kind of energy and passion I bring to what I do to help somebody else and change their life, that would be very powerful. My early heroes were people like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein; I wanted to have a sense of justice in what I was doing. LD: From there, how did you decide that you wanted to start your own law firm? AF: You know, I think I was always built to start my own firm. LD: What qualities do you think make someone built for that path? AF: An entrepreneurial drive and a knowledge of the art and science of charting your own path. I’ve always tremendously valued the freedom that comes with that. You also have to have a high level of energy and commitment to what you’re doing. And I think you’ve got to mix in some amount of crazy. I talk with my kids about making their own paths now that they’re in their twenties. You don’t always know how you’re going to make things work, but if you point yourself in what you think is the right direction, you’re going to figure things out. If you need to make a change, then you make a change. That advice applies to the courtroom, as well. You have to plan and be prepared and carefully think through what you’re doing. But you also have to be able to handle the surprises and the spontaneity of the courtroom. I find that combination very exciting.

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500 “A LOT OF WHAT WE DO AS TRIAL LAWYERS IS STORYTELLING. THAT WAS SOMETHING THAT I HAD BEEN DOING IN A VERY DIFFERENT WAY FOR A NUMBER OF YEARS ALREADY. SO, I THINK IT WAS THE STORYTELLING, THE CREATIVE PARTS OF PUTTING A CASE TOGETHER, THAT REALLY DREW ME TO PLAINTIFFS’ TRIAL WORK – AS WELL AS THE SOCIAL JUSTICE COMPONENT OF REPRESENTING PEOPLE AND COMPANIES THAT HAVE BEEN WRONGED.”

LD: How did the ﬁrm grow? Has it grown in the way that you kind of expected it would, or have there been twists and turns to it?

LD: Do you have any other examples of spontaneous moments like that that have changed the course of your career?

AF: I’d say it’s both.

AF: I do. For instance, I wasn’t necessarily planning on getting involved in representing victims of sexual assault and sexual abuse. But again, through a contact, one case became many cases. It’s been incredibly gratifying to help people who’ve suffered that type of loss and hardship.

We started out, like a lot of plaintiffs’ firms do, with medical malpractice, products liability cases and matters like that. What I’ve enjoyed about the freedom of having my own firm is that I have the ability to explore the unexpected when an opportunity comes along. That led me to a major toxic tort litigation that I handled against Dow Chemical. LD: Tell me more about that case. AF: Well, I didn’t know how big it would become. The case involved 33 families who had brain tumors from a toxic chemical spill in Northern Illinois. LD: How did the opportunity to try that case present itself? AF: Somebody came to me who had tried knocking on the doors of several other plaintiffs’ ﬁrms in town. They heard I was somebody who might take on a case that involved a high level of risk. I was fascinated by the case, and I thought it sounded important and challenging, which it was. The case became the largest environmental brain cancer cluster ever. That challenge became the next 10 years of my life. LD: Wow. That’s a long-haul process. How did that case turn out? AF: I could teach an entire law school course from my experiences in that litigation. Thankfully, it ended very well for my clients.

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So, there have been lots of spontaneous opportunities in my career that have opened new doors. LD: Your dedication to helping your clients brings itself to your community at large, as well. I know, for instance, you worked to help provide underprivileged children with Chromebooks early in the pandemic. AF: That initiative was started by my old friend and tennis partner, Lowell Rich, who grew up in West Philly. He is really devoted to giving back to the community in Philadelphia. Right at the start of the pandemic, kids were expected to work remotely, but there are thousands of families in Philadelphia who don’t have the money to have a computer for their child. We got to talking about it and we agreed we had to do something. We’d already had some experience working with a school in Philadelphia, raising money for them to help buy winter coats for the kids. For kids, it’s hard enough to get up and go to school. But, if you don’t have a coat, not only are you cold, but it’s embarrassing. So, those initiatives are something that I’ve been really blessed to be able to help him work on.

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Everybody in our firm is active in their community in some way. One of our lawyers has high school students who intern with him so they can see what working at a law firm is like. And in other cases, we’ve been involved in programs working with victims of sexual assault in various ways, outside of trying their cases. All of that kind of work goes hand in hand with what we do, not just as lawyers, but as citizens. LD: Speaking of work outside of your cases, I have to ask about your podcast, “Good Law | Bad Law.” Tell me a little bit about why you wanted to get involved in podcasting. AF: I started the podcast because it felt like a way to bring together my journalism background and the law. Every time I do an episode, I learn a lot and meet some really great people. The media is often so superficial, and when you get into issues of law, which run throughout everything – society, culture and politics – it’s pretty hard to get an understanding of an issue with the amount of time the regular media can devote to it. The podcast, in which we devote between 30 minutes to an hour to discussing an issue with somebody who can really have an in-depth conversation about it, is a chance to dig deep into some issues that we all care about. LD: Absolutely. Back to the firm, what kinds of cases are keeping you busy these days? AF: Well, it’s a very busy time for us because the courts are busy again coming out of the pandemic. We’ve got a lot of cases coming out of backlog and going to trial this year and next year. The case matters right now are varied – we have medical malpractice cases, and then I have a very substantial legal malpractice case that involves allegations of fraud and unethical conduct. We also have a number of sexual assault and sexual abuse cases, including one I’m filing out of state shortly. We’ve had cases all over the country. LD: What would you say are some of the most memorable cases of your career? AF: The cases I find memorable are the ones where we made a difference. I mean, we can all pull out a case and say, “Oh, look at this big number I got in that case.” That’s fine, and that’s obviously a big part of what we do.

We’re trying to get compensation for our clients. But the cases that I find memorable and the ones that I will look on and feel proud of are the ones where we really made a difference. Patient safety, for instance, is a big concern for me. I’m not sure whether that’s due to my journalism background, or things I’ve learned as a trial lawyer, or even doing the podcast where we look at problems on a higher level, but I have a lot of concerns about the safety of our healthcare system. I’m concerned about responsibility and accountability. We have a case right now that involves that concern. In Pennsylvania, as in a lot of states, nonprofits can avoid paying taxes. That’s part of what a nonprofit enjoys as a nonprofit. But, a lot – in fact, most – major hospitals and healthcare systems are nonprofits and enjoy avoiding paying property tax as a result. LD: Right. AF: Now, where do property tax dollars go? To support schools. Remember, one of the community involvements I’ve engaged in is helping support students from low-income areas, so this means a lot to me. These are schools where the teachers can’t afford basic supplies in their classrooms, like pens and paper. Now, Pennsylvania’s constitution says only those entities that are “purely public charities” can get exemption from property tax. Long, long ago, hospitals were charities. I don’t think you can look at hospitals today and say they function anything like charities. In fact, they’re really major corporations competing with other big healthcare corporations. Yet, these hospital health systems still enjoy property tax exemption in Pennsylvania, as they do in most states in the country. So, we have filed a challenge against one of the largest health systems in the Philadelphia area seeking to have their property tax exemption removed. The case goes to trial later this year. If we are successful, that billion-dollar hospital system will pay its fair share of takes in support of our public schools just as the rest of us have to do. LD: Wow. AF: That’s the kind of matter that, as a trial lawyer, we ought to care about. We should be involved in cases that make a difference. I’m proud to say that I’ve done that, and that’s the kind of fight that I’m going to keep fighting as long as I can.

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as a practicing attorney, with the last 24 at Skadden where he was the longtime Global Head of the Corporate Restructuring Department. During that time, he worked on some of the biggest, most complex and most innovative headline-grabbing restructurings of the past few decades. Goffman, now Client Chairman at Teneo, knew he had a good idea on his hands as a young associate, and wasn’t put off by wary partners. He held fast to the prepack vision, and as his practice and seniority grew, he was ﬁnally in a position to implement it. Memorex Telex was a computer peripherals company famous for its iconic ads of Ella Fitzgerald singing into a cassette recording, breaking glass with the high notes both live and in the playback, ending with

JAY GOFFMAN BY ALISON PREECE

LAWYERS ARE NOT ALWAYS THE MOST

flexible bunch. Upsetting the status quo, especially if it means less certainty - and potentially fewer billable hours - can be a hard sell. So when the bright, eager, 28-year-old Jay Goffman had an idea that might revolutionize the process of restructuring law, let’s just say he met some resistance. “Lawyers are taught to follow precedent, to follow the rules, do what’s already been done before,” says Goffman. “That was never my approach. I always thought our job was to create solutions and if they’re new and different, so much the better.” The idea was prepackaged bankruptcies, which cut a distressed company’s time in court down from five, six or even more years to often just a month or two. Nowadays, that has even been reduced to a day or two. The basic concept was to do the negotiating on the front end, find common ground and hammer out agreements between the parties, and only then present the solution to a bankruptcy court which could bind holdouts. “The idea was to get companies back on their feet, back quickly working at what really matters to them: their business,” says Goffman. For any lawyers worried that would mean less billable work for them, Goffman’s luminous career stands as proof that smart disrupters will always be valued. He spent 36 years

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the slogan, “It is live, or is it Memorex?” They were founded in Silicon Valley in 1961, grew to be a major international business and went private in a late ‘80s LBO by raising a load of Drexel junk bonds. By 1991, the company needed to restructure, but as Goffman explains, “it had 10 different layers of Drexel junk bonds and Drexel had just filed for Chapter 11. As a result, an out of court exchange offer was virtually impossible. But it also had businesses all over the world, so it would have liquidated if it went the traditional bankruptcy route.” Goffman at the time was the sole bankruptcy lawyer at O’Sullivan Graev and Karabell – a position that worked to his advantage, since he didn’t have to convince any long-established bankruptcy partners to take the leap with prepacks. He just had to convince the company, which happened to be one of the firm’s biggest clients at the time. “I remember explaining this option to the CFO and CEO, and they said, ‘We don’t like Chapter 11.’ I said, ‘This isn’t a traditional Chapter 11 case. This is different.’ ‘Well give us an example,’ they responded. And I said, ‘There are no examples, but I know it can work.’” In the beginning almost everyone in his field told him, “‘It’s impossible,’” recalls Goffman. But the company was out of options, so they put their trust in Goffman. He pulled it off, getting the company in and out of

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Chapter 11 in just 32 days. After that, everyone said, “‘Well of course prepacks work.’”

The lightbulb moment Goffman’s career path and innate cross-section of skills were helpful in leading him to this ground-breaking idea. Backing up to undergrad, he was encouraged to be a doctor by his family, and at first he liked that idea. “I wanted to do something of value in the world,” he says. He also wanted to challenge himself, so he created his own major, the hardest one he could think of: chemical psychobiology within an emphasis in neurochemistry. He did well in school, but there was one hitch: He just didn’t enjoy the science that much. Meanwhile, he loved conversations with friends about economics, finance, business and the law. So he pivoted to law school. After graduating, he took his first job at a relatively small New York firm, Burns, Summit, Rovins and Feldesman. During the start of his rotation in the bankruptcy group, the senior associate in the group left the firm and Goffman was quickly promoted. He had never taken a course in bankruptcy law, but was keen for the opportunity. He started reading up on it and quickly found that it was a perfect fit. “It was a combination of business and corporate law, finance and economics, creativity and a little bit of litigation. Sometimes you get fortunate in life: Restructuring encompassed all the things that I liked and was good at,” he says. “More than that, I really liked the idea of restructuring businesses and saving companies and saving jobs. It felt like I was doing something important, something good.” Goffman’s first restructuring case was for Saxon Industries, which had filed for Chapter 11 in 1982 following allegations of fraud that created unwanted headlines, SEC investigations and a slew of lawsuits. They had brought on William Scharffenberger as CEO to turn the company around. Goffman, just a second year associate, led large parts of the case, working closely with Scharffenberger and the rest of the management team on what was at the time one of the largest restructurings in U.S. history. It also played to his strength as a numbers guy: “This particular case required some mathematical formulas to make it all work from a tax standpoint. I was good at that,” says Goffman. Scharffenberger told Goffman later that he had been considering moving the case to a new law firm until Goffman got involved. He was so impressed with and

grateful for Goffman’s work that, once the case was wrapped, he took him out to lunch and said, “I want to get you to a better firm.” With a recommendation from Scharffenberger, Goffman interviewed and took a position at Weil, where he worked under the legendary bankruptcy attorney Harvey Miller. After a few years, Scharffenberger took Goffman out for lunch again and said, “‘There’s an interesting opportunity at Bear Stearns. They’re building a practice that trades distressed debt and I think you have the unique skill sets needed for that business.’” While distressed investing is a huge business today, in 1986 only a few people were doing this type of work. But it sounded interesting, so Goffman took the job. Sitting on the trading floor at Bear Stearns, Goffman was tasked with analyzing distressed companies: figuring out which companies could be reorganized, where the value ran out, which was the fulcrum security (a term which had not yet been defined), how much debt the company could really afford, how much debt needed to be converted to equity, and how much new equity needed to be injected. It usually took him a couple days to figure out what a company’s balance sheets should look like. And it struck him: “If I can do this in just a couple days, why in the world are companies spending years to hammer out these deals in court?” This stint as a distressed debt analyst/trader also gave him a perspective on the time value of money, a vantage point that might have evaded some less business-minded lawyers: He saw how, if people were buying debt at 70 and he could get them 80 cents on the dollar in six months time, that’s going to provide a better return than getting 90 cents in three years. Therefore people should have an incentive to do quick, smart business deals. In addition to the early job opportunities and his keen eye for numbers and business, Goffman’s big idea was also developing at a key moment in time, just after a major change in bankruptcy regulation. In 1978, the bankruptcy laws that had been in place since the Great Depression were updated by the Bankruptcy Reform Act. “The new Bankruptcy Code changed the way restructurings were going to be done,” says Goffman. “It left management in control of businesses that went into Chapter 11, and it created a different framework for getting companies reorganized. Since the law was brand new, we were all figuring it out at the same time. You could be bold and innovative. It was a great time to be a young restructuring lawyer.”

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500 Still, the stigma around filing for bankruptcy meant that companies were hesitant to file, which meant they often waited until the eleventh hour, when they were really running out of money, to talk to a restructuring specialist. Holding on to the way things were traditionally done, the bankruptcy lawyer would then take a retainer and start paperwork, filing for Chapter 11 and preparing for years in court, slowly reorganizing the business and litigating claims and motions. “It didn’t make sense to me,” says Goffman. “I knew there had to be a better way to save businesses and the jobs that went with them.”

Keeping bluebirds on buses Eventually, Goffman left Bear Stearns and went back to Weil for a few years, where he started properly formulating the concept of a prepackaged bankruptcy. As with many new ideas, the idea from this 20-something associate met resistance at the stalwart firm, but he held on to it until moving to a smaller firm again, O’Sullivan Graev and Karabell, where he was finally able to put it to use. “I think it stems from confidence in my own ability and a sincere desire to do something of significance in the world,” says Goffman of his fortitude in hanging on to this revolutionary idea despite the opposition in his field. “I believed I could do it. I believed it was the right thing. And I’ve always thought if you do the right thing, everything will eventually work out.” After proving his big idea with the Memorex Telex restructuring and quickly making a name for himself in the industry, it was only a matter of time before Skadden came knocking. It made complete sense that this business-oriented restructuring lawyer would find his home at Skadden, one of the most business-oriented law firms in the world. He also appreciated how “the culture at Skadden was a very team-oriented approach. Everybody was pulling together, working for the benefit of the client and knowing that if you did that and worked together, it would benefit the firm, and you could enjoy your career.” Goffman spent the next 24 years there. One of his most memorable cases at Skadden involved a yellow school bus and a bluebird. Founded in 1932, the iconic yellow school bus manufacturer, Blue Bird Body Co., was a company that grew alongside generations of Americans after World War II, with the proliferation of centralized schools (replacing one-room school houses), the broad sprawl to the suburbs and

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the education of the Baby Boomers. The big yellow school buses became an emblem of American values, tying prosperity and industry to family and good morals. But by early 2006, the company was in trouble: They had an urgent need for new funding, and discussions with Volvo about an acquisition fell apart at the last second. The company needed their lender group to step in, but the group couldn’t reach the required unanimous agreement. Because of the nature of Blue Bird’s business, including the various government contracts and single-source suppliers, a traditional Chapter 11 case wasn’t viable. The company shut down for several weeks and was facing imminent liquidation. Enter: Goffman The company was virtually on death’s doorstep and almost everyone had given up. But the CEO was a friend that Goffman had previously helped through another prepack. “When he called, I immediately flew down. I said to the banks, ‘We’re not going to let this company liquidate. Instead, we are going to reorganize this company in a one-day prepack,’” recalls Goffman. “You could literally hear the banks laughing on the other end of the phone. And I said, ‘You can laugh guys, but meet at my office tomorrow morning, Saturday morning at 9:00 a.m.’” They spent Saturday negotiating the entire deal. They documented it on Sunday, sent it out to the banks to vote on Monday, got the ballots back on Tuesday, and filed on Wednesday. On that Thursday Goffman asked the court to have an emergency hearing the next day without any first day motions, just to confirm the plan so the company could emerge immediately from Chapter 11. “I think the judge thought I was kidding. “We reorganized this business start to finish in seven days, including one day in bankruptcy, 32 hours, even with an objecting party,” says Goffman. “It was completely unprecedented and most people said it was impossible. I walked out of court that day feeling better about myself and what we were doing than I think I had in many, many years.” No wonder: He took an iconic company that was facing extinction, and saved it. All the employees kept their jobs, and the company is still going strong to this day. The case remained the record-holder for the fastest reorganization in Chapter 11 history for many years. And the bird keeps riding. About a decade ago, Goffman made further refinements to his own ground-breaking prepack model

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with a Polish company called CEDC, Central European Distribution Corps. CEDC was the largest manufacturer and distributor of vodka and spirits in Eastern Europe. It was headquartered in Poland. Goffman restructured CEDC with his signature prepack, in 30 days. In the prepack, the business ended up being acquired by a Russian businessman, Roustam Tariko, who later merged it with some of his other businesses. With the Russian economy beginning a period of stagnation in 2014 and the ruble getting devalued, the company was in need of a further restructuring. As is typical with Goffman, he had built a solid friendship with Tariko during the acquisition process which continued to endure. (Goffman, who forms long-lasting friendships with most of his clients, quips, “I’m the luckiest guy in the world: Every day I get up, I talk to my friends on the phone and get paid for it.”) So, Tariko naturally turned to Goffman when he was in need of another restructuring. Goffman went through the process of negotiating a restructuring and preparing a U.S. prepack for the company, now known as Roust. But there was a hitch. “While walking on a beach and discussing strategy, he said to me, ‘Look, I love everything you’re doing. I believe in you and the deal looks good, but I can’t have this in Chapter 11, even for 30 days. The Polish and Russian authorities will take actions.’” Goffman is nothing if not solution oriented. He said he had an idea and then designed an even more efficient prepack based upon a technique he had used 20 years earlier that got the company in and out in six days, which became the new standard template. But when you ask Goffman about his favorite client relationship of all time, he immediately talks about Evergreen International Aviation. Goffman first started representing Evergreen in early 1991 when he was still an associate. Evergreen flew most of the wide body cargo missions of the U.S. Military into the “Hot Zones.” “They carried the beans, bullets and bombs,” says Goffman. His first job was to recover Evergreen’s aircraft from Pan Am at the beginning of the first Gulf War and just after Pan Am filed for Chapter 11. He was so successful that he and the owner of Evergreen, the iconic Del Smith, developed a filial relationship where Goffman did all the significant legal work for Evergreen for the next 25 years until Smith’s death. “Del and I used to talk almost everyday. We became best friends. We vacationed together and spent some holidays together. He usually called me at 6:00 a.m. to start the day. He believed in me and together we

did deals all over the world. He was a great man and it was great fun.” When asked about his greatest moment, Goffman speaks of the 1997 out of court tender offer restructuring he did for Evergreen. “The Pan Am Chapter 11 case had cost Evergreen about $1B,” says Goffman. “Our restructuring saved the company and allowed Del to keep 100 percent of the equity. Almost every expert said that was impossible. When we pulled it off, we celebrated at the annual Paris Aviation show.” A few months later, on the day Smith flew to the Conquistador meeting of all airline executives, the Wall Street Journal had a front page article detailing the restructuring with a caricature of Smith and Goffman flying an Evergreen plane to victory. Goffman mused, “All the airline CEOs read the article on the way to the meeting. Del was the hero of the Conquistador meeting that year. It does not get any better than that.” In his current role as Client Chairman of the Financial Advisory Business at Teneo, Goffman works with a global team to consult with CEOs on a cross-spectrum of solutions to support their businesses. In addition to restructuring, he advises on M&A, business strategy, communications and political risk. If all that seems outside the realm of a bankruptcy lawyer, you haven’t met Jay Goffman. “Most lawyers think their job is to tell the clients the law,” says Goffman. “If they wanted that, they would have gone to law school. They run a business, and they’ve got a problem. They need you to use all your skills – legal, financial, business – and your creativity to come up with a solution. Either that, or they have an idea on how to make money and they want your help in figuring out the right way to do it. Those are the only two things you have to worry about.” “If you bring solutions to your clients, you truly care about them and you’re responsive, they’ll keep calling you forever, because they know they can trust you.” With current geopolitical events, including rampant inflation, rising interest rates, reduced liquidity, a budding oil crisis from the Russian war in Ukraine and supply chain aftershocks from the pandemic, clients will have plenty of reasons to have Goffman on speed-dial. “I believe there is a high likelihood of a global recession,” in the coming years, says Goffman, and “there’s a high likelihood that the next three, four or five years are going to be very restructuring oriented. It is just a fact of life.” Fortunately, Goffman, now in his mid 60s and showing no signs of slowing down, will be there to guide them.

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“Mark wanted to restructure the company so that there was a third class of stock, almost like a golden share,” says Grant. “He wanted to be able to sell down almost all his economic interest and still maintain absolute control over Facebook.” Given the enormous political and economic power of the social media giant, from election interference to Covid misinformation, allowing Zuckerberg that much power and limiting his economic risk was worrying to the investor community, and other parties. “It would have been a disaster,” says Grant, “and would have set a dangerous precedent.” Grant, on behalf of investors, was able to get the proposal withdrawn. Grant was inducted into the Lawdragon Hall of Fame in 2019 as a litigator, and again in 2022 as a legal consultant.

STUART GRANT BY ALISON PREECE

AS LITIGATION FUNDING PICKS UP

speed – and respectability with even the most traditional white shoe law ﬁrms – the industry is attracting some of the best legal talent to its ranks.

Stuart Grant, known internationally for his plaintiff advocacy work on behalf of stockholders, cofounded Bench Walk Advisors in 2017. The company has since invested nearly half a billion dollars into over 150 commercial cases and portfolios. They have ofﬁces in New York, Delaware and London. Grant comes to the work after over 30 years as an effective and sought-after securities litigator. A graduate of NYU Law School, his credentials include a degree in economics from Brandeis University, clerking in the SDNY and working as an associate for Skadden for several years. He then became a partner at Blank Rome before co-founding Grant & Eisenhofer, which would go on to become a renowned leader in plaintiff advocacy work. The sharp and tenacious attorney is known for his groundbreaking work in corporate governance reform and securities litigation, shoring up the rights of investors particularly in Delaware courts. One of his recent big wins before moving full time into litigation funding was the blockbuster case for Facebook investors over the stock reclassiﬁcation that Mark Zuckerberg was seeking.

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Making the transition from law to finance was perhaps bolstered by his wife of 36 years, Suzanne Grant, who has an MBA from Wharton, worked for several major brokerage houses and is now the Chair of the Delaware Public Employees Retirement System. Grant considers himself to be the “second smartest finance person in the house.” Lawdragon: You were one of the top securities litigation lawyers, particularly in Delaware. Why did you make the move into litigation funding? Stuart Grant: It was really an accident. One of our big institutional clients came to me and my partner Jay in 2016 and said, “We’re getting more and more involved in the litigation finance space. You guys are great case-pickers, and we think you’d be really good at this. If we gave you some capital, would you be willing to invest in third party cases?” We thought about it and liked the idea. It sounded like an interesting endeavor. It took us about a year to set up the infrastructure. About the same time, the Chancery court started to sour on appraisal cases, which seemed to have been taking more and more of my time. So I thought of litigation finance as a “next chapter.” We made our first investment in the fourth quarter of ‘17, then I left the firm at the end of ‘18 and started full time on this. I really liked it. I was using the

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same skillset as in my legal practice, yet reducing the demands on the emotional energy of being in trial frequently. Although, I did try my last case just before I left and got a jury verdict for the full amount requested, so that was a nice way to get on my horse and ride off into the sunset.

SG: I’m not practicing law, but we will often get a draft complaint, or at least a litigation ﬁnance memo which explains what the case is, what they’re trying to achieve. My diligence team, and ultimately I, read those complaints and have discussions with the lawyers.

LD: So just a couple years in, the pandemic hit. How did that impact things?

I can’t help myself, those discussions wind up probing their legal theory, testing them, pushing, asking about the evidence they have to support their case, ferreting out the weaknesses. Does that cause the complaint to be better, particularly if we invest in it? I think so. Am I telling them what to do? No. I have no authority to tell anyone what to do, how to try a case, what theories to use, etc.

SG: In the end, it did not have a material effect on the business at all, which is extraordinarily surprising. I had thought that case resolution would slow dramatically, and hence stretch out the investment time. It did not. I also thought it could dramatically increase the demand as companies and potential counterparties were looking for assets to monetize to use for collateral to help their business. It did a little bit, but not in a material way. Demand increased during that time, quite dramatically, but only because more and more law firms started to understand how legal findings could be used and how it could help them. LD: What types of cases or portfolios does your firm generally focus on? SG: Our firm is different in a few ways. Most litigation finance firms are running after law firm loans and portfolio investments. Although we love law firm loans and portfolio investments, the bulk of what we do, two thirds to three quarters, is single case risk. So, we are getting in pre-complaint, working with counsel, and agreeing to the financing before the complaint is ever filed. Then we take several of those cases and put them together as a portfolio for our investors. They’re investing in our ability to select cases. Not a lot of entities out there that do what we do, or at the scale that we do it. The types of cases really are any commercial cases – breach of contract, fraud, misrepresentation, antitrust, mass tort. Anything except intellectual property, which is a creature of its own. You really need to have a special skillset for that. We had that for about a year, but that guy is now in charge of all the Navy’s intellectual property, and the Navy doesn’t like to share. But that’s okay, they shouldn’t. LD: You’re getting involved pre-complaint. How much are you involved in building the litigation strategy?

LD: How picky are you about the cases you take on, compared to how many come across your desk? SG: We take less than five percent of the opportunities we see. LD: Even the ones that you don’t take on, it sounds like they might walk away with new strategies for making their case stronger. SG: I think that happens. If we go through our whole diligence process with them, we’ve pressed our concerns, and so they should understand pretty clearly why we decide not to fund the case. Or the really smart ones ask us, “Why won’t you fund this?” And we’ll walk them through exactly why. Some may very well go and try to fix those weakness and bring the cases to other funders, which is fine. We were unhappy taking the risk at a price that both sides would consider reasonable. Perhaps the next case they have, they’ll remember our service and come back to us with stronger evidence and arguments. LD: You mentioned that a lot of law firms and lawyers are really catching on to the utility of litigation funding. Can you point to a turning point there, or has it been a slow shift? SG: The Great Recession was a big turning point. Before then, a company might have counsel with whom they have had a long-term relationship. But if they had a plaintiffs’ case, they would go to the firm and say, “We think this case is worth a couple hundred million dollars. We’d like you to do it.” And the law firm would say, “Sure, that’ll be about $20M.” The company wouldn’t have that in their budget. And anyway, these big white shoe law firms were thumbing their nose at that kind of work, they didn’t really want to be on the plaintiff side,

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500 they thought it was beneath them. So the company would either have to go to another firm that they’re not as comfortable with, that they don’t know, or many times they just didn’t bring the case. Then, the Great Recession hit law firms unlike any other recession. All of a sudden, the corporate clients were much more cost conscious, and the lawyers were saying, “We need business.” They had to keep feeding the beast. Plaintiffs’ work started to look like a good opportunity. This is where funding comes in. Effectively, what we do are synthetic contingent fees. The client wants a contingent fee but the law firm says, “We don’t do that. We need to be paid hourly.” So, there’s no deal there. Now we step in. I talk to the firm and say, “I’ll pay your hourly rates. They’re outrageous. I want a discount. But I’ll still pay your hourly rates.” Then I say to the client, “I got you covered on the legal fees. So you pay me a percentage of what you recover if you win.” If we can pick those cases right and we can work with the Big Law firms of the world and keep their budgets under control, there’s enough money left for us to make a nice living. That’s effectively what we do now. Most of our cases are with large traditionally corporate defense firms in the U.S. or in the UK. As these Am Law 250 firms started to understand that this is just another sophisticated way of financing things, they became more comfortable, and realized that financing allows business relationships to happen that might not otherwise happen. That’s what we do. There are still many lawyers in the Am Law 250 who are either not comfortable or unaware of litigation finance, which is how our business is growing. LD: As more players are entering the litigation funding space, what differentiates your firm? SG: People think price is always the top of the criteria. This is not a commodity product, and so price is generally not on the top of people’s list. Speed and certainty are the two most important things to counterparties. If getting financing takes a year, that’s a problem for these firms. They don’t want to work with a little storefront that they don’t know will be around when they need their fees paid in year two and year three. And they want to know that a yes is a real yes, not a “yes but first I just need to check

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with my committee, my parent company and my funding sources.” Speed, certainty, stability, and the ability to work with a law fi rm and be part of the team, understanding what their needs and constraints are. Then price. All those things are really important. Where we really have a competitive advantage is on the first three things in particular. When you come to us, we analyze quickly, and you’re dealing directly with the investment team. When we say “yes,” that’s it, we’re in. Finally, we bring a wealth of plaintiff-side litigation experience, which can be an asset to the team as they’re looking at what kind of case they’re going to put forward. In terms of pricing, my partner Adrian [Chopin], who runs the London office, comes out of a structured finance derivatives background. He is extraordinary at being able to structure deals in a way that has economics that are satisfactory to us and also considers the needs of the counterparty and what their issues are so that the deal works for them. LD: Do you ever miss being in court? SG: I thought I would, I really did. And it is shocking to me, I do not. The only thing I miss from my former legal practice is the camaraderie, going into an office that has a lot of really smart, fun people who I worked and built with. I miss that. As it turns out, probably everyone misses it for the last two years. I do not miss the trials, or the deadlines, or having to be at the beck and call of judges and clients. I don’t miss the stress of adversaries just jerking around for the sake of jerking around. LD: It sounds like you get the best parts of a legal practice now – looking from a high level about all different sorts of cases, judging the strategy and the viability of them, and then collecting all these really good, interesting cases. SG: That’s exactly it. It’s using the same skillset. It’s taking the best intellectual parts and getting rid of all the day to day grind that a litigation practice entails. I also have 12 employees instead of 175 employees. There is less hassle and distractions. LD: How did you first decide to become a lawyer? SG: I mentor a lot of really smart, talented young people who are not sure what they want to do. When they ask me that question I try to avoid it,

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because when I was six or seven years old and all my friends wanted to be policemen and firemen, I wanted to be a corporate litigator. LD: No way, when you were six? SG: I’m assuming there is some genetic defect in me that has always caused me to want to do this. LD: Were your parents lawyers? SG: My dad was, but I never wanted to do what he did. He was sort of a jack of all trades, he would do your will and your divorce, help set up your business, all that stuff. I wanted to litigate financial matters. Growing up, I watched “Perry Mason,” and that’s what I wanted to do, be in a courtroom. LD: That would do it. SG: Interestingly enough, I took my son at three years old to see “Top Gun” and he became enamored with that. Now he’s a Marine fighter pilot. Sometimes little things in our lives like a TV show or movie just trigger something. LD: Tell me about the I Could Do Great Things Foundation. SG: It’s a foundation that my wife and I started in 2010. Neither of us grew up with money and we realized we’d been very fortunate. We’ve always tried to give back, and this was an opportunity to do that in a larger way. The foundation does major project grants, seven figures to institutions, multiple universities and all sorts of other projects. We’re doing some really cool stuff with an outfit here in Delaware called The Teen Warehouse, which is part of a larger group that has tried to take on the cycle of poverty and realized that low-income housing alone doesn’t solve the problem. We love working with teens. We’re getting more personally involved, and realizing not every kid has to go to college. We are working on a program for young people to identify success as they determine it. What’s my personal roadmap and plan? What are my benchmarks? We tell them we are investors and we love investing in success. We will invest in human success, but first they need to put together a plan, with a counselor, that’s measurable. We’re helping teens learn valuable trades to become plumbers, welders and electricians. We pay to get them trained, and the next benchmark is an internship or apprenticeship, and we can often

be helpful with those, as well. You need contacts for that work. I like to say we have a lot of high friends in low places, and they love to help out with this stuff. We try to do things particularly with young people that will change lives. Not necessarily the world, but just lives. LD: Is your wife a lawyer, too? SG: She is not. We like to say she’s a “real person.” She runs the Delaware Public Employees Retirement System, a $15B fund. She is a finance wizard. She has an MBA out of Wharton. So, I am the second smartest finance person in the household. LD: Was she pleased when you moved over into her realm? SG: It’s funny, because from very early on when I started at Skadden, and my wife was at Morgan Stanley, they would call us in and say, “You’re basically concentric circles now. We want to make sure that compliance is appropriate.” This was before cellphones, so you might not even be able to disclose where you’re traveling to because if you’re headed to a meeting in Bartlesville, Okla., your spouse might be able to quickly put together that that’s where Phillips 66 is headquartered, so they must be involved in a deal. So, it had its challenges. But then we would go to conferences where some spouses are terribly bored, but with us, we would have these overlapping social circles. So we had fun. It’s actually been a huge advantage in my career, and I hope she would say the same thing, that we move in circles that don’t duplicate but complement. She understands what I talk about, and I understand what she talks about. It’s been very nice having a partner like that for what is approaching four decades. LD: Do you have other children, besides the one in the Marines? SG: Yes, I have three kids. My eldest is in sales with a company called TriNet, doing very well. She’s married to a great guy and they had our first grandchild a few months ago. My middle guy lives in Miami, and is engaged. He’s in private wealth management with JP Morgan, he’s doing really well. Soon I’ll be the third best investor in the family.

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also given testimony before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees. In 1994, he co-founded the Kazan McClain Partners’ Foundation, which has provided grants of over $7M for mesothelioma research, among other community and civic outreach efforts. Kazan and his clients, who are often more interested in eradicating this disease than they are at collecting damages, recently put $1M into a new hospital at Stanford University. The pioneering attorney has been spurred on in this lifelong effort by his passionate drive to help his clients, who he says are “the most honest, hardworking people. They come from a culture where if you get a good day’s pay, the boss deserves a hard day’s work.” Kazan, who was inducted into the Lawdragon Hall of Fame in 2021, no doubt comes from the same stock.

STEVEN KAZAN BY EMILY JACKOWAY

THE YEAR WAS 1974. NIXON WAS FORCED

to resign over the Watergate scandal, casualties were piling up in the Vietnam War and runaway inﬂation was worsening the global recession.

But in one pocket of California, Steven Kazan had his eye on another life-shifting issue: the widespread use of asbestos and the massive cover-up of its carcinogenic effects. Asbestos was used in construction as an insulator, and Kazan first got wind of the damage it caused via a medical malpractice case against an in-house doctor at a Johns Manville manufacturing plant. He was an associate at the time at a med-mal boutique in San Francisco. “The firm looked at this case from the perspective of medical malpractice: failure to diagnose,” says Kazan. But he had an instinct that there was more to the story. When he left the firm to hang his own shingle, he started a four-decade effort to secure compensation for factory workers and other individuals who had been exposed to this dangerous mineral. Part of the work included deep dives into the medical science behind mesothelioma, the aggressive cancer caused by asbestos exposure. Kazan has spoken as a keynote at mesothelioma medical conferences and has written abstracts that are published in peerreviewed medical literature on the topic. He has

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“I may be the only lawyer you know that doesn’t own a tuxedo,” he says. “Those are not my roots.” Lawdragon: You were on the front lines of early asbestos litigation in the ‘70s. What first drew you to that work? Steven Kazan: After working at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, I joined a medical malpractice boutique in San Francisco. They had a large referral practice, and one of their connections was a workers’ comp lawyer in the East Bay, representing industrial workers. He sent over a case involving a worker who was eventually diagnosed with asbestosis by the in-house doctor at a large Johns Manville plant in Pittsburg, Calif. For the time, it was a nice verdict, based on a long delay constituting, in effect, a “failure to diagnose.” I was the youngest, newest associate in the firm. This was long ago in a galaxy far away, and so every day at 5:00 p.m., the junior partner would invite all the associates into his office and open the bar. We were sitting around one time, and I said, “Gee, with this case, this doctor’s been there for years. He probably screwed up lots more cases. Why don’t we go try to find them?” My boss said, “Eh, we’re busy enough. Why bother?” Shortly thereafter, I left. My boss and I had a slight disagreement on how much I was worth. LD: Good reason to leave.

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SK: It was a good firm, well-regarded, and I made some important connections there. But the partners were a father and son, and it was clear he wasn’t going to adopt me. Baby number two had just arrived. I decided that since I wasn’t making a living, I might as well be my own boss. I moved to Oakland and opened an office to focus on plaintiffs’ medical and legal malpractice. I kept in touch with the workers’ comp lawyer, and he started sending me cases directly. I said, “Hey, what about all these asbestos things?” He said, “Funny you should ask. I’m seeing a bunch of those. Do you want to work on them?” LD: When did you realize that this was going to become all-consuming? SK: Well, we filed a bunch of asbestos cases in the first year but there were no fees coming in because it was a new area. I continued to work mostly on medical malpractice for several years; I did a trial that first summer that was essentially my year’s income. Then it started to become clear that the asbestos cases were very good cases, and for really nice people. These were all just hardworking blue-collar guys. The guys who did their jobs were the ones who got sick. They were great clients, and they were interesting cases. My specialty with the medical malpractice cases was dealing with complex issues of medical and scientific proof. So, the asbestos work fit right in. LD: Were all these cases related to the Johns Manville plants? SK: Mostly. Then some work came out of the Fibreboard Company plant in Oakland. As I focused more on representing asbestos plant workers, I got more and more cases. There weren’t very many lawyers doing these in California at the time. LD: And then how did you start representing asbestos victims in bankruptcy reorganizations? SK: The first bankruptcies were the summer of 1982. I started the firm in ‘74, but within a couple of years, there was more national cooperation with the workers’ cases. When the first bankruptcies were filed, that changed things dramatically. Some people got out of the business thinking it was all over. By that point, I had a lot of pending cases. In the ‘70s, I had gotten some very strange publicity around the early plant worker cases. Then, in 1981, I tried the first plant worker case in California. LD: Strange in a good way or a bad way?

SK: Well, there was a guy I knew, a left-wing journalist, who started a labor magazine and wrote a lot about our cases against the Manville Pittsburg plant. The San Francisco Chronicle picked it up at one point as the lead story and my name was on the front page. LD: That would cause some momentum. SK: Then, the guys at the plant workers’ local union in Lompoc, Calif., where Manville had a big diatomaceous earth mine that also made asbestos products, saw the article. The union head wrote a letter, which basically said, “Hello, I’m the chair of the local union health and safety committee. We’ve had a lot of people die. In the last few years, we’ve collected 100 death certificates of our members. We think something funny is going on. Could you please come down here and represent us all?” I went down and held a meeting. I talked about what had happened, what Manville had done and so on. They just lined up. For a couple days, they just kept coming. We filed four complaints for 80 or 90 people from that plant. I went down to Santa Barbara and had a local TV reporter meet me at the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board courthouse to watch me file dozens of injury and death claims. It made the local news. And the cases kept coming in. A lot of these guys had exposure in the 1930s and early 1940s and during World War II. By the mid-’70s, 30 years after the war ended, that was peak time, given the latency incubation period for asbestos. Then, as time went on, we started seeing more cases from the post-war construction boom in this country. We also saw cases of guys who’d been in the Navy, and other military exposures. LD: Did you have any mentors during all this? SK: Jack Moore, the lawyer for Johns Manville, was a mentor to me. We had a good relationship. He was much older, although younger than I am now. LD: What did you learn from him? SK: Don’t brag about your fees. He said, “I know you like your clients, but your dad was a retail florist. You are also in the retail business, only you’re selling your cases.” Any good retailer knows you don’t fall in love with the merchandise. Everything is for sale. You don’t take it home. Basically, take care of your clients. Put them first. They come to you to get money, not for sympathy. So don’t fall in love because that gets in the way of doing the job.

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500 LD: Good advice. Still, I imagine cases like these must be personally impactful. SK: They always are, yes. The key is remembering the difference between empathy and sympathy. If you don’t care about them, you’re not going to do a good job. But they don’t come to you for sympathy. They have family and friends and clergy for that. They come to you because they know they’re dying, and they want to make sure their families are taken care of. Empathizing with their situation and caring about them is very useful, but like a doctor, if you get too emotionally involved, you’re not going to be objective enough to do your job properly. It’s a hard line to follow. One of the things we found over the years was that our staff employees tended to be younger. Many have never yet had a death in the family – even their grandparents were alive. They worked very closely with clients and got really connected and involved, and the frequent deaths hit them very hard. Early on, we found a group of counselors and advisors that helped people through adherence to the Kübler-Ross death and dying grief process. We would bring in consultants to work with our staff and for many years had a psychologist on call. LD: That makes so much sense. With so many of your cases having to do with mesothelioma specifically, how did you get into understanding the science of that disease, and how has that progressed over the years? SK: Well, into the 1950s and until 1960, there was a real question of whether that disease existed. The only cause, really, is asbestos. While industries certainly knew that they were killing people, they weren’t telling anybody. It became more and more obvious until it was established in the mid-’60s without any question. I was always kind of a science geek. I understood the language and made it a point to form relationships with doctors who specialized in this. Some have been witnesses for me. There were even doctors I sued in malpractice cases who ended up testifying for me in cases. I followed the literature, subscribed to the journals, and started going to medical conferences on cancer and chest diseases. I was always the ugly duckling at these conferences, or maybe the swan. I was literally the only lawyer there, and I became a fixture. There’s a group called the International Mesothelioma Interest Group, and I started providing financial support for their meetings.

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A while ago, I started submitting abstracts largely focusing on issues of interest to doctors at the intersection of law and medicine. As far as I know, I’m the only American lawyer, and one of a handful in the world, who’ve ever had abstracts submitted, and been asked to present at these meetings. We discussed the legal implications of what they do, and other things doctors should know about. It’s a way of making connections based on common interests and taking care of their patients. Also, my sister has basically been the coordinator for the international movement to ban asbestos. LD: How’d she get involved? I didn’t realize it was a family affair. SK: As I told the U.S. Senate once, it’s the family business. My sister [Laurie Kazan-Allen] moved to London after college. When we started suing British companies, there are formal ways you can serve process through the Hague Convention, which is very cumbersome. There was one major British defendant called Turner & Newall that we had sued a few times. I got to know their lawyers, and they agreed that they’d accept personal service from us. They were in Manchester, which is a reasonable train ride from London. So, I’d send papers to my sister. She would call up to the secretary of the company and say, “I got some more papers.” He’d say, “Well, come for tea on Wednesday.” Then, we’d get hired by clients whose cases required we do corporate research, which my sister, who has a business degree, helped with. I started asking her to help us ﬁnd witnesses for our British clients. She would go to small towns in Ireland or Scotland and place an ad in the local newspaper and go see them. The newspaper would write an article about “a British investigator looking for the mates of John Smith who worked at the ‘X’ factory.” And people would respond. She started meeting some of the early victims’ groups and organizations there. The whole thing mushroomed into an international movement. There’s a lot of this disease also in Australia, South Africa and throughout Asia. They all got together and organized the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat, of which she’s the executive director. She’s written six or eight books, monographs on different aspects of this, in Asia and India and so on, that have been well-regarded. LD: Tell us about your testimony before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees.

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SK: There was one when the global tobacco settlement was reached with all the states, that the people who negotiated the deal deliberately set out to eliminate any claims that asbestos companies could have to get contribution or indemnity from the tobacco industry for diseases, mostly lung cancer, where asbestos and smoking were involved, which did not please a lot of the asbestos companies or the bankruptcy trusts. I pushed the Manville trust to sue the tobacco companies. They brought me in as co-counsel with their regular outside counsel who later moved their practice to the Orrick firm. I testified on whether the trust should get some piece of the settlement, or at least protect their rights. Then there were legislative proposals around 2000 to deal with the flood of screening no-impairment, mild X-ray changed cases. Something like 100,000 of those cases were filed. Some asbestos companies at least acknowledged they’d hurt a lot of people and wanted to help do what was right. But they were getting killed by all these, shall we say, more modest cases. There was a group of lawyers like me who focused on the cancer cases, who also had a common interest. So, there was this very strange coalition between us, the Chamber of Commerce and the American Insurance Association working on lobbying all of this. They had the money and connections. We had the public interest aspect. I was the group spokesman for the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, including when that Committee called for an Asbestos Summit Conference. At one of those hearings, a senator said, “Well, it looks like maybe we should just think about banning asbestos. What do you all think?” The corporate witnesses said, “Well, we don’t know.” The Manville trust guy said, “Well, we haven’t taken a position on that. I’m not authorized to say anything.” Even people from organized labor said the same thing: “That would have to go to the national board. I’m not authorized.” They looked at me and said, “What about you?” I said, “My position is unequivocal. I have a sister who is younger, smarter and prettier than me. She is the director of the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat. So, our family’s position is clear. You should ban it.” LD: They should have listened. What do you ﬁnd most rewarding about this work? SK: It’s the people. I’m more removed these days – I don’t try cases anymore; I focus on the bankruptcies.

I’m on many of the re-organization committees and am an advisor to most of the trusts once they’re established. We put $50B into these trusts, so I’m going to keep an eye on it to make sure nobody screws it up. So, I’m a level removed from the dayto-day with the clients, but I’ve always loved them. Having the clients who want us to help provide for their families has always been central. I’ve called clients and said, “We’re in trial, and we’ve just now settled with the last defendant, so I don’t have to ask you to testify from your hospital bed,” and the clients have said to me, literally, “Thank you so much. Does that mean I can go now?” Because they’ve held on just to see it through. Back then, they knew that the damages for pain and suffering would disappear if they weren’t alive at the end of the trial. We’ve since changed that law. LD: Good. SK: We’ve made some big changes in California law with that and limiting the depositions that used to take days or weeks. They’re now basically seven hours, just like in federal court. We just want to get justice for people. Religious people would say that we try to do the Lord’s work. The biblical injunction to pursue justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God – not a bad way to try and live. They can’t get justice on their own, and no one’s given it to them. I’ve had clients who say, “Look, I don’t need the money, but I want these SOBs to pay for what they’ve done. How can I help protect other people?” Even clients who do need the money often say, “You guys did so much better than I ever expected. I’d like to help the next guy.” So, we help them find ways to do that, and we channel a lot of money into medical research, to save people from dying of this disease, as well as other community efforts, like food banks. We want to help people. The client always comes ﬁrst. We charge lower fees than probably anybody else on asbestos bankruptcy work. Most law ﬁrms charge their regular percentage. I don’t want to say that’s wrong. I do want to say that the way we do it, we think, is the right way. And we spare no effort in preparing and trying our cases; we generally get really good results in settlement and at trial – and in over 45 years have never taken an asbestos case where the client didn’t recover at least some compensation. That’s it.

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found it gratifying to help individuals ﬁnd justice, while bringing larger societal changes by getting bad products off the market and ensuring safer practices in industries and public infrastructure. Some of his notable wins over the course of his career include a $25M verdict for a young girl who got trapped in a defective drain at a community pool; a $8.3M verdict for the families of two children killed in a bus wreck in France; a $7.9M verdict involving a shooting by a disgruntled worker (at the time a national record); a $14M settlement for three workers who died in a scaffolding collapse; and a $4.7M settlement for the family of a college student who died during freshman hazing. The Edwards in his ﬁrm, Edwards & Kirby, is John Edwards – yes, that John Edwards, the former Senator of North Carolina who was the Democratic nominee for Vice President alongside John Kerry in 2004. Kirby and Edwards went to college together and were

DAVID KIRBY BY ALISON PREECE

IT SEEMS LIKE DAVID KIRBY WAS

destined for the law. His father was a highly respected legal and political ﬁgure: J. Russell Kirby joined law school days after returning from combat in World War II where he earned a Purple Heart in combat on Iwo Jima; he practiced law for half a century and spent 12 years in the state legislature. Kirby’s grandfather also served in the state legislature. Back even further, his ancestor served in the House of Burgesses in Virginia. Growing up, Kirby was inﬂuenced by his father’s two law partners, John Webb, who would go on to become a North Carolina Supreme Court Justice, and Jim Hunt, who served four terms as governor. For the young Kirby, all signs pointed to greatness in the profession of law. He didn’t always see it that way, though. Kirby started in pre-med, and when he eventually switched to law school he became a self-proclaimed “coaster.” Once he started trying cases he had bouts of self-doubt, reconsidering his aptitude for the profession on a regular basis.

And yet, the blood runs thick. He stuck with the law, moving into the personal injury space where he

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partners in moot court. They started the firm in 1993, practicing together for six years until Edwards ran for Senate. Then they reconstituted the firm in 2013 and have been going strong ever since. Kirby, who was born and raised in North Carolina where he continues to practice, was inducted into the Lawdragon Hall of Fame in 2022. Now the family tradition of employing the law for the public good continues: Two of Kirby’s three children are in the law, with his youngest son, Winston, practicing alongside him at the firm and his daughter working as legal counsel to the N.C. governor. Kirby’s brother is a lawyer, as is his niece, who works for the Southern Environmental Law Center, and one of his nephews, who works with the U.S. Department of the Interior. Kirby was invited into the Inner Circle of Advocates a few years back, which he describes as “extremely humbling. These are the absolute giants in the legal profession. It is quite an honor to be in their company.” Soft-spoken and kind-hearted, compassionate and methodical, Kirby is a paragon of good lawyering, using every skill at his disposal to build a better world.

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Lawdragon: Your father was such a well-known legal ﬁgure. Did he encourage you to go into the law? David Kirby: That’s interesting. He did, but he never pushed me to follow directly in his footsteps. He was my hero in life and the person who inspired me to go into law. He was a larger-than-life ﬁgure. He was in the state legislature for 12 years. He introduced two pieces of legislation that changed the landscape of our state, by creating a consolidated university system and an educational assistance authority for low-income students. He modeled for me that lawyers are born leaders, and that it’s your job in life to go out and change the world for the better. That was the lawyer’s role in life, but I also thought very individually, that was my mission in life. That’s what I was supposed to do. My mother was an inspiration too. She was president of the Democratic Women for the state of North Carolina and was on the board of a college that brought a new medical school to an underserved part of the state. She was a lifelong advocate for the forgotten, powerless and poor. My parents were both eggheads. Very bright. They were both valedictorians for their high school classes, and my mother was the valedictorian of her college class. Their idea of an enjoyable weekend would be to curl up with a big book and read. They watched virtually no television. They were very active in politics and community affairs. They passed on a great set of values to all their children. I was very lucky to have tremendous role models as parents. I had an older brother and a younger sister, and we were raised with the notion that you should go out and serve. That was your mission in life – to serve others. The three advocations that were discussed were, one, you could go into medicine and try to heal and provide aid to the sick and the injured. The other was you could go into the ministry and try to serve the soul. The third was you could go into law and try to protect people’s rights and redress wrongs that are out there all around you. When I started college, I was pre-med, thinking I would go to medical school. LD: Once you moved into law, how was your experience at University of North Carolina? DK: It was interesting. I enjoyed law school. I have to concede, I probably had a bad attitude as a student. I assumed I would go through law school then return home, practice along with my father and enter politics.

I thought I would run for Congress or for governor or some major political office, because I came from this family history of serving in public office. LD: Even back beyond your parents? DK: Yes, there are quite a few public servants in my family tree. My grandfather served in the state legislature for 16 years. I have a great, great, great, great grandfather who served in the House of Burgesses in Virginia. So my first year of law school, I studied hard and made good grades. Then, I’m ashamed to admit, I knew I would be working for my father and didn’t need to graduate in the top of my class so I started to coast. Once I finished law school, I worked for my father for about two weeks. Then my father’s partner, John Webb, was appointed to be a judge on the Court of Appeals and asked me to be his law clerk. I decided to do it, thinking it would be nine months in Raleigh and then I’d be back with my father. But when I told him, he looked at me and said, “Son, you’ll enjoy life in the bigger city. You’ll never come back.” And he was right. After clerking, I hung a shingle out with a close friend from undergraduate school here in the capital city. Even though we didn’t practice together, my father was always there for me, and helped tremendously with my practice. He had been in a small law school class and several of his classmates were here in Raleigh. One in particular, Robert McMillian, sent a lot of people my way. Every two or three days, somebody walked into my office. “Mr. McMillian told me to come see you. He says you’re the person to see if you’ve got a speeding ticket.” I didn’t know anything about speeding tickets, but I figured it out. That literally fed me that first year. I was doing everything under the sun from criminal cases to business disputes to commercial litigation. Now and then, I had a personal injury case trickle through the door. Whatever came in, I was doing, and trying to do the best I could not to trip on my way to the courthouse. LD: Was there a particular case that led you to focus on personal injury? DK: Yes, I had handled a number of smaller ones – broken arms, injured backs, mostly from car wrecks. And then a Court of Appeals judge called me with a case where a lady at a nursing home was using a motorized wheelchair to move around because she had very advanced arthritis, as well as osteoporosis. When she got on the motorized wheelchair one

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500 “I ALWAYS TRY TO BE MINDFUL OF THE PERSON I’M REPRESENTING, WHILE ALSO BROADENING THE CASE INTO, WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT TO SOCIETY, IN OUR GREATER LIVES? YOU FRAME THE CASE TO HELP THE JURORS THINK, IS THIS THE LEVEL OF SAFETY THAT WE WANT FOR PEOPLE WORKING IN THIS TOWN, THIS COMMUNITY, THIS STATE, OUR COUNTRY? YOU APPEAL TO THEIR COMMON SENSE.”

morning and started to go down the hall, the machine just triggered into high speed, and started racing her down the hallway. She tried to stop it and couldn’t. It crashed into the end of the wall, flipped her off, slammed her into the wall, broke just about every bone in her body. She died about two weeks later. I started doing research. I got the machine. I determined that this company had had some problems with the computer control boards in their machines. Once I’d built a case, I filed a lawsuit. As a result of that case, the company issued a worldwide recall of these particular machines. And I received a large recovery for the woman’s family. That case moved me into focusing on personal injury work, for two reasons. One, you could not bring this lady back, tragically, but at least her heirs were compensated for the loss of losing their mother in the last year or two of her life. The other part that was rewarding is knowing I made a difference. These machines were recalled worldwide, so that type of tragedy would not happen again. LD: Do you recall your first million-dollar verdict? DK: Oh yes. It was in a gas water heater case, a very interesting case. The most memorable part was the lawyer on the other side who was a fabulous virtuoso defense lawyer. His name was Jim Blount. He was a bear of a man. He was about 6’1”, 6’2”, probably weighed 275 pounds. But not overweight. He had shoulders about four feet wide. Built like a middle linebacker. He had the most beautiful radio baritone Southern drawl voice. It was like listening to a symphony in the courtroom, “Membahs of the juray.” I tried desperately to settle the case before trial. My client, Lee, was 14 years old at the time of the incident. He was in his backyard, smoking a cigarette. He

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walked over to a shed to pick up a gas can. A neighbor came out and saw him smoking. Of course, he was a young kid, and wasn’t supposed to be smoking. So when the neighbor saw him, Lee darted back into the shed. When he came back out, he didn’t have the cigarette or the gas can in his hands. Then about a minute or so later, there’s a blood curdling scream. The neighbor saw Lee running across the yard on fire. The main issue was the gas can he carried into the shed was on the steps of the shed, on fire, and so was Lee. All the reports from the fire department and every inspection said that this was a gasoline fire. But Lee’s father thought that didn’t make any sense. He’d been having trouble with the water heater and thought that was the real culprit. So I investigated and hired the former chairman in NFPA 58, which is the national fuel code for liquified petroleum gas. Turns out there had been a lot of similar fires in Florida with water heaters, where when people opened doors that housed water heaters, the push of air up against the burner would ignite unburned fuel and a flash fire would come out and it would set people on fire. We had a decent case, but I thought there’s no way on God’s earth I could ever win in court because of our state’s negligence laws. North Carolina has contributory negligence, which I thought would sink us. I said to Mr. Blount, I begged him, “Let’s settle this case. My client has been terribly injured, horribly burned. He’s a good kid, he’s in college now and the money will help him get through school.” But Jim said, “David, some cases just need to be tried.” Blount was incredible in the courtroom. I would put a witness on, thinking it was going well, and then Jim Blount would finish his cross-examination and I’d think, “Why did I call that witness? That was

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a stupid mistake.” It was like that with every single witness. I started going home and saying to my wife, “I’m not cut out to be a lawyer.” I was ready to enroll in med school. Later in the trial, I put my NFPA 58 gas code expert witness on the stand. He’d been a fireman, served on national fire protection committees. Really knew the subject of LP gas fires. But he didn’t have any formal education past high school. Blount, with his mastery of cross, began his line of questioning: “Do you have a doctorate? No? Ok not a PhD. Are you a licensed engineer? Ok, not a licensed engineer. How about your college studies? Oh I see, you didn’t go to college, ok. You have zero education in physics and engineering.” Then he got to meat of it. “What else was in that shed with the water heater? Rakes, shovels, paint cans? So they must be in and out of there a lot, don’t you think? They had that water heater for six years. How many times do you think they’ve been in and out of that shed in those six years? Fifty times? A hundred? Two hundred?” And he’s just going real slow with all of this, getting my witness to answer each of these little questions, building it up. Then he says, “How is it on those other 200 occasions, when one of the family opened the door to that shed, how is it that this flash fire didn’t happen on one of those occasions?” And I’m thinking: God he’s good. What a good question. My expert witness turns to the jury and says, “Members of the jury, LP gas works in mysterious ways.” And I think: we’re cooked. It’s done, we lost this case. But then, miracles do happen in trials. Blount knew he was kicking my butt. So he let a new associate, who never tried a case, get up and do closing arguments. He got up and argued that where this kid was burned was consistent with this being a gasoline fire, and that Lee had stepped into a puddle of gasoline and the cigarette lit the gasoline and got the gas can and Lee on fire. Bingo: You could have driven a Mack truck through the door he opened for me. I showed the jury the burn chart, and how Lee’s burns began right above the knee, through the thighs, up the torso and onto the neck. No burns on the ankles, shins or calves. And I pointed out that the water heater stood just above the height of his shins. So clearly, it didn’t add up. Why weren’t his feet and ankles burned if

he was standing in a puddle of gasoline burning from the ground up? Then, I hammered home the pain he endured, how his sister and parents couldn’t stay in the room while he had debridement, using razors to cut off dead skin, because they couldn’t stand to hear the screams of a child. And now, in college, he never takes his shirt off because he feels like he’s grotesque, doesn’t want anyone to see his disfigured skin. I didn’t ask for any specific sum of money. I just said, “You decide what’s fair.” The jury came back with damages of $1.7M. And this is almost 40 years ago. A large sum back then. It felt great to get that verdict, but you know, I actually called Jim Blount to apologize that it was him on the losing end. I had tremendous respect for my adversary. He was a virtuoso. No underhanded tactics, just great lawyering. Of course, he was an absolute gentleman about it. And in the years that followed, he actually sent a lot of cases to me, which is the greatest compliment. I wish all my adversaries were like him, although maybe not as skillful as he was. LD: What an incredible story. What advice do you have for young trial lawyers? DK: Be yourself. I believe that very strongly. And uphold the dignity of the profession. You can crossexamine someone effectively and directly, being firm, courteous and polite all at the same time. You can be a great lawyer without being a jerk. Try to connect the case to the juror’s lives. Every case is about what specifically happened to your clients at a particular moment in time. But it’s also about, what relevance does it have to the juror’s life? Can the juror see themselves in that situation? Why does the case matter to the juror? I always try to be mindful of the person I’m representing, while also broadening the case into, why is this important to society, in our greater lives? You frame the case to help the jurors think, is this the level of safety that we want for people working in this town, this community, this state, our country? You appeal to their common sense. And to truly be a good trial lawyer, you need to go get your knees bumped. The more you’ve been out there and experienced the highs and lows of life, had the thrill of success and had your heart broken, the more humanity you’ve got and the better trial lawyer you’re going to be.

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FRANK PITRE A RENOWNED TRIAL LAWYER, FRANK PITRE

has a resume replete with high-dollar verdicts and splashy headlines, but one of the cases that makes him proudest generated neither.

The plaintiff was an 88-year-old woman. Despite dutifully making mortgage payments on her home for 35 years, she had fallen behind on some of them and her lender was throwing her out. The way the lender went about doing so, however, “violated the law,” the name partner at Cotchett Pitre & McCarthy recalls. “I was able to help her keep her house and to have the mortgage extinguished because some of the things that they did in threatening her were egregious. I didn’t get any notoriety, but I got the nicest thank-you card from this woman. The one thing that she cherished was her home and it was the only home that she had lived in for all those years.”

BY JAMES LANGFORD he worked in his immigrant father’s grocery-delivery business. Lawdragon: Tell me more about that. Frank Pitre: My dad came over on the boat from Sicily in 1954 and he went to work in the wholesale produce business in the San Francisco Bay area, delivering fruits and vegetables to small corner grocery stores and what I call mid-market independent grocery stores. Over time, he built his own little delivery service. My mother was the bookkeeper, my dad bought the merchandise and I used to load the trucks and make the deliveries before I went to school each morning.

It’s a common thread in Pitre’s cases, fighting for the powerless against the powerful, whether it’s advocating for California homeowners who lost everything in wildfires that savaged their communities or the relatives of people killed in a crash of the Boeing 737 MAX, a jetliner eventually grounded for months amid an investigation by U.S. air safety officials.

I saw how hard people worked, and I also saw what happened to them: They’d put in a lifetime of hard labor and often ended up with bad backs and other disabilities. I also saw the unfairness that existed, with some people taking advantage of certain folks who worked in the business. I decided then and there that I wanted something different. I was 17 years old, counting boxes of zucchini on the back dock and asking myself why I was there at two o’clock in the morning. I decided I was going to take a shot at going to law school and see if I couldn’t do something to help people. And that was the beginning of a dream.

The desire to help people who feel unable to help themselves probably dates to his youth, Pitre says, when

As opposed to thinking that I was going to be the next Willie Mays or Joe Montana, I said, “Look, my way of

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getting ahead is through education and devoting myself as best I can to school.” I ended up being fortunate enough to do well in school, went on to law school and got my first job working with Joe Cotchett, who later made me a partner and I’ve been with that same firm for 40 years. I’ve been fortunate to handle some wonderful cases, meet some great people and be able to try a great number of cases. When the firm first started, I was lawyer number six out of six, and now the firm has about three dozen lawyers in Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco and New York. LD: You must have seen the practice of law change quite a bit over the past 40 years.

I’ve seen in trying cases. Before, you’d have cases that went on for weeks. Now you’re trying to ﬁgure out what is the most effective way to present something without wasting people’s time. LD: What advantages did that give you compared with lawyers who are starting their practice today? FP: It helps tremendously in developing what I call a discovery plan. When you start, you’re just going through all of the motions and using all the tools in the tool shed, but to what end? Young lawyers today, because they haven’t tried cases, don’t have the vision and the understanding that lots of what you do in discovery is really meaningless. Courtroom experience helps you identify what’s important, making you a better lawyer in terms of focusing your investigation and discovery plan on what’s most relevant and not wasting a lot of time.

FP: Absolutely. When I started, first of all, you got to trial a lot more often. I was fortunate in getting a lot of cases that went to trial in the first 10 years that I was practicing law. The result was that lawyers ended up trying many more cases, and I learned very quickly how to try a case. By the time I had practiced law for 10 years, I had tried a dozen cases. And a lot of those cases were tried for a minimum of four weeks to as many as eight to 10 weeks. They were your basic personal injury cases as well as medical malpractice cases, antitrust cases, fraud cases, product liability cases and intellectual property cases. I ran the gamut, trying them in federal and state court. And that’s what gave me the confidence to continue to move on and to expand. I learned that once you understood the fundamentals of how to try a case, how to present evidence, the only thing that would change is the law and the particular facts, but the fundamentals were always the same.

When you’re on the plaintiffs’ side, your job is to figure out the real issues that are in dispute. What evidence do you need to prove your version of the events? And how do you get to that information in the most effective, simplest and efficient way possible? Because your clients are people who need prompt resolution. They are hurting, they may have lost loved ones or, as in some of the California wildfire cases, they may have lost everything they owned: their home and all of the personal items they accumulated over their lifetimes. They don’t have years to reach resolution. The perspective of having tried cases when I was younger showed me that taking 16-hour depositions is not the way to be the most effective lawyer I can be.

LD: What was the most surprising thing that you learned about how to present evidence? I know that can be a big shift, going from practice in law school to actually doing it real time in front of a judge and a jury.

LD: You’ve worked with a lot of the wildﬁre cases. How did you get involved in those? Was it just a matter of demand or did you feel a personal connection because you live in California, which has had so many of them?

FP: The thing that I learned is that when you start, you’re focused on mechanically doing all the things that are required to make sure that the evidence is admissible. You’re focused on the nuts and bolts of blocking and tackling. Once you gain conﬁdence as to what those rules are and how you do it, then you get to the creative stage. There, the focus is not just presentation of evidence, but how to present evidence effectively and persuasively, and that’s where creativity comes in.

FP: That’s a great question because it really shows how your life and career can come a full 360 degrees. When I was around 10 or 12, I came to live in a town called Millbrae, which is close to a town called San Bruno. I had a lot of friends who lived in San Bruno. In September 2010, a huge natural gas line exploded in that town. It was a catastrophic event: Eight people died, scores of other people lost their homes and ran for their lives and the culprit was a company called PG&E. I learned a heck of a lot about how PG&E did business because for the next three years, I took 40-odd depositions of everybody from the CEO down to the people who crawled in these natural gas lines when they were first buried in the ground in 1956. I learned about the corporate culture of PG&E, which sacrificed safety for the sake of profit. Freeze frame: That case resolved three years later.

How do you present your version of events, your story, in a way that is effective and likely to resonate with the audience, your jury, as opposed to mechanically just doing it? That’s where the light bulb went on for me: Our job as lawyers is to persuade and to do it in the most effective and, today, efﬁcient way possible. People don’t like to waste their time. That’s the biggest change that

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500 Because of my involvement with suing PG&E, after a wildfire in Calaveras County known as the Butte Fire, which occurred Sept. 15, 2015, one of the persons that I had worked with in the San Bruno case, Steve Campora, teamed up with me again to pursue PG&E. We saw that the same failed corporate culture and risk management practices from the gas side that led to the San Bruno explosion was occurring on the electrical side, regarding PG&E’s distribution lines in rural areas. They sacrificed safety for the sake of improving their stock price and their financial position. Two years later, in 2017, the calamity that had happened in Calaveras County struck 22 counties in northern California with the North Bay Fire. There were the same kind of issues: PG&E failing to implement a safety power-shutoff program that had been used by San Diego Gas & Electric, failing to have done what was required to inspect the scores of trees that posed threats to their lines and that caused a calamity and damage of more than $7B to $8B. One year later, in 2018, the same problems manifested with the Camp Fire. Those were transmission lines, not distribution lines, but it all ties back to the same root cause. You have to consider that many of PG&E’s transmission towers were built in the 1900s to the 1920s and ‘30s. If you don’t invest in improving that infrastructure, you are going to continue to suffer from failures, metal fatigue and corrosion. You need inspections and a plan to replace those things before running equipment to failure. I had become so familiar with the ins and outs of how this company ran and the failures that existed in the company that I instinctively knew where liability stood and that this was something that needed to be corrected, not just with payment of money to victims but with the company changing the way it did business. It had buried itself in such a dark hole that it was going to take years to dig itself out. When you ignore, culturally, the need to put safety first for a period of 30 or 40 years and more, you can’t dig out of it quickly. So there’s going to be a lot of pain before you finally see this company get on the right track. I believe that it will. It’s just going to take a lot more time. LD: The tragedy is how many homeowners and their families have had to suffer. You wonder when the change is coming. FP: It’s not just PG&E. The Boeing cases, the two different crashes with the 737 MAX, the last of which was in Ethiopia, just outside of Addis Ababa, point to the same cultural issue. These two companies – one, a utility; one, a manufacturer of aircraft – both had multiple calamities that, if you look to the root cause, stem from a culture that places an emphasis on profits and stock value and as a result, cuts corners. For 148

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Boeing, it was keeping up with competition, rushing the 737 MAX into the marketplace to compete with the new Airbus A320neo. For PG&E, once again it was keeping their shareholders happy at the expense of delaying projects and not investing in infrastructure. You see what happens. The consequences are that the public suffers because of the failure to have a corporate culture that has its head on straight and understands that safety being number one means that sometimes you have to sacrifice profits to ensure that you’re doing things the right way. But in the long run, a company that always lives by safety first is going to have greater value for shareholders over a long-term period. If you’re in this to play the long game, you put safety first. LD: You’ve talked about two very high-impact cases. What were some of the most memorable cases that you’ve handled, either because they were personally satisfying or because of how they helped victims? FP: We talked about the 88-year-old woman who was thrown out of her house. Another one that sticks with me is the San Bruno fire and explosion case because I was able to help families of people that I had grown up with as a teenager. Many were mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers of folks that I went to school with. Being able to do something to rebuild the community that I was once part of was significant for me. All of these types of cases create a mosaic of who you are as a person, and they all have shaped me. LD: Knowing that, what advice would you give to people who either are considering becoming a lawyer or have gotten their degrees and are just starting out as lawyers? FP: My advice is this: If you really want to help people, if you really want to do something that is rewarding and fulfilling, then I can think of no greater way to do that than to be a trial lawyer. I would also tell them not to look at how Hollywood depicts the legal profession. It is hard work. If you really want to help somebody and you want to be the best you can be in this profession, there are no shortcuts you can take. You’ve got to be willing to be disciplined. You’ve got to be willing to get your hands dirty, to dig in and review documents and understand everything about the case. There is nothing that is more rewarding than being able to look back and say that you made a difference in somebody’s life because you devoted all of your hard work and energy to that case, to providing justice to someone who was ready to give up, or didn’t know where to turn to get justice, to stand up against the powerful for somebody who feels powerless. There is no greater feeling.

500 faulty tailgate welding, but a massive bribery scheme that awarded unqualiﬁed truck drivers licenses in exchange for supposed political contributions. The case led to 74 criminal convictions, including that of former Illinois Governor George Ryan, who went to federal prison in 2007. Power secured a $100M recovery for the family, whom he keeps in touch with to this day. More recently, he and his son tried a case for a truck driver who lost both his legs when cargo was dropped on him. They brought the case against both the company that loaded the cargo and the forklift operator and obtained a verdict of $95.4M. Lawdragon: You have done all sorts of cases in your career, and trucking accidents seem to be a particularly bright spot for you. Why would you say that is?

JOE POWER BY EMILY JACKOWAY

FOR SOME LAWYERS, THE CRAFT IS IN

your blood. Not only was Joseph Power’s father a lawyer and a judge (Chief Judge Joseph A. Power of Cook County Criminal Court in Chicago), but he has two brothers and a sister who are lawyers, and his own son is a lawyer, too. Power and his son, James, now work alongside each other at Power Rogers, a prominent personal injury ﬁrm in Chicago.

A Catholic and a Democrat, Power grew up in the inner city of Chicago. He’s naturally driven to help others and thinks about his cases from every conceivable angle. A bulldog in the courtroom, this Lawdragon Hall of Famer has had astounding successes in a multitude of trials over his decades-long career. Power has tried a wide variety of cases, from big trucking accidents to defamation to products liability. He often represents individuals up against large companies; he’s also represented sophisticated entities, including a recent case for a large law ﬁrm seeking $5M in unpaid billing. In one blockbuster case, Power represented a conservative Baptist minister, Pastor Duane Scott Willis, and his wife Janet, who lost six of their nine children in a van ﬁre. In pursuing discovery of the accident, Power uncovered not only a defective fuel tank and

PHOTO BY MICHELLE NOLAN

Joseph Power: Probably 95 percent of lawyers don’t actually try cases. So, when a case is really going to trial, they seek out the few lawyers who have the experience. For that reason, a lot of trucking cases come my way. I just happen to know that there’s a lot of different ways in which you can recover money damages. You can’t just think of it as a trucking case, because if you just pursue the trucking company, they only have a million in coverage, right? Is there other insurance coverage? You may have a broker involved. You may have various entities, the trailer, the tractor. Who owns them? What’s their culpability, in fact or in law? The Willis case speaks to this. We had a trucking company that said they’re not even going to pay their million dollars, and by hook or by crook, we found nine or 10 different defendants who all paid seven or eight ﬁgures to settle the case. You have to think about who did wrong. The person who worked for the railroad who released the truck onto the roadway – we sued them. We brought action against Chrysler. We did testing and learned they did not protect the gas tank as much as they protected the oil pan, and we had an expert who said they did that because they were more worried

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500 about warranty claims. So, they made sure that the oil pan would not be penetrated by foreign objects but not the gas tank. The oil pan was twice as thick as the gas tank based on our testing, and so when this object hit the oil pan, it didn’t perforate, but then it went back and went right through the gas tank and the ﬂoorboard and created an opening for the gasoline to enter and cause a ﬁre in the van. One way or another, there are often many entities responsible for a tragedy, and had they acted differently, it would have been prevented. LD: You secured the largest medical malpractice verdict that went to judgment in Illinois. Can you tell us about that case? JP: Mrs. Medeiros went in to have a test done on her lungs, the bronchoscope, and unfortunately, she aspirated. The oximeter told them that she was having problems and she needed to be intubated. But they didn’t do anything. They delayed it for too long, and she ended up with anoxic brain damage. Aside from the negligence of the defendants, there was an issue of whether she was conscious or not. If she’s not conscious, that would mean that there would be no recovery for pain and suffering, and the noneconomic damages. We demonstrated that, when she watched TV cartoons in Spanish, she would laugh. In addition, when her husband would tell her jokes, she would also laugh. That was the only real way in which we could demonstrate that she was aware, that she had what’s called Locked-in Syndrome. Even though she seemingly was unconscious otherwise, when she heard things in Spanish that made her laugh, she did. So, we were able to prove conscious pain and suffering because she was aware. We won a $55M jury verdict in that case, including a $15M loss of consortium award for the husband. I also ended up being the godfather of one of her grandchildren. LD: Do you often form personal bonds with your clients? JP: I keep in touch with the clients. I’m available for all clients whenever they want. I don’t want to intrude on their lives. Once we recover money damages, we hopefully ease their burden so they can move forward in their life. That’s my hope for them, and I’m always available. Some still visit me; Scott and Janet Willis were just here. They are doing well now, retired in Florida. Others will call me, telling me what they’re up to, wondering how the grandkids are doing and things 150

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of that nature. We share a bond with all our clients, and it’s always very satisfying to see them living well after going through such tragedies. LD: Backing up now. Your dad had such a successful legal career. Did he encourage you to go into the law? JP: I’ve been excited about the law since I was very, very young. My dad probably played a role, but he didn’t push me or encourage me. He left that up to me. I didn’t know how or what kind of law I’d get into when I first started. But then, I got a job while I was in law school as a law clerk, and I became interested in this particular area of law because I felt very bad for those people who were severely injured, or who lost a loved one due to the carelessness of another. LD: Can you recall some of those early cases that drew you to focus on personal injury? JP: There were so many of them. I remember one when I was a law clerk, I was doing what’s called answers to interrogatories, responding to discovery. I found out this poor guy was killed by a drunk driver. The guy only had like $25,000 in insurance, and he left a young family – four children. It was so tragic, and there was no real route for the family to recover because he had such minimal insurance coverage. LD: And tell me about your first million-dollar verdict. How old were you, and what was the case? JP: It was a wrongful death case that I tried against the railroad. I was 28. A young man was killed by a train in a tragic occurrence, and I represented his widow. This poor lady lost her husband at a very young age, 24. She ended up living with another individual, and that fellow got leukemia. Her daughter got very ill, as well, before trial. It was very, very sad, the circumstance of the case. I inherited the case because frankly, no one else wanted to try it. It was a very old and difficult case. The young man had a clear view of the train coming from his right, and there were no obstacles, no trees or anything to block his view. They had only offered $75,000 to settle it. So, I got an expert on it, and we said the train was going too fast for the circumstances, because they didn’t have a bar, gate or crossarm that would come down and block the intersection. No flashing lights or anything. Our position was that they should’ve had something to alert people from crossing when a train was coming. We were able to prevail. I felt very bad for this woman and her family, and I was fortunate enough to be able to try the case

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and be successful. We ended up collecting every penny after the appeal by the defense failed. It was very gratifying. LD: And then when did you start your own firm? JP: I was working with a fellow named Jack Hayes, who I started clerking with, and then I worked as an associate. I became his partner, and he became ill and retired. So, I carried on with the firm. Eventually, it spun into my own firm. LD: And when did Larry Rogers join you? JP: I first met Larry when I was in law school. I used to park my car next to White Sox Park and take the L train down. My car was an older and oftentimes, it didn’t start. Larry’s brother’s gas station was across the street, so I would go in there to get a jump or get gas and things like that. I met Larry, and Larry had dropped out of law school at the time because he had three jobs, trying to take care of his family. We became friends, and I encouraged him to go back to law school. I arranged for Jack Hayes to hire him as a law clerk. He passed the bar exam after graduating law school, and we eventually became partners. LD: Do your styles complement each other? JP: I’m probably a little bit meaner and tougher on our opponents than Larry. But now Larry Jr. has come along, and I think he’s outdoing me. He’s more of a pit bull than I was. I used to be the bad cop when Larry Sr. and I would try a case together. Now, I’m the good cop when I try cases with Larry Jr. LD: You have a stunning trial record. To what do you attribute your success? JP: Hard work. I never break my word with defense lawyers or anyone else, and I’m the same with the jury. I’m honest and try to be trustworthy with my opponents, with the court, with the jury. I think it comes across. I never overpromise. I deliver what I promise. Plus, growing up in the inner city of Chicago, you’re also educated in the school of hard knocks. So, I’m pretty good at knowing who the best jurors will be. In the City of Chicago, County Cook, I know where everyone lives. I know the cultures; I know their tendencies. That’s been very helpful to me in picking a jury. LD: Do you have any advice for young lawyers who want to have a career in the courtroom? JP: Take smaller cases at first to learn your craft. That’s what I did, and it’s how you develop. You get the experience then move on to bigger cases.

Other than that, just work hard, be honest, and return the phone calls of your client. You may be surprised to hear it, but that can be a problem with lawyers. Sometimes you have to deliver bad news, and you just need to bite the bullet and do it. Return the call. If you wait, it’s going to get worse. LD: Do you have any upcoming trials you can talk about? JP: I have case coming up next year involving a man who lost both legs at a 7-Eleven store. It has to do with the failure to place bollards to protect people who go in and out of these stores. You put bollards up because it’s a well-known phenomenon that people, when they’re pulling into parking lots, moving to stop, they accidentally step on the gas instead of the brake. It happens quite a bit. The curb will only protect vehicles going two miles an hour or less, that’s it. Any faster than that, they’ll override the curb and can hit someone or hit the store. My client lost both legs because of this. So, it’s our position that they should have bollards up that would protect people in the event of going over the curb. I have another case coming up involving a City of Chicago employee who lost his life. He was a bricklayer who was outside what’s called a trench box, and the trench collapsed on him and ended up killing him. I’m pursuing that case against a consultant for City of Chicago who we’re saying did not protect him by any pre-construction safety plan, which would’ve made sure that he had protection when he had to work outside the trench box. You can work inside the trench box and do certain things, but when you have to connect the private sewer to the public sewer, you need to get outside the trench box, and they should’ve had a plan to protect the sides of the trench so it wouldn’t collapse on him. LD: You’ll have to keep us posted on the results. What would you say is the most fulﬁlling aspect of your career? JP: Taking care of people. When I’m successful in pursuing a case, seeing that I’m going to ease their burdens. Even though I can’t take away the pain, you can make their life less painful by having some comforts they would not otherwise have. You help them get the care that’s necessary, that they would not otherwise have, the medicine that’s necessary to ease their pain, the assistance in and around the home that they need. It’s comforting to me, that I’m able to deliver that for my clients and make their lives more bearable.

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managing partner for 10 years, 1992 through 2001. While in that role, he agreed to represent the University of Texas School of Law, where he had earned his juris doctorate decades before, in a lawsuit by Cheryl Hopwood and other white applicants claiming that the institution discriminated against them in favor of Black and Latino candidates. Reasoner’s client prevailed, at least in the early stages of Hopwood v. Texas. In 1994, U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks ruled in the school’s favor, determining that under Bakke v. Regents of University of California, the school could consider race either to keep a diverse student body or to remedy past discrimination. “We had a great trial judge,” Reasoner recalls. “He gave both sides a full and fair hearing.”

HARRY REASONER BY KATRINA DEWEY

HE’S BEEN A “BILLION-DOLLAR LAWYER” for more than three decades, spent time as a clerk to Judge Charles Clark and Judge Thurgood Marshall on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He made a massive impact on antitrust, energy and commercial law in Texas and throughout the U.S.

But what Harry Reasoner would rather discuss as he nears his 60th year of practice are his pro bono matters – from individual child custody cases, to winning the right for prisoners to write confidentially to their lawyers and get books and magazines, to the right of the University of Texas Law School to use race as a factor in admission. He’s passionate about his work in Guajardo v. Estelle, which resulted in a settlement overseen by the U.S. District Court in Houston that survived for roughly 30 years, granting Texas prison inmates the right to obtain books and magazines and correspond confidentially with their attorneys as well as news reporters. “One area of our society that could greatly stand improvement is our prisons,” says Reasoner. “We don’t do enough to rehabilitate. You ought to make it so that kids who get there come out with high school degrees.” Reasoner made partner six years after joining Vinson & Elkins’ Houston office. He won a verdict of $1B in 1989 in an antitrust battle over a proposed coal-slurry pipeline and would go on to serve as

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Two years later, however, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans reversed, declaring that using race as a factor in admissions was unconstitutional. In the aftermath, Texas responded with the passage of House Bill 588, a law signed by then-Gov. George W. Bush that promised a spot in state-funded universities to Texas high school students in the top 10 percent of their classes. “The political theory was, ‘Well, they would at least get some minorities that way,’ which they did,” Reasoner says, “but it was an awkward approach.” Just seven years later, in a 5-4 decision authored by then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the Supreme Court overturned Hopwood in a decision on a Michigan case that found the constitution’s Equal Protection Clause didn’t prohibit considering race in college admissions. Even before that outcome, though, Reasoner was happy that Vinson & Elkins had joined the ﬁght on behalf of his alma mater. “I thought it was important to the faculty of the law school and the university that a major business law ﬁrm like Vinson & Elkins recognized that they were doing the right thing, and it was good for our society,” he says. Lawdragon: It’s obvious that concern about social good has been a driver in your career. Take me back

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500 HE’S PASSIONATE ABOUT HIS WORK IN GUAJARDO V. ESTELLE, WHICH RESULTED IN A SETTLEMENT OVERSEEN BY THE U.S. DISTRICT COURT IN HOUSTON THAT SURVIVED FOR ROUGHLY 30 YEARS, GRANTING TEXAS PRISON INMATES THE RIGHT TO OBTAIN BOOKS AND MAGAZINES AND CORRESPOND CONFIDENTIALLY WITH THEIR ATTORNEYS AS WELL AS NEWS REPORTERS. if you would, to where you grew up and how you decided to be a lawyer. Harry Reasoner: I grew up on a farm about five miles outside of San Marcos, a small town in central Texas of about 5,000 people. Today, San Marcos is on the Austin-to-San Antonio corridor and it has a college with a population over 40,000. But happily, when I grew up living on the farm, it was before television. My mother was a schoolteacher, and she taught me to read before I started school. And not having television to distract me, I learned to read a lot. That really affected my learning and attitude toward life. LD: Where did you get the idea that you wanted to become a lawyer? Did you know any? HR: I’m the first lawyer in our family as far as I know. I was lucky. I was a beneficiary of sexism because with the college there, I had a lot of women teachers who were superb teachers: Women didn’t have all of the opportunities they should have, so a lot of them taught school. I really feel like I had an unusually good education for a small town, including in math and science. The year I graduated was the first year they had National Merit Scholarships, and I won a National Merit Scholarship that year. Partially because of having skipped a grade, I was too small to do any good at football. So I took up debate and was lucky enough have a great debate coach. We won the state championship. I had considered majoring in physics, but instead, I went to Rice University because it didn’t charge tuition, which made it the cheapest place I could go, and majored in philosophy. Although nobody told me so at the time, it turned out to be a very good background for law school since the law involves a lot of philosophical questions. Then I went to the University of Texas to law school – again because it was the cheapest place I could go – since it was just a few miles from San Marcos. I was

lucky that I had some great professors and Charles Alan Wright, who was the leading federal authority on rules, had clerked for Judge Charles Clark who had been dean at Yale Law. And so he recommended me to Judge Clark. I was his only non-Yale clerk, I think. That was a wonderful experience. Back then, circuit appeals court judges just had one law clerk. Now they have several. It was really an inspiring experience to be on the 2nd Circuit and I had so many great judges with Clark and Henry Friendly and Thurgood Marshall. Judge Clark passed away after I’d been there a few months, and I worked some then for Justice Marshall. LD: Do you have any particular memories of working with Justice Marshall? HR: Yes, he was a very warm and charming man. I did first drafts of a few opinions for him, though I only worked for him for two months. But he had a great talent of getting you to write what you thought and discussing it with you. And if he had questions or disagreed with you, he was very clear about it. He made the decisions, of course, and shaped the final opinion. But he had the great talent, like Judge Clark, of making you feel like you ought to say what you thought was right. Neither he nor Justice Clark wanted you to try to figure out what they wanted to hear. LD: That was such a great way for you to get your bearings as you headed into private law practice. You must have been so inspired. HR: I feel very lucky to have known both of them and I have admired them all my life. You don’t meet many people of that quality in life. LD: So after that, when you were moving back to Texas, were you already familiar with Vinson & Elkins? How did it come to be your home? HR: After law school, before I was a law clerk, I spent a year at the London School of Economics on a Ro-

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500 tary Foundation fellowship. And many of my close friends at law school, really the majority of the top members at the top of the class, went with Vinson & Elkins. So they immediately started lobbying me to join them, even while I was clerking for Judge Clark. It was Vinson, Elkins, Weems & Searls at the time, and David Searls was one of the country’s great trial lawyers. I liked tax very much and antitrust, and I was going to spend six months doing tax and six months doing litigation and Mr. Searls called me and said, “I’m getting ready to go to trial. Why don’t you go to trial with me?” Which was an incredibly wonderful break for me. So for the first four years I was there, we went to trial in major antitrust cases every year. Many people spend their career in antitrust without ever get really getting to try cases. LD: What was that first case that he brought you in on? HR: It was set in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Conoco had acquired a small refinery in New Mexico and the federal government sued, claiming it was a concentration of market power. I started in 1964, and in that era, there was very intense prosecution in antitrust matters. Cases were filed that would never be filed today. We tried one in Washington, D.C., over the merger of insurance companies and one in New York over the Atlantic Richfield Co. deal with Sinclair Oil Corp. It was an incredibly lucky experience for me to get to be involved in all those trials. It’s better to be lucky than good. LD: Obviously, you were very happy as a trial lawyer and enjoying the heyday of antitrust litigation. HR: I really was. As I say, I think the pendulum swung too far. It’s impossible to separate antitrust from politics. The pendulum swings back and forth, and I think it went too far in the prosecutorial area then, though some argued it hadn’t gone far enough. And there are times when we haven’t prosecuted enough antitrust cases: The concentration that has occurred in areas like the digital world has been very great and whether all those acquisitions the large companies made should have been permitted is a good question. LD: Well, it’s certainly fascinating from your perspective of having seen so much antitrust activity in an earlier era to witness the power that giants like Facebook and Google have now. HR: You’re right. There has been increasing awareness and some alarm over the degree of concentra-

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tion, though whether there will be a serious effort to address that is a good question. LD: As the years went by and you branched out into other types of cases, were there others that were noteworthy to you? HR: One of the great things about Vinson & Elkins was that they encouraged me to do pro bono cases and I tried a number of them where it was just me, from criminal cases to marital disputes. The cases that were most emotionally trying were child custody cases. But it was a great experience. Learning to be at ease and how to conduct yourself in a courtroom is such an integral part of being a trial lawyer. You have to get enough experience to get comfortable in a courtroom because if you’re trying cases in front of juries – or even in front of judges – if they see you uptight or nervous or being rigid or not communicating, it hurts. LD: Tell me how you became involved in the Guajardo case. HR: I had taken some federal cases and it was known and the chief judge of the Southern District of Texas, who had the Guajardo case, assigned it to me. I had some very good young lawyers working with me and I thought that the state and the prison system were very hardheaded about reading correspondence with lawyers and keeping prisoners from writing to the media. It was completely ridiculous. And they did things like not letting them get books, you know? You can imagine what a blessing books would be if you had to sit around in a cell. So we tried it, and it went to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals three times and we ﬁnally prevailed on every count. When they ﬁnally wanted to settle and we settled, we had a provision for us to be ombudsman, which I think was a very salutary thing because prisoners could write to us and get us to represent them to enforce the provisions of the settlement. We’d always have a small group of about three young lawyers who participated in answering that. It was a great experience with them going to court over it. But Congress unhappily passed a statute circumscribing the power of the federal courts to oversee prisons in that fashion. Whether that was a legitimate statute or not, I don’t know. So that ended our approximately 30 years of involvement. LD: And what about Hopwood? HR: As for Hopwood, Mark Yudof, Dean of the University of Texas School of Law, was a close friend of

500 “HAVING A JUDICIAL SYSTEM WHERE MOST OF OUR JUDGES HAVE THE ATTITUDE OF TRYING TO HONOR THE LAW BY DOING THE RIGHT THING – THOUGH YOU AND I MAY DISAGREE WITH THEM ABOUT WHAT THAT IS – IS ONE OF THE STRONGEST ASPECTS OF OUR DEMOCRACY. MY IMPRESSION IS THAT IN MANY COUNTRIES, NOBODY EXPECTS THE COURT TO CROSS THE GOVERNMENT, AND THAT’S FATAL. YOU CAN’T HAVE A DEMOCRACY WHERE YOU DON’T HAVE HONEST AND RESPONSIBLE COURTS.”

mine. He called me for advice when the school was sued over its affirmative action policy. He said, “Who would you recommend?” I said, “Well, what about me?” So we tried that case, and the Attorney General’s Office just really left it to us. But unfortunately, when we got to the 5th Circuit, the three-judge panel held against us two to one. And the judge who wrote it said he knew that when it came before the U.S. Supreme Court again, Sandra Day O’Connor would not be in favor of affirmative action. LD: With everything that you’ve seen in the law, do you love it as much as when you started? And has it gained an importance in terms of the role that it plays in this country? HR: Having a judicial system where most of our judges have the attitude of trying to honor the law by doing the right thing – though you and I may disagree with them about what that is – is one of the strongest aspects of our democracy. My impression is that in many countries, nobody expects the court to cross the government, and that’s fatal. You can’t have a democracy where you don’t have honest and responsible courts. In trying cases, I’ve been lucky in the number of cases I’ve tried for people doing the kind of large practice that I do. But I love the game. I’ve been lucky in that I’ve won almost all the cases I tried, although as a friend of mine told me, “Hell, if you don’t lose cases, it just means you settle too easily.” LD: I know you’ve also served on the Texas Access to Justice Commission. Tell me about that please. HR: I’ve spent 15 years on the commission, serving as chair for 12, and it has been very rewarding. Although I’d always done pro bono, I was shocked

when I started discovering how truly difficult getting access to justice is for a high percentage of our population. In a high percentage of divorces, they either don’t have lawyers at all, or don’t have lawyers on both sides. And then when you get into child custody, it’s one of the most important things courts can do. A lot of people can’t afford court costs and it was keeping them out of court. Nathan Hecht, the Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court, is really one of the leaders in the country in fighting for access to justice, and the Texas Supreme Court has been extremely helpful in developing rules and practice. If you can’t pay the fees now, the Texas courts nevertheless have to permit you to proceed. LD: That’s part of why I was so interested in the early part of your career. As a big firm lawyer to be aware that the courts are not easy for a lot of people and that they need help shows how you’ve come full circle, bringing the understanding you acquired as a farm kid. HR: That’s absolutely right. I don’t know whether you’ve ever observed people go to court without a lawyer, trying to represent themselves pro se, but God, it’s hell. I remember the first time I went to court as a young lawyer by myself, instead of giving an exhibit to the right clerk, I was giving it to the court and I thought, “Oh, hell, this is terrible. I’ve lost this.” I’ve always been proud of how much Vinson & Elkins supports pro bono. We work hard at it. Then I’ve always believed as a citizen that lawyers ought to have a professional obligation to give back to society. We need to give back if there is to be “justice for all,” as our Pledge of Allegiance promises. I almost feel sorry for people who don’t care or don’t feel the need to help humanity: It seems to me it’d be a much shallower or less rewarding life.

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Big Law firm before realizing that he and his close colleagues could revolutionize the legal profession. So, they struck out together and, in 2016, he and his other name partners built a world-class trial firm in Riley Safer Holmes & Cancila. They created an environment that offers the elite feel and expertise of a Big Law firm with a level of dedication to clients, diversity and public service only a fresher, more progressive firm could provide. When building the firm, the founders knew pro bono work would be at the core of its mission. To that end, Safer has spent more than a decade working to overturn wrongful convictions. Recently, he branched out into helping his wrongfully convicted clients get compensation for the decades they lost, and last year obtained a verdict of $25.2M, the largest verdict in the Northern District of Illinois for a single plaintiff

RON SAFER BY EMILY JACKOWAY

RON SAFER IS A KIND-HEARTED WARRIOR. When he talks about his work, you feel every ounce of compassion he feels for his clients, dedication he has to his craft and conviction he holds that his clients deserve the justice he battles tirelessly to win them. Now a white-collar crime and civil litigation attorney, Safer’s career has always been a mission to answer the question, “How can I help?”

He first asked himself that question while facing the horrifying rates of gun violence in Chicago in the 1980s. Picking up the paper every day, he thought, “What am I going to say when my children ask me, ‘When the youth of our community were being killed, what did you do about it?’” Safer wanted an answer to that question, so he “joined the battle.” That refusal to accept comfort or status quo propelled him out of a “cushy” corporate law firm and into a role as a prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago. There, among other projects, he led the prosecution of the top leaders of the Gangster Disciples, an organized crime operation that sold over $100M of drugs in Illinois alone, had 30,000 members in 28 states and was responsible for more than half the murders in Chicago. He spent a decade as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and eventually Chief of the Criminal Division. After he returned to private practice, Safer served as a managing partner of a

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in a wrongful conviction claim. Safer has exonerated multiple people serving life sentences, reuniting innocent people with their families and working, little by little, to repair a justice system that can act unjustly. But, when asked about his achievements, Safer is never one to brag. Humble to the core, he credits his successes to those he surrounds himself with – a star-studded team that has built a ﬁrm on shared values. Looking back, he seems to have answered that driving question, “How can I help?”: He is recognized as a champion of the vulnerable and an advocate for a more diverse and equitable legal profession. Nonetheless, Safer continues to search for where and how he can help the most, ﬁghting his clients’ battles with unparalleled depth of feeling and a steadfast commitment to what’s right. Safer was inducted into the Lawdragon Hall of Fame in 2022. Lawdragon: Tell me about your time as a prosecutor. How did you decide to become a government lawyer? Ron Safer: My career took a dramatic turn when I clerked for Judge Flannery in the District of Columbia. He told me something that I kept next to my computer for the 10 years I was a prosecutor: “A conscientious prosecutor can do more for an innocent defendant, or for a defendant who might be guilty but who should not be entered into the criminal

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justice system, than the best defense attorney in the world.” That’s very true. For example, in the Gangster Disciples investigation, which was probably the largest project I undertook as a prosecutor, we gathered evidence against 200 people who were involved in the drug trade – but we only prosecuted the top 40 or so leaders of the gang. We didn’t prosecute the young people who I viewed more as victims of the gang. LD: Absolutely. Are there any other stories from your time as a prosecutor that stand out to you? RS: There are a thousand stories. The job was wonderful because you could look at a problem and attack it. Like the gang problem in Chicago, for example. The gangs controlled, at that time, 95 percent of the retail drug traffic and were responsible for hundreds of murders. Political corruption is also a huge problem here in Illinois. Everything you’re doing as a prosecutor is inherently important and that is tremendously fulfilling. You can really move the needle on justice. But while it is tremendously fulfilling, it is also joyless. Almost every case that you prosecute ends with a sentencing. Some of the people who I prosecuted did really bad things, and they got enormous sentences. I never left one of those sentencings feeling anything but empty. Somebody loved that person and that person loved somebody. As much as I always felt that justice was served by them going away, it’s tragic. In contrast, when you hug somebody who is coming out of jail for a crime they didn’t commit after a couple of decades and usher them into the waiting arms of their family… that’s joyful. LD: Yes, tell me about your pro bono work overturning wrongful convictions. RS: Like all of the good things that have happened in my career, that is the product of other people’s work and direction, not my own initiative. I got involved in wrongful conviction work because the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern called me up and said, “We’ve got a complex case. We won a new trial for a woman who was convicted of murdering her son. She didn’t do it. We’ve called around, and we found that we need you to defend the case.” I said, “Well, that’s very nice, but I can’t. I have just agreed to be managing partner of the firm and in the free time that I have, I should work on billable matters.”

They said, “Okay, but she has a bond hearing downstate in two days and we need somebody to attend. Could you do that with the understanding that somebody is going to come in for you?” So, I did. Of course, once I got a glimpse of the injustice… LD: What was the case? RS: This was a case involving a mass murderer. Tommy Lynn Sells had broken into a woman named Julie Rea’s house and, for no reason, murdered her son, and then left, with only minor injuries to her. If you saw it on Lifetime, you would say, “That’s ridiculous. That never happens.” The police never believed her. They never fingerprinted the house, never took fibers because her prints and fibers would be all over the house. At her first trial, the defense attorney was overwhelmed and experts gave some junk science testimony, and the jury convicted her of murdering her own son and shipped her off to jail. Then a “20/20” episode asked, “Isn’t it weird that a loving mother, a PhD candidate in educational psychology who had no sign of mental illness, would kill her son? On the other hand, who does what she claimed? Who breaks into a home, kills a kid for no reason and leaves an adult essentially unharmed?” A woman who was writing a book on a Texas death row inmate, Tommy Lynn Sells, watched this “20/20,” and wrote to him: “I just heard a prosecutor say no one breaks into a house to kill a child for no reason, leaves an adult unharmed and forgets to bring a murder weapon. We know that’s not true because you’ve committed six murders exactly like that.” He wrote back. “Was it in Illinois? Two days before Stephanie Mahaney?” Joel, Julie’s son, was killed on Oct. 13, 1997. On Oct. 15, Sells raped and murdered a little girl, Mahaney. The writer said, “Yes. How did you know?” He said, “Because I did it.” Eventually, he gave an 86-page tape-recorded confession. Now, the guy’s a drug-addled mass murderer. He got a lot wrong. So, the prosecutors refused to believe it, and he recanted his confession. When I asked the judge to let Julie Rea out on bond, I mentioned the confession and he turned to the prosecutor and said, “Yeah, what about this Tommy Lynn Sells thing?” They said – and these are almost verbatim their words, because they are burned into my memory – “Oh, Judge, don’t worry about Tommy Lynn Sells. No jury is going to hear about that confes-

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500 sion because Texas will not honor a subpoena for an out-of-state inmate. It’s hearsay.” I turned to the judge. I said, “Judge, I don’t hear the representative of the people of the state of Illinois telling you that he intends to try this woman for her life while concealing from the jury the fact that he took an 86-page tape-recorded confession, which he knows is corroborated by independent evidence. But if you hear that, you should say, ‘Not in my courtroom.’” Then I turned to the Northwestern people and said, “Okay, I’m in.” LD: Wow. RS: That was the start. We tried the case, with many twists and turns. She was acquitted. I turned to Karen Daniel, who was a true hero and the head of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern, and said, “I will never do this again. Never. The pressure of representing an innocent defendant in a murder case is unbearable.” About six months later, she called up with another case. I said yes before she got the full question out. LD: That’s an incredible story. Your firm’s commitment to pro bono work is paralleled in your focus on diversity and inclusion. Tell me why, from the founding of the firm, that was so important to you. RS: Well, I was the managing partner at a large corporate law firm for 10 years. I had zero interest in firm management; whatever skills I had were in the courtroom. But our firm was remarkably non-diverse. We had zero African American partners out of over 100. We had something like 12 percent women partners. I loved that firm, and I knew we could not succeed while having that profile. So, I agreed to become the managing partner. My largest contribution to that firm was dragging Judge Patricia Brown Holmes off the bench and into the private sector. Over the next 10 years, she did the very hard work of building our diversity. I tried to be her champion and support her in every way, and we obtained remarkable results. We had seven percent minority partners by the time we left, and close to 25 percent female partners. LD: That’s great. RS: Well, much to my partners’ chagrin, when interviewed about that accomplishment, I said, “Yes,

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we have made it all the way from abysmal to a little less than mediocre.” Who should celebrate seven percent minority participation? Who should celebrate 25 percent women? It’s disgraceful. We realized that a big law firm is a ship that takes monumental effort to change the course by a few degrees. We knew if we started fresh, we could accomplish tremendous things. We could insist that there be excellence at every level of the firm and provide real diverse teams for every engagement – because if you do not have a diverse team, you cannot provide excellence. We put mechanisms in place to ensure the right people get the right tasks, such as not tracking billing attorney credit, so you put the client first, not the rainmaker. We made it so the firm doesn’t run primarily to drive profits for the equity partners – the firm runs to serve its clients. That’s a different mindset. And we serve our community through pro bono work. It’s been very rewarding. LD: How has the firm grown and changed from when you started? RS: It grew faster than I expected. We grew because of client demand. There is something about our model that’s extremely attractive to the market. We deliver the excellence of AmLaw 30 law firms with the diversity that no AmLaw 200 firm approaches, and we’re nice people. We get along with each other. We have palpable respect and affection for each other. It’s a collaborative place, and clients like that because it serves their interest. We’ve attracted talent at a pace that I would not have predicted. People want to join a firm like ours. Even though we don’t run the firm to maximize profits per partner, the partners have said, “We make enough, more than enough.” The returns in client satisfaction are far more than money can buy. LD: Tell me about your other name partners. RS: Bob Riley was a moving force behind our firm. He is the most elegant and eloquent lawyer I have ever met. He personifies excellence and has a vision, foresight and commitment to clients that is unparalleled. He is strategic and dogged. Bob is the trial lawyer we all aspire to be. Judge Holmes is a force of nature. She is the most tireless human being I’ve ever met. She is a talented trial lawyer, former federal prosecutor, corporate

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counsel and judge. She has the best judgment of any person I’ve ever met. She is a trusted advisor to Fortune 100 companies. At the same time, she’s spent enormous amounts of time mentoring and coaching people – reaching back and lifting up. Anybody who needs help, she will give it. She’s tremendously generous. Joe Cancila is perhaps the smartest lawyer I know. He is one of the finest class action lawyers in the country, tremendously hardworking and also one of the most generous people – always giving credit to others and deflecting it from himself, even though he is one of the most well-respected and outstanding lawyers I know. LD: How would you describe yourself? RS: “Lucky” is how I would describe myself. LD: What about your style in court? RS: I am not a genius. I do have, I think, an uncommon work ethic, and I work to understand complex concepts that are difficult for me. Because of that, I think I have an unusual ability to translate those concepts into terms that jurors and judges can understand. I think that’s my greatest gift as a trial lawyer. I speak slowly. I stumble at times. But I don’t think there’s anybody I can’t talk to. I greatly respect all people, and I am naturally curious. That has helped me communicate why justice would be served by those people voting for my client. LD: A lot of lawyers in your firm are former federal prosecutors like yourself. How did that come about, and what strengths do you think that brings to the firm? RS: It brings enormous strength. Everybody knows about the “disappearing trial.” Well, the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices are the biggest litigation boutiques in any city. They go to trial. Until you see trials, you can’t prepare for them. We have more Assistant U.S. Attorneys in our small law firm than most AmLaw 200 firms have. Why is that? We share values. Somebody becomes an Assistant U.S. Attorney because they want to help their community. You make a fraction of what people make in the private sector, and yet, at least for me, I felt overpaid every day. I would’ve done that job for nothing, because you’re helping your community. I think that same idea appeals to people about our law firm – although we make a lot more money. We

have a rare sense of common purpose, serving our clients and our community. LD: Speaking of trials, which moments in the courtroom stand out most in your memory? RS: Because I’ve surrounded myself with people who are smarter and better than me in every way, I have had remarkably good fortune in the courtroom. In the private sector, in jury trials, my record is unblemished. That has been tremendously rewarding, because in every one of those cases, I believed in my client – or else I would not have taken the case. LD: That’s incredible. Can you discuss any recent wins you’ve had? RS: Last year, we had three cases of enormous significance to me that went to trial back-to-back. We had a criminal case for a lawyer who was convicted of fraud that he did not commit. His entire livelihood and that of his family were on the line, and we prevailed at trial. Then I went immediately to a case for Zurich Insurance Company, which was facing a $2B claim. We convinced the judge on the eve of trial of a legal aspect of that case that ended up being dispositive. I believe with every fiber of my being that the client was absolutely right, and judgment was granted for Zurich. They paid nothing on the main claim. Then we moved on to a civil rights case for a client that we got out of prison. I’ve done these wrongful conviction cases now for a number of years, but never a civil case. I always felt my time was better spent trying to get the next person out of jail than doing the civil cases. But our client, who I regard as my family, had spent 22 years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. I tried to get him to go to another firm to handle the civil case, and he said no, that he trusted one person in the world. At that point, I could not say no. The learning curve was steep. But, because we had an outstanding team, we were able to achieve a record-setting verdict for an individual who’d been wrongfully convicted: $25.2M. We sat there, tears flowing from every one of our team member’s eyes, as the jury read “for the plaintiff” 24 times. It was one of the most joyful experiences I’ve ever had in my professional life.

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malpractice matters to litigation over faulty Takata airbags. Smith has also held scores of leadership positions at some of the largest and most prestigious lawyer associations, including the American Association for Justice and the Illinois State Bar Association. What makes Smith a truly great lawyer is not just his victories in the courtroom but the quality of his character. Friends and colleagues describe him as sincere, genuine, modest and a true leader with intellect, compassion and emotion. In addition to receiving dozens of signiﬁcant awards for his accomplishments, Smith has also received awards of a different kind, with memberships in two invitationonly organizations – the Inner Circle of Advocates,

TODD SMITH BY EMILY JACKOWAY

A STAUNCH ADVOCATE FOR ACCESS

to justice, Chicago trial lawyer Todd A. Smith has focused his 40-year legal career on making the courts accessible to all. Whether he’s ﬁghting for a severely injured client in a jury trial or supporting a cause like government cutbacks in legal services for the poor, he strives to help everyday people obtain the justice they deserve.

A former Chicago assistant public defender and a founding partner of Power Rogers & Smith, he and partner Brian LaCien opened Smith LaCien on May 1, 2020. Smith has won some of Illinois’s largest multi-milliondollar jury awards and settlements in catastrophic personal injury, product liability, wrongful death and medical malpractice cases. They include cases like a horrific accident on a highway claiming the lives of four people, a negligent delivery resulting in serious harm to a newborn, and the crash of the 737 Max passenger aircraft in Ethiopia. He and his legal team always find a way to tell their client’s story, winning more than $2.5B in verdicts and settlements for victims and their families. While his reputation in medical malpractice, product liability and aviation is well known, he also takes on some high-value litigation with national implications. Cases range from financial fraud and birth-related

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a group of the top 100 trial lawyers in the U.S., and the International Academy of Trial Lawyers (IATL), an organization of the top 500 top trial lawyers in the world. He was recently awarded a seat on the 2022 IATL Board of Directors. It is a pleasure to announce that Smith was inducted into this year’s Lawdragon Hall of Fame. Lawdragon: Two years into founding your new firm, what has most surprised you about the firm’s development? Todd Smith: I’m pleasantly surprised with how much we’ve grown and developed already. For a small operation, we’re growing in a very solid way. We started with just three lawyers and now we’re up to six and looking to hire a couple more very soon. I feel very fortunate to have this group. We are going to keep growing but not too much. I always preferred to be part of a smaller operation. LD: What qualities do you look for when bringing new talent to the firm? TS: I look for someone who is passionate about what we do and is driven by more than just the financial rewards. I started out as an assistant public defender doing criminal work. The people I represented virtually had no money. Helping the most vulnerable in our society access justice gave me a strong sense of purpose for practicing law.

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It transfers to the plaintiffs’ side of civil cases, the personal injury and wrongful death work we do now because most often, it’s people who are vulnerable and not well off who are more likely to be exposed. Those who are doing the hard physical labor in construction, for example, are the ones who get injured. Those who don’t live and work in areas with the best medical care can be at risk. People on the lower end of the economic scale are more likely to need our help. So, I always look for that passion to help others in the lawyers we bring into the firm. And that’s the team we have now. Everyone is very involved with the clients and cares deeply about the people we represent. LD: I know you did a lot of aviation cases when you first started doing civil work. Can you reflect on how those early cases have influenced the way your career has unfolded? TS: From the very beginning of my civil work, I had access to aviation matters. My mentor, Phil Corboy, was essentially the king of torts in Chicago. The firm became involved in one of the worst aviation disasters at the time. It was appointed lead counsel for the American Airlines flight 191 crash in 1979 at O’Hare International Airport where 271 people on board and two people on the ground were killed. One of the three engines which powered the aircraft just dropped off as the plane was ascending. That was the first case I worked on in private practice, and it was a big, fascinating case. I still have a model of the DC 10 in my office. In addition to commercial aviation cases like that one, I had what you would call general aviation cases – cases against aircraft manufacturers, such as product liability cases against Beech Aircraft and Cessna and Piper, all on product defects. I also worked on air traffic control cases, where we sued the federal government over failures in air traffic control. I decided to get my pilot’s license in the early ‘80s because I wanted to know precisely what I was dealing with. I wanted the depth of experience to help me communicate with clients and juries about the cases. LD: Do you continue to do aviation work? TS: Absolutely. I’m currently representing a family and others from Kenya that lost loved ones in the Ethiopia Airlines Flight 302. One passenger on that flight who died was a nun, traveling from her mission in the Congo, going back to see her family in Kenya for the first time in several years. She had

been away training to become a sister in an order of French nuns in Quebec and was then assigned to the Congo and died in that crash. I’m working with Kreindler & Kreindler’s NY office on those cases. LD: You’ve since expanded into many different practices. Was it difficult to become proficient in so many areas? TS: It takes time and effort to develop proficiency in these complex areas, but I’ve always felt that the law is a continuing learning experience and I love learning. The law is a jealous mistress meaning it keeps you busy all the time. It can take you away from family and home, but you need to devote that time and effort to be the very best you can be. LD: Tell us about the Sterigenics case that’s going to trial this fall. TS: It’s an environmental case, and there are several hundred cases filed. This is the second trial. There are many different issues, but the big one is that a lot of people were exposed to ethylene oxide emitted into the air from Sterigenics’s plants across the country, resulting in cancers. It is an important case because it is bringing a lot of these issues to light. The EPA and the Illinois EPA, early in 2018, came out with studies that made certain declarations about these emissions. People were living nearby and raising children who attended nearby schools and visited local parks. All along the plants have been spewing these toxic carcinogens. It’s just been devastating to these folks. LD: That’s awful. I’m sure you’ll be able to find justice for these victims. You recently had a settlement in another class action case relating to injuries caused by faulty Takata airbags. TS: We started on Takata back in 2014 and it has become national multi-district litigation. Judge Federico Moreno in Southern District of Florida appointed me, along with David Boies of Boies Schiller Flexner, as co-lead economic loss counsel. The chair lead was a really fine lawyer, Peter Prieto. We worked closely with Peter in leadership, and we settled the first seven cases with manufacturers, including Honda, Toyota and eventually Ford. I had a lot of involvement in the Ford case and took many depositions from Takata employees, which was a development that supported all of the defendants. Recently, we’ve been working with Mercedes, General Motors, Chrysler and VW. I had responsibility for all of it, and I took the lead on VW and that settled

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500 “I DECIDED TO GET MY PILOT’S LICENSE IN THE EARLY ‘80S BECAUSE I WANTED TO KNOW PRECISELY WHAT I WAS DEALING WITH. I WANTED THE DEPTH OF EXPERIENCE TO HELP ME COMMUNICATE WITH CLIENTS AND JURIES ABOUT THE CASES.” this past April. I was really pleased about that, given they were the one out of the remaining four to step up and resolve their case. The case was about inflaters that rupture, or potentially rupture, and they had ammonium nitrate in them which was the problem. They used a propellant that was able to absorb moisture, expand its surface, become more volatile and explosive, and have the potential to do serious harm and even cause death. VW didn’t have nearly as many inflaters as the others, but they stepped up and resolved the issue. LD: The case settled for $42M. TS: That’s right. These cases will always be memorable for me, in part because it was the largest automotive recall in history and remains so as far as I know. To have been a part of that case and successfully obtain a just result is very gratifying. LD: I also wanted to ask you about your recent wrongful death case with the endoscopy. TS: The saddest thing about it is that it involved a young woman – 30 years old who was a paralegal at a law firm. She had an elective procedure, and our evidence was very strong that the procedure should never have been done. She came from a lovely family and the parents and siblings were just devastated. They hung right in there with her to the end. It was an outpatient procedure, not even under general anesthesia. It should have been done with imaging but instead it was an endoscope that went down into the bowel and made a hole there, resulting in her needing surgery. They decided to do what is called in the medical literature as “wait and watch.” The surgery was delayed for almost 30 hours. So, the legal battle was going to be over the extent to which she was made worse during those 30 hours without intervention. Their claim was that she was stable, and they didn’t have to go back in, but she wasn’t stable. There were indications of instability, and they weren’t identified. That was our position, and about 24 hours after she had the initial

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injury in the outpatient procedure, she began dumping bile out of a chest tube. Bile has no business being up in your chest. She suffered from collapsed lungs due to the air that got inside of her abdomen, which had pushed against the lungs and deflated them. Our contention was they waited, but they didn’t watch. A truly devastating situation, to lose a young woman who was completely healthy 12 days prior. It was senseless, needless. It was important to get full and complete justice for that family, as much as you can when they have lost a daughter. We settled for $7.3M. LD: You have had such an impactful career in so many areas. What’s different about the profession now from when you started? TS: A lot of things have changed, some for the better, others not so much. A major change happened when the U.S. Supreme Court decided that lawyers could advertise. Under the First Amendment, their decision is protected. Law firms must abide by the federal government’s truth-in-advertising laws and by ethical guidelines determined by each state. Unfortunately, advertising has not always had such a great impact on the profession. Some advertising can be respectful, but these splashy ads on billboards, buses, television and online – they aren’t professional and don’t send a great message about the law. LD: Earlier this year, you were elected to a three-year term on the board of The International Academy of Trial Lawyers. Why is professional trade association involvement so important to you and to the legal profession, in general? TS: Legal trade organizations help maintain respectability for the profession, and many of these organizations do very positive things for society. Corporate interests and well-financed interests, who seek to protect themselves and their monies, try to place caps on damages that could keep regular people from getting the justice they deserve. It’s always been a huge battle, but it’s so important to keep those doors open for all.

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DEBORAH WILLIG AMAZON. STARBUCKS. APPLE. ACROSS

the country, employees at these and hundreds of other major companies have recently come together to spur on a national movement toward unionization. For labor attorney Deborah Willig, however, the fight for union recognition is not simply an issue of the moment: It’s her life’s work. Willig has been at the forefront of union-side labor litigation for more than 45 years, winning her clients precedent-setting benefits and spearheading progressive policies in an array of workplaces. She and others at her firm, Willig Williams & Davidson, have represented public school teachers, municipal employees, cafeteria workers, restaurant employees, teamsters and more, all in their fight for higher wages and better benefits. Willig has led the core negotiating team in collective bargaining agreements on behalf of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and white-collar employees of the City of Philadelphia, both relationships that have gone on for decades. Recently, the firm has expanded into new sectors, including representing athletes from the National

PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE FIRM

BY EMILY JACKOWAY

Women’s Soccer League Players Association in their effort to raise wages and ensure player safety. In one prominent negotiation in the mid-to-late ‘90s, Willig represented reporters at the Philadelphia Inquirer in their fight to win healthcare benefits for domestic partners. At the time, major companies were just starting to grant domestic partnership benefits. But, as Willig explains, the trustees of the Philadelphia Inquirer weren’t willing to award the benefits because “one fellow just didn’t believe in it.” In her soul, Willig knew that was wrong. So, armed with data, experts and compassion, Willig took the matter to arbitration and won. Those benefits have remained in place since, granting access to life-saving healthcare for families of all kinds. “I still get an annual note from a now-retired reporter thanking me for getting that case tried and extending domestic partner benefits to her family,” says Willig. That negotiation wasn’t the first time Willig broke new ground on the path to progress. In 1992, Willig became the first female Chancellor of the Phila-

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500 delphia Bar Association. She continues to support those fighting for equality. On the recent wave of labor unionization, Willig says, “I think Generation Z understands the notion of collective action and the fact that there is power in numbers. They are and will continue to be a force in the resurgence of the labor movement.” In recognition of her career-long unparalleled commitment to workers’ rights and a more equitable legal profession, Deborah Willig was inducted into Lawdragon’s Hall of Fame in 2021. Lawdragon: What brought you specifically to labor and employment law? Deborah Willig: I was always interested in labor law because of familial history. My grandfather was the president of the largest local Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union in the early 1900s. My sister, may her soul rest in peace, was a member of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. My mom was a member of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. So, I grew up talking around the dinner table, particularly with my grandfather, about the benefits of union membership. I began working with the predecessor to my firm in 1976. In 1979 the firm split up and one of the senior partners, Richard Kirschner, asked a colleague, Jonathan Walters and me to join him to form Kirschner, Walters & Willig. Over time, those partners left and the firm became Willig, Williams & Davidson. LD: Were there any early moments that motivated you to keep practicing labor law exclusively? DW: One of my first labor arbitration cases involved three Black nurses. They all worked at what was then the Philadelphia General Hospital, represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) District Council 47. In 1978, there was a City wide strike. All three of these employees were Union stewards and picket captains. After the strike they were all fired. The hospital claimed they were all terminated for theft of time. We claimed that they were fired because of their union activity and leadership.

Shapiro, who was the first woman partner at Dechert, Price & Rhoads and the first female Judge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Miriam Gafni, who was a colleague at the firm that I joined in 1976, was probably the most brilliant lawyer I have ever met. Finally, Arline Lotman, who was the Executive Director of the Governor’s Commission on the Status of Women in 1972. I was her administrative assistant after college, and she was the one who persuaded me to go to law school. I learned an immense amount from these four women, and probably wouldn’t be the person or lawyer I am today without their assistance. All of them were ahead of their time, committed to women’s rights and very generous with their time and advice. LD: I’m so glad you had women to look up to at that time. Tell me about your involvement with the public school teachers’ union, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. How did you first become involved with that organization? DW: Our firm and I were hired to represent the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers in 1983, and we’ve been representing them ever since. I have been a part of the PFT negotiating team since the beginning, so it’s been almost 40 years now. LD: How have you seen things change over those 40 years? DW: Well, every new administration at the School District has a different approach to its relationship with its employees and their respective unions. [Former superintendent] Paul Vallas, for instance, initially tried to have a management company take over the entire school district because he believed in privatization. We fought that tooth and nail and won.

LD: Did you have any mentors starting out?

In 2014, now retired superintendent Bill Hite implemented massive layoffs. For some reason, the school district’s counsel advised the District that it could legally “cancel” the teachers’ contracts. My partner Ralph Teti and our WWD team fought that before the Court of Common Pleas, the Commonwealth Court and ﬁnally before the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. After changing law ﬁrms three different times – for each level of the litigation – the School District got its head handed to it. I think the District fully expected to be able to cancel the contracts, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said a resounding NO. It was a huge victory.

DW: I had several. Esther Polen, who was, I believe, the ﬁrst woman lawyer at Fox Rothschild. Norma

LD: What triggered those attempted contract cancellations?

I was raised in a family where I was taught that inequality and unfairness need to be redressed. So, it was a natural path toward representing workers like those women.

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DW: It was driven by money in part, but that’s not the only thing. It was really the Board and the Administration believing that the collective bargaining agreement provided too many “rights” to the teachers. The District wanted to have complete command and control. After that defeat, that attitude has been slowly changing in the school district. LD: How are you able to bring your clients that sense of control instead? DW: We believe in what we do, so these core beliefs make it easy to do the work well. We rarely do litigation on a single issue. Our relationships with our clients are ongoing relationships. They come to rely on our knowledge and expertise and we are able to work together to fight unreasonable management demands. Some issues also become very easy to navigate because we have the evidence on our side. I’m involved in a set of negotiations now where most of the employees are enrolled in a high-deductible health plan because the premium co-pay for a pretty meager HMO is unaffordable. The studies about these plans are almost indisputable: They conclude that highdeductible health plans are terrible for people who make less than $75,000 a year. So, these folks don’t really have access to healthcare. The folks at our firm and I believe that health care is a fundamental right. When you firmly believe in your soul in a concept or a right, it makes it easier to advocate for it. LD: Which union are you representing in that negotiation? DW: We represent AFSCME District Council 47, which organized the employees of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The museum has a budget of over $60M a year. They have an endowment of over $600M. But there are very few people in the bargaining unit who make anywhere close to $75,000. So very few have what we would consider adequate health care. And, if you compare the museum to their peers, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Museum of Modern Art, or the California museums, those institutions provide much better healthcare. You just want to say, “What are these people thinking?”

Players Association. They were an organization that wasn’t used to being unionized. Museum Management doesn’t like ceding control and they’re taking a long time getting used to it. LD: Tell me about that negotiation. DW: The National Women’s Soccer League Players Association hired us back in 2020. Initially, we were negotiating with two lawyers from a management law firm, the League Commissioner and the inside general counsel. None of the owners were at the table. Very few of these clubs make a lot of money, so they look at negotiations from that perspective, and I understand that. But the owners did not focus on what was significant to the players. Salary was a very big issue; but equally as important was player health and safety. Players had questions like, “What happens if I’m injured? Do I have a right to see a doctor of my choosing? Who’s going to pay for that? What happens if the doctor is in New York and I’m playing in Oregon?” And we spent an enormous amount of time on issues you might not expect, like, “What is the composition of the pitch?” In other words, “What kind of a field surface do soccer players play on? Is it grass or turf? Is it artificial or natural? How do you take care of it?” All of those factors are key issues when it comes to player injuries. I should have counted the number of hours that we spent on surfaces. It was beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. LD: What finally allowed you to reach an agreement in that negotiation? DW: We turned a corner when the owners were finally at the table, we could see each face-to-face and hear each other’s points of view. LD: In many of these negotiations you’ve mentioned getting better healthcare for employees. Why is that fight important to you? DW: My core belief is that healthcare should be a right.

DW: They’re not making any valid or substantive arguments. They just don’t want to spend the money.

I mentioned my grandfather was involved in the Amalgamated Clothing Workers union. Because of his union membership, my grandparents got free healthcare for all of their lives. That’s how I grew up watching the world. Now, I see people who can’t get surgery, or who can’t adequately care for a child because they’re going to have to take too much money out of their pocket. People having to make choices between food and medicine.

This situation is not unlike what I faced in 2021 while representing the National Women’s Soccer League

Sadly, I don’t think that I will see a real improvement on this issue in my lifetime. So, the ﬁght is for my

LD: If the data’s on your side and if peer museums are on your side, what kind of arguments do you see businesses like the art museum making?

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500 THE PRACTICE OF UNION-SIDE LABOR LAW IS A LABOR OF LOVE. WE REPRESENT LABOR UNIONS WHOSE BUDGET COMES FROM UNION DUES, SO YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT WORKING PEOPLE WHO PAY EITHER A FLAT FEE OR SOME VERY, VERY SMALL PERCENTAGE OF THEIR SALARY. SO, HAVING THE UNION BUDGET VERSUS THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER OR THE TEACHERS’ BUDGET VERSUS THE PHILADELPHIA SCHOOL DISTRICT (WHICH HAS A BUDGET OF $3B) MAKES THIS A VERY DIFFERENT PRACTICE. clients. In every negotiation, no matter the size of the union, healthcare is the number one or two priority. LD: Tell me about becoming the first woman Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association. What were the joys and challenges there? DW: Well, the first challenge was to get there. I ran in 1986 and lost. I don’t know the more recent history, but I lost in what was then the closest election in Bar history. There were not-so-subtly sexist comments made during the campaign like,”Well, she’s abrasive; she’s political; she’s a union labor lawyer.” So, in 1989 I decided to run again. It’s funny; I could give you the names of four or five people who ran and lost the first time, and ran the second time unopposed. They weren’t going to let a woman do that. At least, not the first woman. LD: Of course not. So, after you were elected, what kinds of changes did you make as Chancellor? DW: Generally speaking, the Chancellor-elect appoints the vice chairs of the Association’s many committees. Fifty or 60 percent, probably more, of the vice chairs I appointed were women. I remember a former chancellor asking me, “Why did you do that?” I replied, “Well, why didn’t you?” I believe I actually changed the face of the Bar Association. That change has continued on to this day, because now there have been eight or 10 women chancellors, where in the 180 years before me there had been none. LD: That’s incredible lasting change. How does your firm uphold the practices and values that you hope to see in the companies you negotiate with? DW: From the beginning, in the ‘80s, we made sure our employees had appropriate maternity leave 166

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and we were among the first firms to offer part-time employment. And being part-time did not exclude women from being on the partnership track. We made it clear that we were family-friendly. Also, the practice of union-side labor law is a labor of love. We represent labor unions whose budget comes from union dues, so you’re talking about working people who pay either a flat fee or some very, very small percentage of their salary. So, having the union budget versus the Philadelphia Inquirer or the teachers’ budget versus the Philadelphia School District (which has a budget of $3B) makes this a very different practice. A number of the more senior partners in our firm, including me, have been offered jobs on the management side at salaries many times more than we’re making. We’ve always turned them down. I once explained to the management partner of one of the biggest firms in Philadelphia, who asked me 30 years ago to chair the labor department in his firm, that my grandfather would turn over in his grave. He asked me why. I explained that I could not argue for example that an employee who’s sick with cancer and has exceeded their number of sick days should be fired for abuse of sick leave. I just could not make that argument with clear conscience. We have a team of lawyers who believe in these core values as well. And who are committed to women’s rights, civil rights, voters’ rights and workers’ rights. Equality. Period. And leveling the playing field. As I said over 30 years ago when I became Chancellor, I am incredibly lucky. I love what I do; I love who I do it with and I love who I do it for. That hasn’t changed.

KAREN KAPLOWITZ IS HONORED TO BE RECOGNIZED AS A TRUSTED ADVISOR TO LAW FIRM PARTNERS ON BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY

THE NEW ELLIS GROUP IS PROUD TO JOIN AND SALUTES THE

LAWDRAGON 2022

100 LEADING CONSULTANTS AND STRATEGISTS AND CONGRATULATES ALL THE 2022 LAW DRAGONS ON THEIR ACCOMPLISHMENTS

WWW.NEWELLIS.COM

6 DECADES OF 6 DECADES OF 77AND 8 FIGURE RESULTS AND 8 FIGURE RESULTS

Voted the #1 Personal Injury Firm in San Francisco for the third consecutive year in 2022, the Walkup Personal Injury team has exited the Covid-19 court

We teach for USF School of Law, Berkeley Law and Stanford

lockdowns with energy, optimism, and newly minted remote

Law School, NITA and ABOTA.

litigation skills.

Our trial lawyers have resisted widespread

Our skills improve and evolve with every case we prose-

surrender to “trial by zoom” and stood by our clients over the

cute. With seven and eight-ﬁgure recoveries in cases involving

last 30 months to achieve fair and just trial, arbitration, and

cerebral palsy, sexual abuse, toxic poisoning, paraplegia, brain

mediation results.

damage, thermal burns, wrongful death, bicycle and pedestrian

We boast three ﬁrm members selected to the Lawdragon

accidents, we are leaders in the tort ﬁeld. Our lawyers hold

500, as well as the top vote-getter in the Super Lawyers “Top

leadership positions in the JUUL litigation, Paraquat MDL,

Ten“ ranking for all of Northern California. Our trial team

PG&E ﬁre litigation, and Paciﬁc Fertility Clinic litigation.

includes ﬁve members of The American College of Trial Lawyers,

We accept referrals from counsel across the nation. We pay

four members of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers,

referral fees consistent with State Bar rules. We are prepared

ﬁve members of the International Society of Barristers, and ﬁve

and zealous advocates for clients in cases across California and

past-Presidents of the San Francisco Trial Lawyers Association.

the West.

500

The Legends One of our favorite moments of each year is when we say: We are delighted to announce the 2022 Lawdragon Legends. These remarkable lawyers have all been recognized repeatedly among the 500 Leading Lawyers, typically 10 times. And they are lawyers who fascinate, motivate and challenge us. They set the bar high for themselves and in doing so remind us of the magic of the law in the hands of a great lawyer. The 20 lawyers recognized this year have inspired us in some cases for decades. We’ve watched Chris Meade ascend from WilmerHale partner to general counsel of the U.S. Treasury Department and now BlackRock. And Elaine Golin soar from the dazzling upcoming litigation star at Wachtell to one of its foremost partners. We first met Debra Katz for her tenacious work as an employment lawyer representing plaintiffs ages before she became the #MeToo go-to counsel in the highest of high-profile situations. Debra Wong Yang was a young U.S. Attorney leading the Los Angeles office ages before she emerged as Gibson Dunn’s powerhouse insider consigliere. We’ve known and loved these lawyers for ages. We hope you do, too.

PHOTO OF ELAINE GOLIN BY DAVE CROSS

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500

Paul Lancaster Adams

Michael Aiello

OGLETREE DEAKINS – PHILADELPHIA

WEIL – NEW YORK

The former Microsoft Corp. in-house counsel has long since been one of the most admired labor and employment attorneys in America.

Aiello has handled countless billions of dollars in complex transactions over a storied career that put him atop Weil as firm chairman.

Photo provided by the firm

Photo by Laura Barisonzi

Frank Aquila

Sean Berkowitz

SULLIVAN & CROMWELL – NEW YORK

170

LATHAM – CHICAGO

A trusted mainstay of Sullivan’s esteemed corporate corps, Aquila has earned his place as one of the most prolific dealmakers of his generation.

The global chair of Latham’s massive complex litigation practice has thrived in the most difficult white-collar matters after his arrival from government service.

Photo by Jennifer Pottheiser

Photo by Anthony Tahlier

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500

Ray Boucher

E. Leon Carter

BOUCHER – LOS ANGELES

CARTER ARNETT – DALLAS

Best known for taking on the Catholic Church in sexual abuse cases, Boucher has fought for a wide array of victims for more than 35 years.

Carter is one of the Legends who has truly done it all in court, succeeding in a varied mix of criminal and civil cases across many jurisdictions.

Photo provided by the firm

Apalla Chopra

Steven Fineman

O’MELVENY – LOS ANGELES

Employers in virtually every type of industry and setting have relied on Chopra to handle their most sensitive and potentially costly employment matters.

LIEFF CABRASER – NEW YORK

As managing partner, Fineman has led the renowned litigation firm to its greatest heights in its acclaimed work in plaintiff-side class actions. Photo provided by the firm

Photo provided by the firm

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500

Katherine B. Forrest

Kenneth Gallo

CRAVATH – NEW YORK

PAUL WEISS – WASHINGTON, D.C.

The former federal prosecutor and judge has handled cutting-edge legal issues surrounding artificial intelligence and big data.

Many of the world’s most influential businesses turn first to this titan of the antitrust bar when the stakes are at their highest.

Photo provided by the firm

Elaine Golin

Jeh Charles Johnson

WACHTELL – NEW YORK

Golin’s leadership role in the RMBS litigation and in high-profile matters since exemplify an extraordinary career at the most elite level of law. Photo by Dave Cross

PAUL WEISS – NEW YORK

The former head of Homeland Security has followed his highly acclaimed stints in public service with leading one of the nation’s top data and cybersecurity practices. Photo provided by the firm

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500

Debra Katz

Colette Matzzie

KATZ MARSHALL – WASHINGTON, D.C.

PHILLIPS & COHEN – WASHINGTON, D.C.

Few lawyers have done as much for employees and civil-rights litigants as Katz, who brought her 30-plus-year track record to the #MeToo movement.

Matzzie has played a central role in Phillips & Cohen setting the standard for excellence representing whistleblowers in complex fraud claims.

Photo provided by the firm

Photo by Eli Meir Kaplan

Christopher Meade

Patrick Quinn

BLACKROCK – NEW YORK

CADWALADER – NEW YORK

From private practice to general counsel roles at the U.S. Treasury and now BlackRock, Meade has made his mark in the highest levels of the profession.

The longtime Cadwalader corporate partner brought his experience and steady hand to the eminent New York institution as managing partner.

Photo by Eli Meir Kaplan

Photo by Dave Cross

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500

Grace Speights

John C. Taylor

MORGAN LEWIS – WASHINGTON, D.C.

TAYLOR & RING – LOS ANGELES

Speights has a nearly unrivaled track record at guiding employers through their most difficult cases, scandals and investigations.

His tenacity on behalf of victims of police shootings is just one facet of a storied career that has aided countless plaintiffs in times of misery.

Photo provided by the firm

Shawn Williams

Debra Wong Yang

ROBBINS GELLER – SAN DIEGO

174

GIBSON DUNN – LOS ANGELES

The former prosecutor has risen to the top of the securities litigation bar over the past two decades, netting major recoveries for shareholders.

The former U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles is a key reason why Gibson Dunn is on the shortest of shortlists for the most urgent white-collar matters.

Photo provided by the firm

Photo by Amy Cantrell

LAWDRAGON ISSUE 26 | WWW.LAWDRAGON.COM

Policyholders’ heaviest hitters

* The go-to firm for insurance disputes: Cohen Ziffer

Congratulations to Cohen Ziffer Chair

ROBIN COHEN

and all of the lawyers named to Lawdragon’s 2022 500 Leading Lawyers in America Guide.

Cohen Ziffer is the nation’s leading boutique focused exclusively on representing policyholders through their crucial, highest-exposure insurance recovery cases. And for law firms facing conflicts, our pledge is unwavering: we will lead your clients through their toughest, most important insurance disputes. 1325 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS | NEW YORK, NY 10019 | COHENZIFFER.COM

Debra Wong Yang GIBSON DUNN (LOS ANGELES)

500

THE VISIONARIES The 2022 Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America are the stars representing the judiciary, public interest, dealmakers, plaintiff advocates, commercial litigators, disability lawyers and more. And, if you’re like anyone else we’ve talked to lately, it’s been a hard day’s night. By which we mean a really rough two years. We’re tired, we’ve been ill, we’re cranky, we are oh so very, very done with this. So a little good news is in order. Trials are again underway. Deals are booming like there is no tomorrow, although it seems, perhaps, maybe there is … There’s a new flourish of inclusion that seems it might take hold. We have learned that we miss one another. A lot. Sorry Zoom. It’s always a pleasure to read through the submissions and research reports on which we base each year’s selection. Almost – but not quite – as good as sitting down at The Ear or some pub in Manhattan and dishing with well-sourced friends about who’s in, who’s out and who to keep an eye on. So here’s to all of you, 500 members and readers alike. For caring enough to keep going, for leading, for showing up, for putting on a jacket over your pajamas. In 2022, that alone denotes excellence. And this group does so much more than show up. They win, finding justice where there was little hope, and a newfound and surprising accountability. Our guide is 40 percent female and 25 percent inclusive. We’re thrilled to honor each and every member of this special class as well as so many other nominees and those considered. While exhausted, this nation does justice – and the lawyering it requires – as well as any country in the world. Better, for my two cents. So while we may not feel magnificent, trust us, we are. Just look at these 500 if you need some inspiration.

PHOTO OF DEBRA YANG BY AMY CANTRELL

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500 178

Matthew Abbott

Antonia Apps

PAUL WEISS NEW YORK

MILBANK NEW YORK

Paul Lancaster Adams

Stephen F. Arcano

OGLETREE DEAKINS PHILADELPHIA

SKADDEN NEW YORK

Charla Aldous

Roy Austin

ALDOUS WALKER/ATHEA DALLAS

META WASHINGTON, D.C.

Mary Rose Alexander

Baher Azmy

LATHAM CHICAGO

CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS NEW YORK

Samuel Alito

Andrew L. Bab

U.S. SUPREME COURT WASHINGTON, D.C.

DEBEVOISE NEW YORK

Catherine Amirfar

Rebecca Weinstein Bacon

DEBEVOISE NEW YORK

BARTLIT BECK CHICAGO

Kay Anderle

Aelish Marie Baig

KELLER ANDERLE IRVINE, CALIF.

ROBBINS GELLER SAN FRANCISCO

David B. Anders

Jon A. Ballis

WACHTELL NEW YORK

KIRKLAND CHICAGO

Lauren Angelilli

Ian Ballon

CRAVATH NEW YORK

GREENBERG TRAURIG EAST PALO ALTO

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500

Peter T. Barbur

Martine Beamon

CRAVATH NEW YORK

DAVIS POLK NEW YORK

Johnine P. Barnes

Barbara L. Becker

GREENBERG TRAURIG WASHINGTON, D.C.

GIBSON DUNN NEW YORK

Barry Barnett

Matthew Bergmann

SUSMAN GODFREY HOUSTON

WINSTON & STRAWN CHICAGO

Randall J. Baron

Barry Berke

ROBBINS GELLER SAN DIEGO

KRAMER LEVIN NEW YORK

Neil Barr

Sean M. Berkowitz

DAVIS POLK NEW YORK

LATHAM CHICAGO

Judy Barrasso

Erica Berthou

BARRASSO USDIN NEW ORLEANS

KIRKLAND NEW YORK

Amy Coney Barrett

Landis C. Best

U.S. SUPREME COURT WASHINGTON, D.C.

CAHILL GORDON NEW YORK

Scott A. Barshay

Vineet Bhatia

PAUL WEISS NEW YORK

SUSMAN GODFREY HOUSTON

Paul M. Basta

Frances Bivens

PAUL WEISS NEW YORK

DAVIS POLK NEW YORK

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Debra Wong Yang GIBSON DUNN (LOS ANGELES)

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DEBRA WONG YANG WATCH OUT IF DEBRA WONG YANG IS LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW. That’s when the pieces are falling into place. She’s had roughly the same view for over two decades of her practice that has seen her ascend from L.A. Municipal and then Superior Court judge to the first Asian American female U.S. Attorney and now Executive Committee member and head of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher’s Crisis Management practice. She looks out toward L.A.’s Chinatown, where she grew up walking the streets with her maternal grandfather, who helped build the famous neighborhood. A businessman who left Guangdong province hidden in a rice barrel as a young boy, he instilled in her a deep desire to elevate others. A fourth-generation Chinese immigrant on her father’s side, her passion is to make the world more fair for everyone who needs a chance – without regard for what form that takes. “The whole legal journey has never been about me,” she says. “It’s been about trying to create opportunities for other people. Personally, that’s what feels good and rewarding to me.” She’s spent her career using her substantial wit and charm combined with a killer work ethic and sense of right and wrong to craft an exemplary legal career that has seen her take on street gangs, law firms, banks and numerous other corrupt businesses. She oversaw one of the first computer hacking prosecutions and used environmental laws to force a major shipping company to stop dumping oil waste in California’s rivers and ocean. Today, she is the go-to advisor for tech companies, politicians and businesses suffering concurrent, multi-level, devastating crises. Take the tired trope of three-dimensional chess, and blow it up to infinity and beyond. “You don’t know when you’re growing up, what you’re going to be. And so you think back now to all those things in your life that formed you,” she says. Her path has been magnificently multifaceted – the opposite of the linear accumulation of skills too often advised – yet entirely consistent in its roots. Yang’s heart is a tangle of hilly streets where homes, restaurants, churches and schools commingle just north of Downtown L.A.’s Civic Center, just down the hill from Dodger Stadium. It’s Chinatown. Not the

PHOTOS BY AMY CANTRELL

BY KATRINA DEWEY racist noir home of Jack Nicholson’s epic turn, nor today’s jaded eye-roll hipster haven. But a storybook pavement of the early 1960s where Asian immigrants could form a community, build a business and, over time, own property (which they had been barred from by the state’s Alien Land Law of 1913). Her maternal grandfather, Geui Hong (Daniel Hall) Quan, helped found L.A.’s Chinatown and when he retired he would often walk Yang to school, pointing out those whose lives she needed to help improve. He made his way to California at the age of 15, after escaping Guangzhou for Hong Kong in 1910. He built a successful meat marketing business in L.A., doing his accounting on an abacus, while Yang sat nearby after school tending to her homework. The immigrant story is that, too, of her paternal great-grandfather, Lew Hing, who immigrated to the Bay Area in 1870 at the age of 12, working as a conscripted laborer before going on to establish the Paciﬁc Coast Canning Company and helping found San Francisco’s Chinatown. “My maternal grandfather told me when I was a little kid that I was responsible because he was. I was responsible for people other than myself,” Yang says. “He had 14 children. And I was the oldest granddaughter.” Her grandfather said she had to help people because she could speak English, which many people could not. “’You are going to be in a place where you can help others when they can’t help themselves,’” Yang recalls him saying. “That has just stuck with me all through the years, because when it’s all said and done, I don’t care a wit about accolades for myself. They were just a vehicle and a mechanism to give me the ability to speak for other people and create opportunities for other people and get other people to see – it took a while – people like me to give them their own inspiration.” To be seen is hard. It’s a risk. But one Yang always embraced, particularly beginning in 2002 when she was appointed U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles by President George W. Bush. His Attorney General was John Ashcroft, and the administration was reeling from a world turned upside down by 9/11. Law enforcement and intelligence infrastructure that had formed the bedrock of protection and prosecution for decades were revealed as inadequate for an age of global

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500 terrorism. There was no Department of Homeland Security, the Immigration and Naturalization Service was inundated in a wave of protectionism, and every agency was in disarray. Yang shuttled from L.A. to D.C. every two weeks for terrorist debriefings. And there is no doubt she was seen. She was advised to dress “appropriately,” which she came to understand meant she should wear a skirt; she did not own one. “I’m a single mother with three small children. I drive a minivan. There’s soccer stuff rolling around my car.” Yang says. “I can’t be in a skirt. I have to get these kids in and out of their car seats when I drop them off for school and I need to wear pants.” The next time she traveled to D.C., she stepped it up: white silk top, off-white silk pants and a belted mellow orange trench coat. “I looked fantastic. But I was nowhere near what the uniform looked like. And when I showed up at the meeting, these guys looked at me and I said, ‘You can’t tell me that I don’t look good.’ And they never said anything again.” “I’m here to expand everybody’s minds,” she says. “One of the nice things that age has brought is that I now feel no hesitation in describing the juggle of having been a working single mother. I previously hid it because it didn’t fit in all the conversations.” How to explain spelling tests, for instance, to her fellow prosecutors on the Attorney General’s Advisory committee? “If I left on a Monday, my daughter always had a spelling test on Friday,” she says. Yang would copy down all the words and take the list along. On Tuesday night, she’d call her daughter and run through the list, highlighting the ones she was misspelling. “And then I’d come back to her on Thursday night. And I’m eating Cheetos. I’m doing crunches on the floor in the government issue hotel because there’s no time to exercise. And I’ve got the spelling list in front of me. And I’m like, ‘Okay, “flexibility.’” It was a complex time that galvanized Yang’s life, abilities and experiences into a steel-trap mind that has become her greatest professional strength. Where others fragment under multiple levels of crisis, she compresses the issues into a singular calm focus. “I learned this when things were hitting the fan after 9/11. All the agencies were changing and the only place there was continuity was in the U.S. Attorney’s offices,” she says. When crimes occurred, agents would head to their U.S. Attorney rather than their agency.

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“There were so many changes to the mandate. Often times, I’d get all the data, everyone would debrief me, and I’d say, ‘OK, whose decision is this?’” And they’d say, “It’s yours.” She’d shut her door, pace and think. “I’d come to understand the law – which I’d reviewed with the lawyers. And then I’d start to game play and look around corners. Some of it was very upsetting because of the nature of what it was. And I’d look out the window and I could see my elementary school in Chinatown. And it was really calming.” “In that process, I realized that when others start to panic and freak out, I go to a place of clarity,” she says. “I don’t know why, but I can do that.” That skill has been her ace at Gibson Dunn, which she joined in 2006 after more than 20 years of public service as a judge and prosecutor. The firm already had a modest white-collar practice, and the hope was that Yang would expand its depth and dimension. She accomplished that in no time and then accelerated. Seventeen years later, she’s chaired the White Collar Defense and Investigations Practice Group; the Information Technology and Data Privacy Practice Group; and now the Crisis Management practice. Yang intended her time in private practice to be a limited engagement. She had practiced in law firms for several years after graduating from Boston College Law School. While formative, the experience failed to inspire her. However, by 2006, the toll of single motherhood and more than 20 years of public service was clear. “I needed to pay my mother back the money I borrowed from her when I was at the U.S. Attorney’s office because $128,000 does not carry you far with three kids,” she says. She also wanted to pay off her mortgage and save enough money so her kids could go to college. Her plan was to stay five to seven years. “The idea that I’ve been here now going on year 17 is astounding even to me,” she says. “And the reason is because the job is much more interesting than I thought it was going to be.” Give credit for that to Ted Olson, the preeminent Supreme Court litigator and longtime Gibson Dunn D.C. partner. He was familiar with her work as U.S. Attorney and had seen her in action investigating claims surrounding New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in the “Bridgegate” fiasco. Olson suggested she con-

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Michael Blair

Kobi Kennedy Brinson

DEBEVOISE NEW YORK

WINSTON & STRAWN CHARLOTTE

Lisa S. Blatt

Daniel L. Brockett

WILLIAMS & CONNOLLY WASHINGTON, D.C.

QUINN EMANUEL NEW YORK

Angelo Bonvino

Alex Brown

PAUL WEISS NEW YORK

LANIER LAW FIRM HOUSTON

LaBarron Boone

Benjamin D. Brown

BEASLEY ALLEN MONTGOMERY, ALA.

COHEN MILSTEIN WASHINGTON, D.C.

Gary Bornstein

Reginald J. Brown

CRAVATH NEW YORK

KIRKLAND WASHINGTON, D.C.

Andre G. Bouchard

Walter Brown

PAUL WEISS WILMINGTON

PAUL WEISS SAN FRANCISCO

Jamie Boucher

Yvette McGee Brown

SKADDEN WASHINGTON, D.C.

JONES DAY COLUMBUS, OHIO

Theodore Boutrous

Eugene Brown Jr.

GIBSON DUNN LOS ANGELES

HINSHAW SAN FRANCISCO

Richard Brand

John C. Browne

CADWALADER NEW YORK

BERNSTEIN LITOWITZ NEW YORK

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Spencer Burkholz

WACHTELL NEW YORK

ROBBINS GELLER SAN DIEGO

Devon C. Bruce

Reuben Camper Cahn

POWER ROGERS CHICAGO

KELLER ANDERLE IRVINE, CALIF.

David R. Buchanan

Andrew Calder

SEEGER WEISS RIDGEFIELD PARK, N.J.

KIRKLAND HOUSTON

Jacob W. Buchdahl

Timothy G. Cameron

SUSMAN GODFREY NEW YORK

CRAVATH NEW YORK

Russell Budd

Joshua R. Cammaker

BARON & BUDD DALLAS

WACHTELL NEW YORK

Susanna Buergel

George S. Canellos

PAUL WEISS NEW YORK

MILBANK NEW YORK

John D. Buretta

Gretchen Freeman Cappio

CRAVATH NEW YORK

KELLER ROHRBACK SEATTLE

Karen Burgess

Gregory Care

BURGESS LAW AUSTIN

BROWN GOLDSTEIN LEVY BALTIMORE

Paul Burgo

Robert Carey

KASOWITZ NEW YORK

HAGENS BERMAN PHOENIX

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sider crisis management, explaining how her experiences and expertise were perfect preparation for the harried, multifaceted crisis management practice. “It was a game changer,” she says. Crisis management allows her to use her legal knowledge and litigation skills, but also funnel in her political judgment and media savvy. “It’s allowed me to be in a place where it’s not just legal decisions, it’s overall structural decisions. I prefer this type of work over representing overwhelmingly guilty individuals. “I’m totally a prosecutor, so that doesn’t jibe with me. But I do like helping companies either figure out how to be better and more compliant going forward – having a better interface, helping them solve some problems that are intrinsic to them as they grew and developed. I like meshing the legal issues with the overall business strategy. I like seeing American companies succeed. “I love that piece of it because it feels to me like I’m making the business better,” she says. That’s how she’s found herself amidst DraftKing’s competitive battles for online fantasy sports; representing 20 west coast universities in challenging the Trump administration’s policies against foreign students; and as the first lawyer MGM called in 2017 after the mass shooting at Mandalay Bay. On her way back from New York to L.A., she rerouted straight to Las Vegas. “You didn’t know if there was another shooter, people were being interviewed left and right, law enforcement was investigating and it was mayhem,” she says. “But that’s where my skillset and place of calm can help. And, as a former judge, I know the iteration of litigation. I could see how the problems would ultimately manifest. I have that all in my head, and I see things and know how it will turn out.” That vision allows her to intake all the data, quickly analyze what issues will surface as major ones, how to message them to the public, shareholders and other audiences, and how to bring the team together to help the company. Her wisdom is invaluable to her clients and confirms to Yang her decision to join Gibson Dunn rather than take a position offered on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. She would have been the first Asian American woman ever on a circuit court, which appealed deeply to her sense of service. Two factors swayed her to private practice: one, she had met with a financial planner and could never get

to the point in public service where she could pay for her daughters’ college. “Also, in my heart, I knew there would be other Asian judges who would come up the pipeline,” she says. And she knew that because she’d spent part of her career working to build the pipeline through organizations including NAPABA (the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association), identifying and preparing national candidates. As one of the few Asian American candidates the Senate had confirmed before, her insight was valuable in laying the path. “So I knew there were others out there. And it wouldn’t be tomorrow, but it wouldn’t be forever,” she says. “And that gave me some peace.” The choice also gave her a new focus for her mission. She found there were very few women of color who had voices in Big Law. “And I thought, that’s the nut I need to crack.” That’s the same assessment she made when she chose U.S. Attorney over a District Court bench, after seeing very few minorities on the leadership floors at the Department of Justice. “I never saw people who looked like me, and I didn’t see that many women,” she says. “I’ve always been compelled by the notion of how I can help change things, which is why I went into Big Law.” Last year, Gibson Dunn chose Barbara Becker as its first female Chair and Managing Partner, the seventh attorney to hold the position in the firm’s 131-year history. Yang was excited to watch Becker’s selection. “What I didn’t foresee in Big Law is that you have to prove yourself fi rst before you can have the kind of voice that I wanted to have,” she says. “But then I reached that point and this is now my tenth year on the executive committee and change and progress are happening. I’m so excited to have a female managing partner, and that it’s happening in my lifetime.” Her lifetime of being the change she – and her grandfather – wanted to see in the world has brought her an abundance of accolades, including recently the Learned Hand award from the American Jewish Committee recognizing her work for civil rights and to combat anti-Asian hatred and violence. “Hatred is hatred. It doesn’t matter what kind, whether it’s black, it’s Asian, it’s Jewish. It’s hatred,” she says. “We have to get to that underlying feeling and really try to disarm that.

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SHE FOUND THERE WERE VERY FEW WOMEN OF COLOR WHO HAD VOICES IN BIG LAW. “AND I THOUGHT, THAT’S THE NUT I NEED TO CRACK.” “I’ve been in the community, I’ve been active. I understand the challenges that are out there. When you get older, you focus on, ‘How do we solve this? Where’s the path to resolution?’ And it’s really trying to ﬁnd that commonality and creating a voice and a crescendo together and trying to effect change that way.” Whether she’s broadening minds in Big Law, public interest or public service, Yang has always brought together communities. She remembers back when she was interviewing for U.S. Attorney as well as District Court judge. And those vetting her were struck because she received an endorsement letter from the Mexican American Bar Association when a Hispanic candidate was also under consideration. The White House asked me, “How is it that you got a letter of support from the Mexican American Bar Association when they have another Hispanic candidate?” She had met with MABA’s board, and recognized the import of the decision. And she explained Chinatown to the White House.

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“I grew up in a very Hispanic neighborhood. I relate to their issues. I grew up around gangs,” she says. “And I had been active in the community since I was 19 years old. So many of those people know me.” They knew she completely understood the Mexican American and other communities at its heart and hers. “And that is something that’s so unique to L.A.,” she says. It’s a land of hopes and dreams where a young man who ﬂed in a rice barrel can have a granddaughter who becomes its top prosecutor and – as a single mom – a leader in its most illustrious law ﬁrm. “I don’t take this lightly, but I don’t think of myself as inspiring,” she says. “But I’ve had so many younger people say to me how important it is to them to see people like me in certain positions and I’ve come to believe that. It has given me more of a mental mandate to be out there and to do these things and create change.”

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Michael B. Carlinsky

Peter Wilson Chatfield

QUINN EMANUEL NEW YORK

PHILLIPS & COHEN WASHINGTON, D.C.

Mats Carlston

Doris Cheng

WINSTON & STRAWN NEW YORK

WALKUP MELODIA SAN FRANCISCO

Bill Carmody

Apalla Chopra

SUSMAN GODFREY NEW YORK

O’MELVENY LOS ANGELES

James Carroll

Shauna Clark

SKADDEN BOSTON

NORTON ROSE FULBRIGHT HOUSTON

E. Leon Carter

Kristen Clarke

CARTER ARNETT DALLAS

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE WASHINGTON, D.C.

James Carter

Taj J. Clayton

THE COCHRAN LAW FIRM METAIRIE, LA.

KIRKLAND DALLAS

Amy Caton

Paul D. Clement

KRAMER LEVIN NEW YORK

KIRKLAND WASHINGTON, D.C.

Ricardo G. Cedillo

Linda Coberly

DAVIS CEDILLO & MENDOZA SAN ANTONIO

WINSTON & STRAWN CHICAGO

Deborah Chang

Jeff Cody

CHANG | KLEIN/ATHEA LOS ANGELES

NORTON ROSE FULBRIGHT DALLAS

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Taj Clayton KIRKLAND & ELLIS (DALLAS)

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TAJ CLAYTON AS TAJ CLAYTON TELLS IT, OPPOSING FANS

of his high school basketball team in Pennsylvania would taunt players for (allegedly) having no chance of getting to college. Clayton did one better in proving them wrong – attending Harvard twice, the second time launching him towards a renowned legal career that includes inclusion on the Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America. Clayton excels across a varied mix of cases – the common thread being the high stakes and complexity of his clients’ most pressing matters. In this effort, Clayton says he has found a fitting home in Kirkland & Ellis, where he practices from the firm’s Dallas office. Lawdragon: Your caseload has been very diverse over the years. That being said, have you tended to litigate more in certain practice areas or industries in the past few years? Are there any trends you are seeing in your practice? Taj Clayton: I enjoy having an extremely diverse practice ranging from all kinds of civil actions involving major professional sports teams to the world’s biggest and most successful corporations in jurisdictions around the country. The diversity of my cases keeps my work interesting and fresh. It also keeps me intellectually agile, which I love. The common denominator in all of my cases is that the stakes are high. Clients rely on Kirkland to handle their most sensitive, complicated and important cases. I love delivering when high-caliber lawyering is needed the most. One trend I’ve seen is that plaintiffs’ lawyers are becoming increasingly sophisticated and mass actions are becoming increasingly complex, typically spanning across many jurisdictions with strong collaboration among plaintiffs’ counsel and states’ attorneys general. Defending these cases effectively requires tremendous experience with these types of cases, strategic chops and coordination. Kirkland is one of a finite number of firms who can handle these cases effectively by coordinating with a deep bench of talent across the country and across practice groups. It’s become a key differentiator for our litigation practice. LD: Backing up: What led you to Harvard in 1995? TC: I went to Harvard to change the trajectory of my life. I grew up in Pottstown, Penn., a hardscrabble, working-class community that I love deeply. Even though it’s a small town, it has big city problems

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BY JOHN RYAN (crime, drugs, poverty, teenage pregnancies, etc.) that are hard to escape. Outsiders questioned our academic abilities and prospects for success. I recall rival fans at our high school basketball games mocking us by chanting “We’re going to college!” as if nobody from Pottstown would. Harvard was my answer. I saw it as my ticket to a better life. It also helped that I met my gorgeous future wife on campus when I visited as a high school senior. I was smitten by the school and definitely by her. LD: What did you expect to do with your college degree? TC: I had zero idea what I’d do with a college degree. My parents never went to college so post-college life was an opaque enigma to me. Right before I left for college, my parents told me that I had to figure out things on my own from that point forward. I only knew for certain that I wanted to be successful, and I wanted to make an impact. Sports has always been my passion so I started at the NFL after graduating from college. At the same time, my college girlfriend and soon-to-be wife worked at the NBA. We had an extraordinary time living in NYC and working in sports. We met a lot of incredible people and enjoyed amazing experiences fresh out of college. Ultimately, we decided that generating wealth would require us to go back to grad school and pursue careers outside of sports. So we both went back to Harvard. I went to law school and she went to business school. LD: How did you become interested in law school? TC: When I was at the NFL, I worked with a group of terrific attorneys who really nurtured and guided me. They taught me about the flexibility of a law degree because I was still unsure about what my career path would be. At the time, the commissioners of the NFL, NBA and MLB all had law degrees. The CEOs of major entertainment corporations did as well. I was informed that there were more Fortune 500 CEOs with degrees from Harvard Law School than any other educational institution in the country, including Harvard Business School. For me, that was all I needed to hear. I was all in and went back to Harvard for law school. LD: What advice do you have for current law students who may be interested in a similar type of career?

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MY FOCUS IS BEING EFFECTIVE AND MY OBSESSION IS WINNING…I LOVE LITIGATION BECAUSE I LOVE TO WIN. TC: First, outwork everyone. Hard work eats raw talent for breakfast. Second is to smile often. Make sure that others around you feel good about themselves, the team and your shared mission. Third, have fun. Life is too short to toil away without having a lot of fun. The fourth piece of advice is to never compromise your integrity, principles or values. Ever. Finally, I would say dream bigger. There are no limits. You are capable of more than you realize. Go for it all. Never settle for less. LD: Was there an early experience or mentor who really helped shape your development as a litigator? TC: Ken Frazier, the former CEO of Merck has really shaped my career – probably more than he realizes. I met him as a ﬁrst-year law student when he was the General Counsel at Merck. He told me then that he would become the Merck CEO one day – years before it ever happened. I watched him make it materialize. We didn’t speak often, but when we did it was always impactful. Over the years, he pushed and challenged me in various ways to never settle for being good. He emphasized that greatness is the objective, and success beyond myself is a must. LD: How would you describe your style as a lawyer? Or, how do you think others see you? TC: I see my style as bespoke. Different cases call for different approaches. Even a single case can be dynamic and require different styles and approaches at different times. I really try to be as agile as possible and tailor my lawyering for the speciﬁc case depending on my rapport with opposing counsel, the presiding judge, the composition of the teams I’m leading and the facts. My focus is being effective and my obsession is winning.

fulfilling along multiple dimensions and gives me the opportunity to think strategically, creatively and analytically – all in service of winning for my clients. LD: Can you talk a little bit about what led to your decision to join Kirkland? How has it been so far in the first few years? TC: Kirkland occupies rarified air in the legal firmament. In my view, it has become the gold standard not just in the legal profession, but in the broader professional services industry. The biggest and most successful clients in the world hire Kirkland for their most important issues because they want access to the best talent and the best client service. I had to be a part of that. My first two years have gone even better than my lofty expectations. The firm has overdelivered on what it promised to me. I’ve delivered for the firm. Together, we’ve delivered for our clients. It’s been a lot of fun. I really enjoy practicing at the cutting-edge of our profession. LD: What do you do for fun when you’re outside the office? TC: I’m a family man first and foremost. Nothing in the world brings me more joy than hearing the laughter of my wife and kids over a family board game, a family movie night, or a family trip. I love seeing my kids discover and pursue their passions. Second, I’m obsessed with the game of golf. I love playing with great, interesting people while outside in beautiful settings and engaged in fun, friendly competition. For the rest of my life, I intend to be in perpetual pursuit of perfecting my swing and collecting as many birdies as possible.

LD: What do you like most about the litigation process? What keeps you excited about your practice day to day?

LD: An interesting tidbit from your bio is having run for the U.S. House seat for Texas’ 30th district in 2012, eventually losing to incumbent Eddie Bernice Johnson in the Democratic primary. Do you think you will ever run for ofﬁce again?

TC: I love litigation because I love to win. Even at 45, I still self-identify as an athlete. The athlete in me loves the fact that there are winners and losers at the end of litigation. The thrill of competing, performing under pressure, and winning when the stakes are high has never left me. I also identify as a thinker. I require intellectual engagement. Litigation is intellectually

TC: I’ve learned to never say “never,” but it is highly unlikely that I will run for ofﬁce again. My life in the private sector right now is more exciting than I dreamed it could be with some incredible opportunities in store. I’m also creating a path to have a positive impact on the life of others through the private sector rather than through public ofﬁce.

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Lori G. Cohen

Ben Crump

GREENBERG TRAURIG ATLANTA

BEN CRUMP LAW TALLAHASSEE

Robin Cohen

Katie Curry

COHEN ZIFFER NEW YORK

MCGINN MONTOYA ALBUQUERQUE

Steven A. Cohen

Stephen D’Amore

WACHTELL NEW YORK

WINSTON & STRAWN CHICAGO

Vincent H. Cohen Jr.

Frank Darras

DECHERT WASHINGTON, D.C.

DARRASLAW ONTARIO, CALIF.

Eva Cole

Cari Dawson

WINSTON & STRAWN NEW YORK

ALSTON & BIRD ATLANTA

Melinda R. Coolidge

Karin A. DeMasi

HAUSFELD WASHINGTON, D.C.

CRAVATH NEW YORK

Philip Harnett Corboy Jr.

Michael Demetrio

CORBOY & DEMETRIO CHICAGO

Kelley Cornish

Kelly M. Dermody

PAUL WEISS NEW YORK

LIEFF CABRASER SAN FRANCISCO

Eric R.I. Cottle

Abigail Dillen

K&L GATES NEW YORK

EARTHJUSTICE SAN FRANCISCO

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Ira Schacter CADWALADER (NEW YORK)

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IRA SCHACTER BY JAMES LANGFORD

ASK IRA SCHACTER HIS PHILOSOPHY ON LIFE,

practicing law or virtually anything else and he might tell you about a car. One, in particular.

It was a TR-6, a two-seater that British carmaker Triumph Motor Co. built from 1969 to 1976 that’s now considered a collector’s item. Schacter bought it decades ago for just a few hundred dollars. It was only the second vehicle he had owned in his life, and once he restored it from the ground up – a necessity that explains the low purchase price – he had no funds left to replace the aging ragtop. “So I took the old top, cut it apart and made it into patterns,” recalls Schacter, a partner at New York-based Cadwalader whose practice includes clients in fields from technology to finance. “I took 20 books from the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue on how to sew, and started practicing.” In case you’re wondering why he didn’t just go to YouTube, Schacter learned to drive in the 1970s. Public access to the internet didn’t yet exist – much less instructional videos delivered via smartphone. Acquiring new skills was considerably more labor intensive. Nonetheless, Schacter persevered: “I learned to use a sewing machine, and I sewed a perfectly usable, suitable and ‘looked fine’ convertible top.” And what’s the message here? “I look at law the same way,” Schacter says. “Whether it’s mergers and acquisitions or structured finance, or anything in between – you take on challenges, you put in the time and you invent creative ways to make it work.”

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500 He relied on the same philosophy to build his practice after completing a juris doctorate at Nova Southeastern University and his Master of Laws at New York University. Only the ninth member of 230-yearold Cadwalader’s structured finance group when he joined in 1985, Schacter set aside every Sunday night to read about the deals other lawyers were working on. “I just wanted to know what was out there,” he says. “I had a hunger to know, ‘What are the deals? How do they work?’ This was a very early time in the growth and development of financial products and the like.” His curiosity paid dividends. “This is how it would go at Cadwalader in the early days,” Schacter recalls. “A partner would come out of his office, walk down the halls and shout something to the effect of, ‘Goldman Sachs just called, and they want to do this deal that First Boston just did. Does anyone know what they’re talking about?’” More often than not, Schacter did. “So after a period of time, they’d more frequently start coming to my office, which meant that I developed a relationship with partners early on, and worked on more interesting, different, one-off kinds of things,” he says. That approach has allowed Schacter to mature into a holistic strategic adviser over the past three decades – taking roles in transactions from a $21B securitization of franchise agreements for Hilton Hotels to a $325M Series F investment round for cybersecurity firm Cybereason. He recommends the approach to attorneys starting their careers today. “It’s really, really hard to learn how to be a lawyer working at a law firm, and the reason for that is because you’re adversely selected in your training,” Schacter explains. “Your ability to get good assignments depends on how lucky you are on a day that both you’re more free than your peers and the phone rings with an appropriate client assignment. You have to fill in the gaps by reading and doing homework if you’re going to become a master craftsman.” Schacter, who describes his practice as people-centric rather than product-centric, noticed early in his career that the investment bankers he worked with who were good at their jobs got promoted quickly. “They went from working on the mortgage desk to supervising mortgage securities, then supervising all of structured finance and supervising fixed income,” he says.

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Some of the partners at Cadwalader had true relationships with those clients and would adapt to handle whatever legal services the clients needed over time. Others remained focused on their specialties, and when a client was promoted, would transition to working with whomever succeeded him or her. “I made a very, very conscious decision that I wanted to stay close to the people, because it was much more interesting to me to do whatever they did and to work with them,” he says. “My first love of Cadwalader has always been that it has encouraged its people to find their own path.” Lawdragon: What made you gravitate, either intuitively or by choice, to people over product? I would have thought, especially at the time, that law firms were emphasizing product. Doing the same thing over and over seems like a more common path to success. Ira Schacter: Because of who I am, I wanted more breadth. The way I saw it, and still do to this day, you can only succeed to a point by doing the same thing over and over again. You’re never going to grow to run large client relationships and help them in thinking broadly about their business. You may have a great practice, but if you only do the same thing over and over again, there are natural limits to the kind of adviser you can be. Your scope is too narrow. Plus, I’m convinced – because you see it happening already – that artificial intelligence is much better suited to doing the same things over and over than worldclass legal minds. Unless you have skills that allow you to adapt in an ever-changing world, you’re almost by definition running the risk of becoming obsolete in a world that values ingenuity and different things. LD: Tell me about Cadwalader. Does the culture that attracted you when you were interviewing for the firm still exist? IS: It does. It does. You may laugh at this story, but it’s one of the things that made my decision in favor of Cadwalader. In those days, firms would take you out to lunch after you spent the day interviewing, and the people who took me out at Cadwalader were two young associates. They were politely sharing food off each other’s plates, which made me feel like they were real people, and that I could work here. I had just gone to lunch the day before with another firm, and the experience felt so stiff. There was something about the people at Cadwalader that just felt incredibly genuine to me.

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Michael Dolce

Daralyn Durie

COHEN MILSTEIN PALM BEACH GARDENS, FLA.

DURIE TANGRI SAN FRANCISCO

Diane M. Doolittle

Brian Duwe

QUINN EMANUEL REDWOOD SHORES, CALIF.

SKADDEN CHICAGO

William Dougherty

Karen Dyer

SIMPSON THACHER NEW YORK

CADWALADER NEW YORK

Joseph Drayton

Ryan Dzierniejko

COOLEY NEW YORK

SKADDEN NEW YORK

Daniel S. Drosman

Mary Eaton

ROBBINS GELLER SAN DIEGO

FRESHFIELDS BRUCKHAUS NEW YORK

Christopher Duffy

Sarah K. Eddy

VINSON & ELKINS NEW YORK

WACHTELL NEW YORK

Brian Dunn

Michael Elkin

THE COCHRAN LAW FIRM LOS ANGELES

WINSTON & STRAWN NEW YORK

Karen L. Dunn

Tara D. Elliott

PAUL WEISS WASHINGTON, D.C.

LATHAM WASHINGTON, D.C.

Kendall Dunson

Dennis S. Ellis

BEASLEY ALLEN MONTGOMERY, ALA.

ELLIS GEORGE CIPOLLONE LOS ANGELES

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500 LD: Did you grow up in New York? IS: I did, in a town called Merrick, near Jones Beach, maybe 30 miles outside of the city. When you lived there, you got dragged by your parents into the city only to go to museums or buy your clothes, and you only saw the most commercial parts as you went with your dad to his office. So you often missed out on the real rhythm of the city – the really unique things that make this such a special place. So, not surprisingly, I wasn’t sure about living in New York City. But I remember unpacking the car on that first morning before NYU Law School and thinking to myself, with the action on the sidewalk, that I was never going to leave, that New York City would be my home forever. I love it as much now as I did then. These days, I’m in Red Hook, Brooklyn, close to the office and down the block from my metal shop where I scratch-build cars with raw metal and my bare hands. LD: I wondered about that after you mentioned rebuilding the Triumph. Do you specialize in any particular kind of vehicles? Where did that interest come from? IS: I’ve been building things since I was 5. I was the kid who took everything apart, no matter what it was – old TVs, old radios, old lawnmowers. Whatever. Then I built ever more audacious, complex things. My first car, which I bought for $75 when I was 15, was a 1966 Buick Riviera that had been in a head-on collision. I spent every minute before school, after football practice and on the weekends fixing it, rebuilding it, having it ready for when I got my license. In my projects now, I’m very partial to 1930’s French Art Deco cars, like the Delahaye and the Bugatti Atlantic and the Talbot-Lago 150. I like the challenge of building something on the outside with that 1930’s look, with a body made of aluminum, built the way they would have by hand in the 1930s, as well as the 200 miles-per-hour sports car performance that could compete with any Ferrari or Lamborghini underneath. I love building my own machines and tools too, not just the car proper. Of course, it helps to have grown-up kids and a stable career to be able to indulge yourself in things you loved when you were little. It’s both a great release for me, with a very active law practice and great clients who come to me for guidance and, even more so, for my insights on their business and industry. My clients all know about my passion, and tacitly or explicitly, understand the connection. Transactions, like cars, are about forces and opposing forces – the ability to absorb, harness and oppose competing forces whether

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“I’VE BEEN BUILDING THINGS SINCE I WAS 5. I WAS THE KID WHO TOOK EVERYTHING APART, NO MATTER WHAT IT WAS – OLD TVS, OLD RADIOS, OLD LAWNMOWERS. WHATEVER.” the horizontal twist from the motor, the forward force from putting power to the wheels, the upward forces of riding over terrain and the cliff-like risk of an unintended impact. Designing around these forces is an art in packaging and the judicious use of triangles. You know you need a motor, four wheels, room for an occupant, gas tank, mufflers, etc. and it all needs to fit into a confined space. The triangle is the strongest yet most elegant shape to oppose and stand up to force. The art is putting it all together in a form that is both functional and beautiful in a Museum of Modern Art sort of way. In a nutshell, this is the fabrication side of building. The other side of building is shaping – the ability to take flat sheets of thin sheet metal and turn it into beautiful shapes like the skin of a body. Doing deals and providing strategic advice is much the same. I have what I consider my own legal aesthetic, a way I think about deals and risk and business that plays out differently from deal to deal, but is consistent because of how I think about the world and how I think about risk. It all comes back to isolating forces and opposing forces and structuring around them. I tend to think of legal provisions as motivators of good behavior. I’m fortunate to work with some exceptionally talented younger partners and attorneys here, and my team is great. For the most part, when they submit documents, they’re in very good shape. But I tend to think that my job is to go for a walk along the water, close my eyes and

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think, “If I were the client, what are the eight unique things in this deal that I would need to be protected from and how can I address them?” Inevitably, five of those aren’t in the documents and typical precedents that I’m presented. If I can give one piece of advice to young lawyers, it would be to not fall into the trap of believing that the precedent is always correct but to have the confidence to forge new frontiers. LD: It’s interesting how the attitude you have toward your extracurricular projects reflects your professional habits. It’s very versatile. Did that mindset give you or people around you an indication of what your career might be when you were growing up? IS: I’d say I grew up in a way that would be very indicative. I played football and could talk to the athletes on the teams, but at the same time, I also played guitar in a Southern rock band and could also talk to the musicians. Because I was building a car in my garage, I could talk to other builders who also read the car magazines and worked on their own cars every chance they could. And I could also talk to and befriend the very smart kids. I never found it difficult. I was always able to talk to anyone and everyone. And the secret to my practice, both with the people with whom I work and with the clients with whom I work, is very, very deep relationships. LD: Tell me more about how your practice evolved from your early work in structured finance to the tremendous range of representations you have now. IS: Sure. Let me give you an example. About 27 years ago, when I was a baby partner, a senior partner came to me and said, “There’s a banker at one of these big banks, a young vice president, and everybody thinks that he is going to go really, really far. He’s not happy with the partner he was assigned to work with and he’s threatening to move his business if we can’t come up with a different one. Would you help?” So, for nearly three decades now, I’ve talked to this person several times a week, sometimes six times a day. He’s now the chief financial officer at a major client. So again, if all I did was the very narrow range of work that he was doing 27 years ago, we probably wouldn’t have grown as much as we have together as friends and colleagues over the past quarter-century. LD: Interesting. I can see how people have been the consistent factor in your practice. Understanding them and their needs provides a way for you to put your lawyering skills to their highest and best use. It also results in a widely varied practice, which includes things like the naming deal you worked on

with Vanderbilt University. Tell me a little about that. IS: I worked with Goldman Sachs on that as predesignated investors counsel, meaning that I was hired alongside Goldman Sachs as advisers to the university but would ultimately represent whoever the investors that Goldman Sachs brought in on a series of deals that raised nearly $3B for the university from monetizing the naming rights. Basically, the Vanderbilt Medical Center on campus has a contract with Vanderbilt University to pay the university for the use of its name, and we sold the right to receive those payments. All of the proceeds went to the university’s endowment fund, and instead of the university taking payments of small amounts for 40 years, a group of insurance companies and other investors paid the university up front and will receive the payments instead, ultimately betting on the credit and the performance of the medical center. It was a very groundbreaking, interesting transaction. LD: That’s fascinating. IS: It’s using whole company securitization technology but in a different space, with a different twist and in a different way. The opportunity to do things like that is one of the reasons I like doing deals. LD: You’ve said you appreciate the way Cadwalader enabled you to take on such a wide range of matters by encouraging lawyers to develop their own practices their way. Is that why you’ve stayed with the firm for so many years? IS: That, and the beautiful view of the Hudson River and the Statue of Liberty. But, seriously, what makes Cadwalader really special are the people. While I certainly have good friends and good relationships developed here over 37 years, I really believe that the people here are different than at many other firms. What makes partners successful here and what drives Cadwalader is that we’re entrepreneurial. It’s a system that gives you a lot of rope to go out and do things, to be yourself. That actually commands the most intensive self-discipline because you don’t want to ask for something, or do something, that causes you not to have what you feel like is unlimited freedom forever. It’s my strong sense from knowing a lot of practitioners that a practice like mine, doing asset-backed securities and mergers and acquisitions, and a lot of other things in between, all at the same time, would be very difficult at another firm. But at Cadwalader, it’s seamless.

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David Elsberg

Mark Filip

SELENDY GAY ELSBERG NEW YORK

KIRKLAND CHICAGO

Adam O. Emmerich

Steven E. Fineman

WACHTELL NEW YORK

LIEFF CABRASER NEW YORK

Miguel A. Estrada

Julie E. Fink

GIBSON DUNN WASHINGTON, D.C.

KAPLAN HECKER & FINK NEW YORK

Theane Evangelis

Alice S. Fisher

GIBSON DUNN LOS ANGELES

LATHAM WASHINGTON, D.C.

Karen Evans

Fidelma L. Fitzpatrick

T HE COCHRAN LAW FIRM WASHINGTON, D.C.

MOTLEY RICE PROVIDENCE, R.I.

Gregory A. Ezring

Jodi Westbrook Flowers

PAUL WEISS NEW YORK

MOTLEY RICE MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C.

Eric B. Fastiff

Kobie Flowers

LIEFF CABRASER SAN FRANCISCO

BROWN GOLDSTEIN LEVY WASHINGTON, D.C.

Bibi Fell

David Flugman

FELL LAW/ATHEA SAN DIEGO

SELENDY GAY ELSBERG NEW YORK

Mark Ferguson

William V. Fogg

BARTLIT BECK CHICAGO

CRAVATH NEW YORK

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Jason A. Forge

Vijaya Gadde

ROBBINS GELLER SAN DIEGO

TWITTER SAN FRANCISCO

Katherine B. Forrest

Eric Gang

CRAVATH NEW YORK

GANG & ASSOCIATES WASHINGTON, D.C.

Mary Beth Forshaw

Jonathan Gardner

SIMPSON THACHER NEW YORK

LABATON SUCHAROW NEW YORK

James J. Fox

James Garner

VINSON & ELKINS NEW YORK

SHER GARNER NEW ORLEANS

Raquel Fox

Gregory G. Garre

SKADDEN WASHINGTON, D.C.

LATHAM WASHINGTON, D.C.

Andy Freeman

Faith Gay

BROWN GOLDSTEIN LEVY BALTIMORE

SELENDY GAY ELSBERG NEW YORK

Agnieszka Fryszman

Paul Geller

COHEN MILSTEIN WASHINGTON, D.C.

ROBBINS GELLER BOCA RATON, FLA.

Keith Fullenweider

Eric George

VINSON & ELKINS HOUSTON

ELLIS GEORGE CIPOLLONE LOS ANGELES

Robert Fumerton

Adam Gerchen

SKADDEN NEW YORK

KELLER POSTMAN CHICAGO

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Karen Dunn PAUL WEISS (WASHINGTON, D.C.)

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KAREN DUNN

BY ALISON PREECE

THE LAWYER WHO HELPED TAKE DOWN THE CHARLOTTESVILLE NEO-NAZIS PAUL, WEISS LITIGATION PARTNER KAREN

Dunn has first-chaired some of the most consequential trials of the past decade, including, most recently, the much-watched Epic v. Apple antitrust case and Sines v. Kessler, the first and only private lawsuit to take on the leadership of the white supremacist movement. Her client list includes some of the world’s most recognized corporations, including tech titans like Amazon, Apple, Oracle and Uber. But Dunn’s practice extends far beyond the courtroom. She has become a go-to advisor for the boards and executives of major companies, high-profile individuals and top government officials, as they navigate multifaceted crises, including the most sensitive and complex matters where reputation and business operations are on the line. Lawdragon: Last year, you tried two landmark cases in five months: the Epic Games v. Apple antitrust trial last May in San Francisco, and the civil conspiracy trial against white supremacist groups in October in Charlottesville. How do you prepare for such a schedule? Karen Dunn: I once heard a great trial lawyer say that most of the important work of trial takes place during the trial and, in some sense, this is true. The work you do a month in advance is not as important as the work you do a week in advance, which is not as important as the work you do every night during trial to prepare for the next day. That said, it’s still quite a lot of work. I try to always take it one step at a time and not look out over the next several months and think, wow, how will I get all of this done? And actually, the best part about trying cases is that it is a team sport. I don’t work alone and, by this point in my career, have found a whole group of people to try cases with. We are like a trial SWAT team. We descend on the law and the facts, distill the core themes and fit the evidence into them. We have years of experience communicating with one another, including under extreme stress, so we are able to minimize the daily transaction costs of getting things done. And most importantly, we genuinely like each other. We have fun. And we are excellent at what we do because we love doing it. LD: Tell me about how you became involved in Sines v. Kessler and what it means to you. KD: Social impact cases are core to my legal practice. Before private practice, I spent a long time in the gov-

PHOTO BY ELI MEIR KAPLAN

ernment, including as a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia. Earlier in private practice, I was part of the representation – led by my former partner Michael Gottlieb – of the owner of the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria. He was a victim of political violence when a man drove from North Carolina with an AR-15, believing a false conspiracy theory that a pedophile ring associated with Hillary Clinton operated in the basement. Following the Unite the Right event in Charlottesville in 2017, I got a call from Robbie Kaplan, a leading civil rights lawyer who had just opened up her own ﬁrm, who was familiar with some of the work I had done. We had never met but admired each other from afar. She asked if I wanted to sue the Nazis with her, following the violence in Charlottesville, and I said of course I do. We put together an all-star team, including my partners Jessica Phillips and Bill Isaacson, as well as Robbie’s partners Michael Bloch, Julie Fink and Gabrielle Tenzer, and Alan Levine and David Mills at Cooley. I cannot do justice to this case in the space we have here. It was a transformative life event for everyone who was part of the proceeding. It was immensely meaningful as a lawyer, as a person and as someone who cares about our country, to be able to secure some measure of justice for our brave plaintiffs whose lives were forever changed by what happened. I have always had great faith in our country’s jury system but there was a moment during jury deliberations, after the jury had been out for a couple days, when I thought that I might have to leave the law. I couldn’t imagine that a jury of good faith could overlook all of the evidence of racially motivated violence that we had seen during the course of the trial. The jury sent out a bunch of notes over the course of deliberations, some of which were worrisome. So when the verdict was read, my primary feeling was relief – the jury found each and every defendant liable for racially motivated violence and had imposed not just compensatory damages but also punitive damages. I had expressly told the jury in closing argument that the point of punitive damages was to send a message beyond just the defendants in the case that there was no place under our laws for this racially motivated violence. The jury had sent that message. LD: How would you describe your courtroom style?

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500 KD: I think the most important asset you have as a trial lawyer is your authenticity. So I don’t think about creating a particular style; I am just myself. I think when lawyers try to be someone they are not in real life, it undermines credibility and trust, which is the worst thing you can do. And no matter how many people are watching, I am focused on the only audience that will matter at the end of the day: the jury or, if it’s a bench trial, the judge. LD: You’re one of a few trial lawyers with a very active crisis management practice. How is advising C-suite executives on crisis issues different than trial practice? KD: Trial work and crisis management are more similar than many people realize. Both require you to play three-dimensional chess strategically. Both require you to be extremely quick on your feet and act decisively in the moment. Both require you to be a clear communicator who can break down complicated concepts and make them accessible to people. And both require expertise in preparing witnesses who are under extreme stress. One critical difference between the two is that trials inherently deal with a fixed set of facts – once you get to trial, the parties have agreed on an exhibit list and the rules of evidence control what is admissible. In crisis management, the considerations are wide-ranging, often affecting every part of a business or political situation, and new facts or curveballs can come at you all the time. My prior experience on campaigns and in communications conditioned me to thrive in that kind of environment, but I completely understand why it’s not for everybody. LD: How do you prepare witnesses for staying calm during their biggest “hot seat” moments in court? KD: Most of the strategies I use in witness prep I picked up doing debate prep for presidential candidates and confirmation prep for Supreme Court and Cabinet nominees. There are two general principles: First, every witness is different and you need to spend the time to earn their trust and understand the way they learn and assimilate information. Second, running a professional process is important because it gives the witness confidence and increases the likelihood that they do the work necessary to be a success on the stage or in the witness chair when the day comes. There is nothing I can do to remove the stress from the situation entirely, but I can reduce it by making sure the witness is well prepared. LD: How did you first decide to become a lawyer? KD: My mother went to law school when I was six years old and then became an associate, and later a partner,

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at a law firm. Predictably, as a kid who never wanted to do the thing anyone expected of her, I vowed for years never to become a lawyer. Instead, I worked in television news, then as a staffer for Representative Nita Lowey, and then as press secretary to Hillary Clinton when she ran for Senate in 2000 and as her communications director in the Senate. I truly loved my job in the Senate. It required me to engage in constant advocacy with nearly every news outlet in America. I loved putting together our case and figuring out how to communicate it most persuasively. I also really loved working for the government, and the mission-driven nature of public service. That all caused me one day to have an epiphany – I should go to law school to be a federal prosecutor. If I didn’t like it, I figured I could return to politics having learned something about the law and about myself. Turns out, I love trying cases and standing up for the government in court. I found the law challenging and interesting and, along the way, met colleagues who made the work fun. Ultimately, I created a legal practice where I can still work on important social impact cases while wrestling with some of the most challenging legal issues of our day, and working with colleagues who have become close friends. I am grateful for that every day. LD: Do you have a “favorite” case from your career? KD: The Charlottesville case was the most transformative but since I already spoke about that case, I will talk about another favorite: working with my husband to secure budget autonomy for the District of Columbia in Council of the District of Columbia v. Gray. Budget autonomy is the ability for the District of Columbia to spend its own locally raised taxes and fees without congressional approval. It sounds very technical but was actually a long-standing civil rights issue in the District, which was perfectly capable of deciding how to spend its own money. In 2012, the D.C. Council passed the Budget Autonomy Act but the Attorney General at the time advised the Mayor, Vincent Gray, not to enforce the act. My husband, who at the time was an appellate specialist, teamed with me and we litigated this case pro bono for two years in district and federal courts. Most people thought it was a lost cause but in the end, we won, a victory that turned in part on key legislative history my husband found one night. For years, we talked about this case so much at home that I used to joke the biggest opponent of budget autonomy was not Mayor Gray; it was our daughter.

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Douglas G. Gibson

Neil Gorsuch

COVINGTON WASHINGTON, D.C.

U.S. SUPREME COURT WASHINGTON, D.C.

Maria Ginzburg

Ilene Knable Gotts

SELENDY GAY ELSBERG NEW YORK

WACHTELL NEW YORK

Robert J. Giuffra Jr.

Elizabeth Graham

SULLIVAN & CROMWELL NEW YORK

GRANT & EISENHOFER WILMINGTON

John Gleeson

Nicholas Gravante

DEBEVOISE NEW YORK

CADWALADER NEW YORK

Asheesh Goel

Salvatore Graziano

KIRKLAND CHICAGO

BERNSTEIN LITOWITZ NEW YORK

Sandra C. Goldstein

Scott J. Greenberg

KIRKLAND NEW YORK

GIBSON DUNN NEW YORK

Thomas Goldstein

Mark I. Greene

GOLDSTEIN & RUSSELL BETHESDA, MD.

CRAVATH NEW YORK

Elaine Golin

Ernest Lamont Greer

WACHTELL NEW YORK

GREENBERG TRAURIG ATLANTA

Andrew G. Gordon

Udi Grofman

PAUL WEISS NEW YORK

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Avi Josefson BERNSTEIN LITOWITZ (CHICAGO)

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AVI JOSEFSON

BY ALISON PREECE

AVI JOSEFSON HAS A UNIQUE PRACTICE IN

from their investment activity. Those institutions range from Taft-Hartley funds for different trades, like plumbers, carpenters, electrical workers, to pension funds of all asset sizes and members, including teachers, police officers, firefighters, state and municipal employees and some very large U.S. and European pension funds, as well as private investment funds.

Josefson brings a perspective formed by his experience litigating securities claims to his leadership role in the ﬁrm’s case development and client advisory group. He started as an associate at BLB&G just before a lot of the large accounting frauds broke in 2000 and 2001, including Enron and WorldCom and the blow up of Arthur Andersen.

What we’re charged to do through those retentions is to scrutinize their investment portfolios and monitor for potential claims through which the pension funds can take action to protect the investments of their pension holders. We let them know proactively when they’ve incurred a loss that may be the result of corporate misconduct, securities fraud or breaches of duty.

“I joined the ﬁrm and immediately saw that a lot of our cases become front-page news,” he says. He cut his teeth as a young securities lawyer, ﬁrst working on those accounting frauds and later prosecuting cases arising from the subprime mortgage crisis and the fraudulent sale of mortgage-backed securities.

Our group is constantly analyzing market movements and new developments within companies and across industries. If we identify a situation where a company appears to have been engaged in misconduct, we’re investigating those claims, developing potential causes of action, and checking which of our clients have invested in that company during the period of potential misconduct.

the securities space: He and his team at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann (BLB&G) monitor all potential claims for their vast and varied client base of institutional investors, and advise on whether to pursue an action. They sift through the noise and decide which cases have legs.

In his current role, he’s touching all the cases that the firm chooses to prosecute. He’s in regular contact with the firm’s large client base, evaluating cases based on legal merit as well as what types of issues are important to the funds and their boards. In addition to securities lawyers like himself, Josefson’s group is made up of financial analysts and investigators. They use proprietary tools “to quickly and consistently review the trading of institutions with tens of billions of dollars of investment data,” says Josefson, “to quickly identify not just the relevant securities, but the trading patterns across multiple accounts.” The group monitors many of the portfolios for the largest institutions in the U.S. and throughout Europe, including public entities and pension funds. Josefson and his team recently identified claims against Allianz Global Investors that were both meritorious and important for their clients, and pursued a set of cases that many other law firms had passed over. The result: nearly $2B in recoveries. Lawdragon: You’re a leader of your firm’s case development and client advisory group. Can you walk us through what that entails? Avi Josefson: We have over 300 institutional investors, who have retained the firm to advise them on an ongoing basis about potential claims that arise

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We identify whether they have a real financial interest and the potential size of their claim. Then we advise on their litigation options, which can include being involved in a class action, a direct individual action, or a governance claim such as a claim for a breach of duty. Our clients typically get involved if they’re going to have a leadership role in the case, as lead plaintiff or co-lead plaintiff. So we advise on the merits of the case, whether it will benefit from their leadership and whether their institution would benefit from taking an active role in it. LD: It sounds like a fun role, seeing many potential cases and deciding which have merit. AJ: Exactly. Having started my practice at the firm litigating, I’d work on three or four cases and live with those cases for several years. Here, I delve into a half dozen different cases each week, often involving different companies and types of misconduct. In some of them, it’s apparent immediately if it’s a potential case or not. Others we might investigate and look at for weeks or longer.Our clients rely on us to review all the new cases that are filed. There’s a lot of filtering that goes on to identify the high quality, meritorious cases that would be of interest to our clients. LD: What does your team look like?

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500 AJ: The senior partners on the team with me are Jerry Silk and Hannah Ross. I’ve been working with both of them for over 20 years now, and we are supported by a team of attorneys focused on this. We also have financial analysts who analyze the clients’ trading, which can be quite complex. We also have analysts who work with our attorneys in scrutinizing the markets and identifying relevant news. I’m constantly getting updates from them about what they’re seeing in the markets, both macro and very specific, regarding the companies our clients are invested in that we are investigating. We also have a team of in-house investigators who do two things. One is assisting us when we’re initially looking at these cases, to help determine whether they are potentially meritorious. Then when we have a case that we’re litigating, the investigators work with litigation teams to develop facts to buttress our pleadings. We frequently work with outside experts as well. That could be accounting experts when we have a forensic accounting issue, or industry area experts when we’re investigating a company that might be involved in some particular area that we want to better understand, like oil or commodities or a specific technology issue. It’s great to be able to work day-to-day with analysts, investigators and our financial team. It’s a unique law practice, being able to work with so many great, smart, business professionals in addition to a stellar legal team. LD: And you must be working closely with the clients, too. AJ: Yes, that is the best part. We’re in frequent contact, and we have a wide range of clients. Many of them are public employees, school teachers and police officers or union workers. They’re so committed to these assets they’re managing for their members; it’s not academic for them. So when they hear about wrongdoing that impacts their pension plans, their beneficiaries, it’s meaningful to them. At the same time, we work with elected officials, such as state attorneys general or treasurers who have responsibility for state pension systems, as well as large, private institutions, including many outside the U.S. It’s interesting and challenging, having that broad of a client base. LD: Are certain types of cases of interest to some clients and not others? AJ: Yes, especially since we have such a varied client base. Certain clients, when they’re evaluating a potential claim, simply want to understand if they have

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a significant financial loss and whether the claims are meritorious and there’s a chance of recovering those losses. Others are driven by concerns for governance and other ESG issues. There was a wave of cases in the last few years since the #MeToo movement gained traction, for instance, where public companies were exposed for having policies that fostered harassment or for covering up mistreatment of certain employees, particularly women. Certain clients started saying, yes, we want to use our position as shareholders to address that misconduct. LD: Are there other trends you’re seeing these days? AJ: ESG has been overlapping with the SPAC [Special Purpose Acquisition Company] trend, which we’ve seen a lot in the last year and a half. SPACs were very popular vehicles for a time, and we are now seeing many instances of apparent fraud in companies that went public through a SPAC transaction. Perhaps the greatest confluence between SPACs and ESG has been in some of the environmental startups, especially electric vehicles. Many EV companies went public in the last couple of years through SPACs. And several of those EV companies subsequently became subsequently embroiled in securities litigation, for overpromising and under-delivering to their shareholders. There’s an interesting inflection point, where you have institutional investors, many of which are charged with ESG mandates, looking for opportunities to satisfy their ESG investment obligations. So to the extent that institutional money is chasing ESG compliant dollars, there’s certainly a market for people who can get a public company out there that is environmentally conscious. And while there certainly is demand for electric vehicles, when you look at the recent performance of some of those public companies, it’s potentially a warning sign to investors to be somewhat cautious with the ESG mandates, especially with some of these new companies that have gone public through SPACs LD: What else are you seeing in the market? AJ: We had a period with a long bull market, where stocks were going up, sometimes irrespective of negative news the companies might put out. What we’re seeing now, with a lot more volatility, is that when companies do release negative news, the market might be more realistic and reactionary to the news being announced. The market volatility keeps our group busy, because of course that creates more potential investment losses that our clients need

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us to look at, to analyze and identify situations that may be the result of misconduct, as opposed to just market forces. LD: So, once you’ve done the initial evaluation of the case, do you pass it off to your partners? AJ: It depends. We typically stay on in a client advisory role, but our group can’t litigate every case we analyze for our clients, so a litigation team usually steps in. But there are exceptions. Recently, Hannah and I were involved in starting a group of cases involving Allianz, which are just now wrapping up. Allianz had a number of investment funds that blew up in the first quarter of the pandemic. Those were very interesting, complicated cases. We ended up filing seven lawsuits, but represented several dozen other investors. The total recoveries, all in direct actions or negotiated settlements, were close to $2B. LD: And that was a case you identified early on? AJ: Yes, we were the first firm to develop and file those cases. We filed the first case for the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System. Some other law firms tried to file as a class action, which we believed from the outset wouldn’t work. That class action was ultimately voluntarily dropped. What we learned as we pursued the Allianz cases was that other law firms in our bar had looked at these claims and advised clients not to pursue them, because they didn’t think they were going to pan out and be meritorious. Some of the losses were at the level where, early in the case, it wasn’t clear if that would be effective or efficient for them to begin litigating. But the losses were very material to certain of our clients, which included nonprofit foundations and small college endowments. We were really motivated to find a way to help them recover what we could, and were ultimately able to get them the same pro rata recovery as larger institutions, by helping to coordinate a large group of investors and really buttress their efforts. It was very gratifying and meaningful to been able to secure those recoveries for our clients. LD: How did you move into this type of role? AJ: I was a fourth or fifth year associate when I was asked to join this group. At first I resisted it, because I was getting to the point of having more of a hands-on, leadership role in my cases, and I was worried that focusing instead on analyzing new cases would take me away from that. But that was completely wrong. I got plenty of litigation experience, depositions and arguments, and it’s an excellent education in securi-

ties litigation. We see so many cases and analyze so many different situations, that it really forces you to be smart about the different types of cases, identifying all the risks at the outset and carefully assessing the likelihood of success. LD: What would you say is uniquely challenging about this role? AJ: The challenging aspects are also what makes it all so interesting. You’re always juggling multiple cases at once. When there is breaking news about a major company and the stock goes down, that abruptly changes your to-do list for the day. The other real challenge is, because the federal securities laws don’t permit discovery at the outset of these cases, you’re really working to complete a jigsaw puzzle without all the pieces, or even knowing how many pieces there are. The pleading standards in these cases are quite high. So without a lot of information, you’re trying to determine whether there was fraud, whether there was intentional misrepresentations and misconduct, and also trying to understand, what’s a likely path for discovery? Do we think we’re going to be able to find more sources of information in these cases? LD: Did you ever imagine you’d have this kind of practice when you were back in law school? AJ: I can’t say that I did, but I did know back then that I wanted to do something meaningful with my law degree. I had a great time at Northwestern. It was a great school, very collegial. They have a robust clinic practice, and I really dove into that. It was a juvenile delinquency and juvenile rights clinic, and I got to have a lot of time in court and working directly with kids in Chicago who had been impacted with gang violence and drugs, exposed to a lot of horrific experiences and put into difficult situations. That was completely foreign to me, from my upbringing. It was a formative experience, being able to work on some of those cases. It was also relatively soon after Columbine. Schools, including Chicago Public Schools, were imposing zero tolerance policies. We did a lot of work with kids, not only on criminal matters and delinquency matters, but fighting to keep them in schools and give them some basic representation when they made mistakes that were threatening to lead to expulsion. That early experience cemented in me the notion that lawyers have the ability to really make a difference in people’s lives.

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Tor Gronborg

Geoffrey Harrison

ROBBINS GELLER SAN DIEGO

SUSMAN GODFREY HOUSTON

Nicholas P. Groombridge

Stephen S. Hasegawa

PAUL WEISS NEW YORK

PHILLIPS & COHEN SAN FRANCISCO

Benjamin Gruenstein

Sean Hecker

CRAVATH NEW YORK

KAPLAN HECKER & FINK NEW YORK

Vanita Gupta

Dara Hegar

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE WASHINGTON, D.C.

LANIER LAW FIRM HOUSTON

Melinda Haag

Damaris Hernández

PAUL WEISS SAN FRANCISCO

CRAVATH NEW YORK

Richard Hall

Eve Hill

CRAVATH NEW YORK

BROWN GOLDSTEIN LEVY BALTIMORE

Caitlin Halligan

Jennifer Hobbs

SELENDY GAY ELSBERG NEW YORK

SIMPSON THACHER NEW YORK

Claudia Hammerman

Tricia “CK” Hoffler

PAUL WEISS NEW YORK

THE CK HOFFLER LAW FIRM ATLANTA

Erica Harris

Ellen Holloman

SUSMAN GODFREY HOUSTON

CADWALADER NEW YORK

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Hillary Holmes

Phil Iovieno

GIBSON DUNN HOUSTON

CADWALADER NEW YORK

Michael Holmes

William A. Isaacson

VINSON & ELKINS DALLAS

PAUL WEISS WASHINGTON, D.C.

Patricia Brown Holmes

Shauna Itri

RILEY SAFER HOLMES & CANCILA CHICAGO

SEEGER WEISS PHILADELPHIA

Deneen Howell

Dani R. James

WILLIAMS & CONNOLLY WASHINGTON, D.C.

KRAMER LEVIN NEW YORK

Heidi Hubbard

Jaren Janghorbani

WILLIAMS & CONNOLLY WASHINGTON, D.C.

PAUL WEISS NEW YORK

Hamish Hume

Rachel Jensen

BOIES SCHILLER WASHINGTON, D.C.

ROBBINS GELLER SAN DIEGO

James Hurst

M. Janine Jjingo

KIRKLAND CHICAGO

SKADDEN NEW YORK

Melissa J. Hutson

Emily D. Johnson

KIRKLAND NEW YORK

WACHTELL NEW YORK

Sherrilyn Ifill

James W. Johnson

NAACP-LDF NEW YORK

LABATON SUCHAROW NEW YORK

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Hamish Hume BOIES SCHILLER (WASHINGTON, D.C.)

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HAMISH HUME A SETTLEMENT WAS RECENTLY APPROVED IN

the nearly decade-long antitrust case against Blue Cross Blue Shield over the rules governing their network of companies. At $2.7B, this is easily one of the largest antitrust settlements ever achieved without any government involvement. Blue Cross Blue Shield is a huge network of health insurance companies, servicing nearly a third of Americans. The settlement – although being appealed by a small number of claimants – is designed to increase market competition, ultimately bringing better prices to companies and individuals. Hamish Hume is one of the lead lawyers in the case and the one who originally looked at the structure of these networks and thought: Something isn’t right here. “It was fairly well-known what the Blues did and how they were structured,” says Hume, noting that the federal government had opened antitrust inquires in the past but never decided to bring an action. “No one thought it was worth challenging.” Enter: Hume. Tenacious and practical, he has a courteous countenance, typically eschewing the aggressive litigation style of some of his counterparts in favor of a steady, studious approach. Hume is a first generation American, with parents from South Africa and Zimbabwe, where he lived between the ages of seven and 10. His mother’s father was a lawyer in a small town in the eastern Cape. We spoke to Hume on the eve of a jury trial in federal court in D.C. That case is over the rights of private shareholders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have been under federal conservatorship since 2008. Under a re-negotiated deal several years later, the full net worth of the mortgage finance companies are being sent to the federal government – to the tune of over $380B – making it impossible for private shareholders to ever receive a dividend, no matter how profitable they are. Lawdragon: Congratulations on the historic Blue Cross Blue Shield settlement. What impact might this have on the healthcare industry? Hamish Hume: Thank you, although with the pending appeal, I’m not celebrating quite yet. But beyond the damages recovery, the structural relief can basically be broken down into three categories. All of which should lead to more competition amongst health insurance companies and thus lower prices for consumers.

PHOTO BY ELI MEIR KAPLAN

BY ALISON PREECE The first is the elimination of something that the Blue Cross entities called the National Best Efforts Requirement in their trademark license, which effectively prohibited serious competition between the more than 30 independent insurance companies that license the Blue Cross or Blue Shield trademarks. In the Blue system, each independent company licenses the Blue trademark for an exclusive service area. That’s one thing. But then this so-called National Best Efforts provision severely capped the amount of money the companies could make even when they used a different, completely independent trademark, disincentivizing investment and competition outside of their exclusive territory. Now, they’re free to develop and use an independent trademark. The second impacts large companies and their employees. Almost all large companies self-insure for health insurance, but still buy services from health insurance companies through Administrative Services Only contracts, ASOs. Previously, only one Blue entity would be allowed to bid for an ASO contract for these large companies, with limited exceptions. Under the settlement, the largest of those companies now have a right to select at least one other bid. This will bring competition and the promise of better health care to some 30 million employees. The third way the settlement will enhance competition is through its regulation of what are called most favored nation clauses. Previously, the Blue entities would have such a large share in a particular market, they could demand the best prices from large hospital systems. This made it very difficult for competing health insurance companies to enter the market. Now, the Blue entities are limited in this ability anywhere they have a market share over 40 percent. LD: It’s incredible you brought this massive antitrust case, with such stunning results, without any government involvement. That’s so rare in antitrust. What were some of the hurdles there? HH: It was challenging in several ways. We litigated for close to a decade, and still there was no government investigation, which indicates how uncertain the application of antitrust law to this kind of regime was. That uncertainty in the law was really the biggest challenge. Then, if the government is involved in an antitrust case, the defendants are more likely to want a settlement. No company wants the government prosecuting it for a serious violation. We also didn’t have access to the government’s significant resources. The private resources put into this

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500 case are staggering. The total out-of-pocket expenses for all the law firms involved was approximately $40M over eight or nine years. Not to mention approximately two hundred million dollars in lawyer time. The other big hurdle was the filed-rate doctrine. The government has all sorts of fines and penalties it can impose if it wins, whereas we must prove damages. Defendants would argue the filed-rate doctrine says that if a regulator has approved the rate an insurance company is going to charge, no court should second guess that and impose a different rate. There is precedent for this thinking, but we argued it has been applied too broadly, including in industries where the regulator barely scrutinizes the rates and doesn’t even look at antitrust violations. There are different regimes in many states, and health insurance companies, including the Blues, would often get automatic approval for their rates. An antitrust litigator has a challenge to then say – those rates are too high, and if there had been competition, they would’ve been lower. We had multiple rounds of briefing and hearings to deal with the filed-rate doctrine. We found some ways around parts of it, to at least give us a viable damage claim. It got very complex. It was part of what we settled in the end. LD: What do you anticipate happening with the appeal? HH: We’re disappointed with the appeal. The overwhelming majority of claimants want this settlement to happen. There are total claims of 8.2 million, businesses and individuals, and just three objector groups have filed appeals so far. We’re not concerned about their appeals being successful because the settlement was more than reasonable. The judge was exceptionally thorough in going through everything. We think his decision will be affirmed, but it will cause some delay, both with the distribution of the funds to class members and the implementation of at least some of the injunctive relief, which delays the benefits of competition. We are looking at ways to help expedite it. LD: You worked with some Hausfeld attorneys on this case. How was that? HH: They were great. Truly exceptionally good at what they do. They’re incredibly experienced in class action litigation. We worked very collaboratively and cooperatively, almost like one firm. I was very impressed with their tenacity and persistence, throughout discovery and then managing the case for a very long time. Megan Jones and Swathi Bojedla were both incredible, running the case

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day-to-day, staying on top of dozens of lawyers and firms and the defendants, who put up all sorts of roadblocks. Michael Hausfeld is a legendary guy who’s had enormous success. For somebody so successful, he’s wonderfully understated and mild mannered. It was a privilege getting to know him and working closely with him. He’s got a backbone of steel, but he’s got the velvet glove on top of the iron fist. He’s very understated, very pleasant to be around, and very savvy. Hausfeld was with us on this case from the very beginning, as was Cy Smith of Zuckerman Spaeder, also amazingly talented and great to work with. They all saw the potential here, in a case that wasn’t that obvious. LD: What other cases are currently on your desk? HH: Front and center for me right now is another class action on behalf of all the shareholders in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They have been in government conservatorships since September 6, 2008. But they’ve now effectively been nationalized, and that’s what the lawsuit is over. The conservator is the Federal Housing Finance Administration, which made a deal with the Treasury to provide financing. In the original deal, the Treasury became a shareholder and got senior preferred stock with a 10 percent dividend. But in 2012, when the housing market was recovering and Fannie and Freddie were turning a profit again, the FHFA and the Treasury changed the deal, so that Treasury gets 100 percent of the net worth of Fannie and Freddie every quarter. So the government has received over $384B, an amount that goes up each quarter, after investing less than half that amount. Meanwhile, private preferred shareholders invested over $33B and received only $5B in dividends, and now have no chance to receive more. Moreover, roughly $20B of that investment was made during the crisis years of 2007 and 2008 at the behest of regulators who wanted Fannie and Freddie to raise more money. The government has made a massive profit, and the private shareholders have suffered a huge loss. I’m also focused on an appeal from a case we won last year, challenging a gambling compact between the Seminole Tribe in Florida and Governor DeSantis. They made a deal, approved by the Department of the Interior under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA), allowing online sports gambling throughout Florida. With an app on your phone, you could place a sports bet with the Seminole tribe from anywhere in Florida. The theory is, that bet takes place on the tribe’s land because that’s where the server is.

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We represent parimutuel gaming entities in Florida who say that’s not legal because a bet takes place both where it is placed and where it’s received, and under IGRA the Department of the Interior can only approve gambling that takes place on tribal lands. The district court agreed and invalidated the deal, and it’s now on appeal in the D.C. circuit. I’m handling another appeal for a company that specializes in creating offset transactions for large defense contractor deals with foreign countries. In our case, South Korea bought several billion dollars’ worth of F35 jets from Lockheed Martin through a U.S. government program. The offset was a military satellite provided directly from Lockheed to South Korea. Our client devised the offset transaction and the ﬁnancing mechanism. At the last minute, Lockheed, South Korea and Airbus cut our client out of the deal. We brought a lawsuit for tortious interference with our contracts, and invoked the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The district court dismissed the case, holding we did not meet the FSIA commercial activity exceptions. I just argued the appeal in the Fourth Circuit. I think we should win. One thing all those cases have in common – the Fannie/ Freddie case, the gambling case, and the South Korean case – is they involve not just me but my partner Sam Kaplan, who’s brilliant and without whom I could not be doing any of this, or at least not nearly as well. I also have several cases for United Healthcare, including several large antitrust cases where they are a plaintiff, and some defensive cases against healthcare providers that have been purchased by private equity funds who then jack up prices. LD: You’re busy! What do you like about practicing at Boies Schiller? HH: The diversity of experience and the freedom to do so many different things. I represent a wide variety of clients, both plaintiff and defense, sometimes individuals or small business, sometimes millions of individuals in class actions, sometimes the largest companies and banks in the country. And it’s a wide variety of litigation, all sorts of industries and types of problems. I’m legally omnivorous – interested in everything from tax law to constitutional law to antitrust and many things in between, and BSF gives me the variety that I love. LD: What ﬁrst brought you to the law? HH: I took myself too seriously out of college. I either wanted to be a political philosopher or an investment banker on Wall Street. Law is somewhere in the midpoint.

My parents came to the country with no money, and it was important to me to achieve certain financial goals, while also doing something interesting that spoke to me. LD: How else has your family background influenced you as a lawyer? HH: In subtle ways. My father was an anti-apartheid activist as a student in Cape Town, so I grew up idolizing him and thinking of myself as a liberal. Then for various reasons, I became more conservative – I was a partner at one of the most Republican firms in the country, Cooper & Kirk, a small firm where I worked with Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton. Now I’m moving more to the center. The politics of it all is complex. But I love the law for how it can cut across politics. I asked Chuck Cooper to join us in our Blue Cross case, and he and David Boies – who opposed each other in the highly charged Proposition 8 same-sex marriage case – have become fast friends. They still differ dramatically in their politics, but they share certain values of integrity and respect for the law. That inspires me. The rule of law is fundamentally about treating people equally, and addressing each particular case based on neutral principles and rules applied to the facts, not based on some sweeping ideology or the hot emotions of the moment. My grandfather, who was no radical or activist, was mostly taciturn and cerebral, told me and my brother during a visit to his small town in South Africa in the 1980s, that “In this country, the law treats people differently based on what race they are, and that’s very bad.” It was an understatement, but he felt it important to say to us, to make sure we knew he felt that way, even though he was part of that system. We are all part of a system, and we all have a duty to reform and improve, even if we sometimes disagree about what that means. LD: What advice do you have for young lawyers? HH: I used to ask myself, is my job making me good at something I want to be good at? Don’t get trapped into short-term thinking. Think about whether people 10 years senior to you are doing things you’d like to be doing. Any profession will have things you don’t love doing. But there are other things, like learning how to think through a complex problem and make it simple, or how to take a morass of facts and tell a clear narrative. How to be persuasive. How to discipline your emotions. As David Boies famously says, how to disagree without being disagreeable. Talking on your feet, being persuasive as an oral advocate, even to people inclined to disagree with you. Those are things this profession hopefully makes you better at.

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Jeh Charles Johnson

Roberta A. Kaplan

PAUL WEISS NEW YORK

KAPLAN HECKER & FINK NEW YORK

Michele D. Johnson

Alec Karakatsanis

LATHAM COSTA MESA, CALIF.

CIVIL RIGHTS CORP WASHINGTON, D.C.

Randy Johnston

Brad Karp

JOHNSTON TOBEY BARUCH DALLAS

PAUL WEISS NEW YORK

Megan E. Jones

David C. Karp

HAUSFELD SAN FRANCISCO

WACHTELL NEW YORK

Phyllis A. Jones

Andrew A. Kassof

COVINGTON WASHINGTON, D.C.

KIRKLAND NEW YORK

Roscoe Jones Jr.

Jacquelyn M. Kasulis

GIBSON DUNN WASHINGTON, D.C.

KIRKLAND NEW YORK

Avi Josefson

Neal Katyal

BERNSTEIN LITOWITZ CHICAGO

HOGAN LOVELLS WASHINGTON, D.C.

Elena Kagan

David A. Katz

U.S. SUPREME COURT WASHINGTON, D.C.

WACHTELL NEW YORK

Michael Kaplan

Debra S. Katz

DAVIS POLK NEW YORK

KATZ MARSHALL & BANKS WASHINGTON, D.C.

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Brett Kavanaugh

Daniel S. Kirschner

U.S. SUPREME COURT WASHINGTON, D.C.

CORBOY & DEMETRIO CHICAGO

Ashley Keller

David Kistenbroker

KELLER POSTMAN CHICAGO

DECHERT CHICAGO

Christopher Keller

Ashley McKeand Kleber

LABATON SUCHAROW NEW YORK

GIBBS & BRUNS HOUSTON

Jennifer L. Keller

Adam Klein

KELLER ANDERLE IRVINE, CALIF.

OUTTEN & GOLDEN NEW YORK

David N. Kelley

Gayle R. Klein

DECHERT NEW YORK

SCHULTE ROTH NEW YORK

Garland A. Kelley

Jamie Kocis

GLASER WEIL LOS ANGELES

KRAMER LEVIN NEW YORK

Erika A. Kelton

Linda Kornfeld

PHILLIPS & COHEN WASHINGTON, D.C.

BLANK ROME LOS ANGELES

Karen M. Kennard

Michael Kosnitzky

GREENBERG TRAURIG AUSTIN

PILLSBURY MIAMI

Rakesh Kilaru

Kalpana Kotagal

WILKINSON STEKLOFF WASHINGTON, D.C.

COHEN MILSTEIN WASHINGTON, D.C.

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Bill Reid REID COLLINS (AUSTIN, TEXAS)

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BILL REID

BY KATRINA DEWEY

ON THE FIRM’S EPIC $300M RENREN WIN IN JUNE, JUDGE ANDREW BORROK OF NEW

York Supreme Court approved the largest directpay derivative settlement in U.S. history – $300M by Renren, the onetime aspiring Facebook of China. Though Alphabet/Google’s #MeToo $310M price tag in 2020 was technically larger, it was structured as a non-cash fund to remedy workplace discrimination over 10 years – no cash was paid to shareholders. The Renren deal could also rise thanks to a “true up” provision. While size matters, Renren was off the charts in degree of difficulty. It is the only recent derivative case brought under foreign law that has succeeded in holding international companies to account in U.S. courts. Plaintiff counsel filed a flurry of such claims against global behemoths over the last few years, hoping to loosen the Supreme Court’s noose around cross-border securities litigation in Morrison v. National Australia Bank Ltd. And while several such claims are pending, most have failed to achieve jurisdiction. Winning jurisdiction is just one of three formidable mountains scaled by plaintiff counsel at Reid Collins in their successful attack on the looting of Renren by its directors, who took IPO money intended to build up a social media behemoth and invested it in the then-upstart Social Finance, now SoFi, among dozens of other ventures. The firm also won derivative standing under Cayman law in New York, one of only two such claims to ever do so. Completing the Three Summits, firm founder Bill Reid surprised even himself winning a $560M pre-judgment attachment on Renren’s assets, which were being dissipated at a rapid clip. “Imagine you’re sitting in a valley in the Himalayas, and you’re like, ‘Whoa, maybe we could climb that mountain over there.’ And that mountain’s Everest,” which is how Reid viewed finding a court that would accept jurisdiction in the case. “And if we did that, we looked out and there was K2, an even harder mountain to climb. That would mean we could establish derivative standing.” Many have died on Mt. Everest and K2. Perhaps fittingly, the world’s third-highest mountain, Kangchenjunga, is off limits to climbers from the Indian side.

PHOTO BY LAURA CROSTA

“And that gives you some sense of the odds of us winning an attachment,” says Reid. And yet, Reid and his team of lawyers – known for their intrepid nature, determination and technical prowess – completed all three, defying every odd to hold accountable a Chinese company based in the Cayman Islands in New York State Court. The Renren case is more than a head scratcher, it is, instead, a case study in what a talented team can do when they come together determined to right a wrong, confirming one of Reid’s guiding principles “that equities truly matter.” And make no mistake, Renren was wrong. Very, very wrong. Perhaps it didn’t start out that way, back in 2006, when Joe Chen, a Chinese-born, American-educated entrepreneur, formed Oak Pacific Investment (OPI) to purchase a social networking site known in Mandarin as Xiaonei, or “on campus.” Primarily used by college students, it certainly held the potential to become the Facebook of China. Chen was joined in his investment by David Chao and, in 2008, by SoftBank, which invested $100M. Facebook itself entered China in 2009, but was blocked by authorities later that year. The opportunity for Xiaonei was spectacular. Chen rebranded it as Renren, meaning “everyone” in Mandarin. He cloned the look and feel of Facebook to great result: In Dec. 2008, the site had 33M visitors, by March 2011, traffic had soared to 100M. The growth caught the eye of many China investors, including Alex Shoghi, who started out in Asian equity sales at Lehman Brothers in Hong Kong in 2004. He joined Oasis Capital Management there in 2005. In April 2011, Renren filed to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange as American Depository Shares. The IPO was a huge success, raising $777M, giving Renren a market capitalization exceeding $8B. Fittingly, Chen and Chao traveled to New York to indulge in the tradition of ringing the bell to open trading on May 4, 2011. That would prove the last Renren had to celebrate, at least as a social media company. It plummeted far and fast, dropping to 45M users on an operating loss of nearly $100M by the end of 2013.

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THE RENREN CASE IS A CASE STUDY IN WHAT A TALENTED TEAM CAN DO WHEN THEY COME TOGETHER DETERMINED TO RIGHT A WRONG, CONFIRMING ONE OF REID’S GUIDING PRINCIPLES “THAT EQUITIES TRULY MATTER.” And yet, they were sitting on so much cash. Which, the lawsuit claimed, Renren diverted to investments in other companies on a grand scale starting in 2011 – while starving the platform that helped them raise the money. Chen himself led the way, personally investing $4M in SoFi in 2011. In 2012, Renren joined its chairman, investing $240M in the fast-growing SoFi over the years. In total, Renren made more than $244.7M in long-term investments in 2014 and an additional $538.1M in long-term investments in 2015, Judge Borrok found. That Renren had morphed into an investment fund was a problem in many ways, not least of which was it should have been subject to investment oversight by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Shoghi moved back to the U.S., to Austin, with Oasis in 2012. He was not alone by 2015 keeping a sharp eye on Chinese fraud and overvalued companies in which insiders were trying to take the value of the company for less than it was worth. Renren did not disappoint. Led by Chen, Renren ﬂoated a deal to take the company private at a 20 percent premium that year. Cue howling. The deal was killed, at least for the moment. By 2017, Chen & Co. were back at it, with a new and quite brazen scheme to take private the company’s successful investment business – hiving off the valuable and still private SoFi investment, among others – and divesting itself of the old social media asset, into which it would force its minority shareholders. Speciﬁcally, it would play out, the company was internally assessing the value of its holdings at $1.3B and used a Duff & Phelps “valuation” to pass off to minority investors that the assets were worth just $500M. Among those minority investors was Shoghi, who invested in Renren after the deal was announced in April 2018 and before it closed in June, becoming the largest minority shareholder; Shoghi eventually owned 40 percent of the minority shares. “I’m looking at a deal that stinks,” Shoghi told Reid. Think dirty deal, done dirt cheap.

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The two had met years before fundraising for their children’s school. While they had not yet brought a case together, they formed a friendship over a love of risk and reward. Reid had started his own firm in Austin in 2009 and experienced quick success. He was sponsoring an event at Scottsdale National Golf Club in April 2018. And, though Shoghi didn’t golf, had come over for the show. Shoghi was talking to the right lawyer. And, it turns out, in a locale that would prove pivotal to the case’s remarkable outcome. But there was a hitch (isn’t there always?). U.S. investors have poured more than $100B into Chinese companies going public in the U.S., more than 70 percent of which are Cayman based. Under the internal affairs choice of law doctrine, all claims against those companies must be pursued under the law of the country of incorporation – meaning Cayman law governs any claims against the vast majority of those companies. And, as the Reid team was about to learn, the odds of successfully pursuing a Cayman derivative claim in a U.S. court were highly unfavorable. Of all known claims, only one other investor had ever succeeded in establishing derivative standing under Cayman law in a U.S. courtroom. Reid turned to his partner Nate Palmer, an expert at ferreting through the most difficult problems and finding a path. “Nate has surgeon-like technical skills. He drills down very deep on the facts and the law and finely categorizes each piece – an archeologist exploring an ancient ruin, then he reassembles them with precision in a way that very few lawyers could ever rival – he is truly masterful at putting together facts and law in a complex case,” says Reid. A college baseball pitcher, neither the looming deadline of the deal closing nor the impossible setup phased Palmer. He focused first on finding jurisdiction. Morrison circumscribed general jurisdiction to

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either a company’s principal place of business or its site of incorporation. China, the former, was a nonstarter. Cayman Islands – a locale of great expertise for the Reid Collins ﬁrm – did not quite ﬁt.

cial wires and legal documents circled through Times Square and Hudson Yards like LaGuardia on Friday night – paper airplanes seeking somewhere to land. Preferably near Wall Street.

For any hope, Palmer had to ﬁnd speciﬁc jurisdiction, most likely in the U.S. “You’re looking at what is the connection between the claims you’re asserting and the conduct that gives rise to them,” he says. “There has to be a connection between the two in that jurisdiction.”

The “evil genius” behind the Renren steal was that Chen, Chao and Softbank would not have to pay anything out of their own pockets to create the new subsidiary. To accomplish this, they instead declared a cash dividend that qualiﬁed investors could waive and take shares in the new subsidiary. If an investor failed to qualify or did not want to move into the spinoff with the guys who were ripping them off, he would be stuck taking the dividend and remaining in the shell of the old social media company whose trafﬁc had tanked to such an extent that used-car sales were among its strongest prospects.

He lasered on Renren’s security filings, especially the proposed take-private divestiture. California briefly glimmered when he uncovered Chen’s California driver’s license. In addition, millions in Renren assets were transferred to the San Francisco-based SoFi. But Palmer knew that individual connections would not suffice to get the company there jurisdictionally. “You have to have both, the individuals and the company.” But wait, was that a flinch he saw at the plate from New York? Just being traded on a New York exchange would also not cut it. Intrigued, he “started digging around” on New York activity. And came across a 1988 case, Kreutter v. McFadden Oil, that allowed a cross-pollination between corporate contacts and individual contacts for jurisdictional purposes. “So if you’re the CEO of the company and you’re directing your company to do actions in New York, those can be imputed to the individual,” Palmer says. That’s an outlier to most states, which provide a fiduciary shield: If your contact with a jurisdiction is in your capacity as a corporate representative, that doesn’t establish individual contact for jurisdiction. New York rejected the fiduciary shield doctrine in Kreutter. “That was the piece of the puzzle that helped me bring it all together as far as tying the individuals in the company to a jurisdiction where preparatory work and key components of the transaction went through New York,” Palmer says. As for the company itself, well, you know that saying ‘the devil is in the details’? After Renren, companies should check their hubris when hiring lawyers, financiers and others assuming they can retain the world’s best talent and profit from the world’s leading financial market while escaping accountability when bad actors run amok. The stinky Renren steal was structured by New York lawyers and New York bankers who required notices and transfers galore to their Big Apple offices. Finan-

The Reid Collins team built their plea for a New York court to find jurisdiction around that unfair “Hobson’s choice” paired with a due process argument that some court somewhere needed to stop the looting. Partner Michael Yoder worked with Palmer to shape their theories in what became a series of increasingly incriminating complaints. “I went back through history to build out the jurisdictional argument by tracing the cash. And the cash they raised in New York in 2011 all the way through to the ultimate investments they made with it and then through the divestiture created our argument,” he says. Palmer and Yoder created the initial complaint almost exclusively through publicly available information. From the specter of thousands of legal and financial documents flying about Manhattan, they focused on four areas of extensive involvement between Renren’s leaders and its transactions in New York: 1) the IPO; 2) the separation of the investment company and the social media assets; 3) the private placement of the investment assets into the spun-off entity; and 4) the cash dividend payment. “All these little pieces of the puzzle – how people elected their shares by sending a communication to New York; if you were going to get cash, the wires had to go to New York banks and come out of New York banks,” says Palmer. Their jurisdictional dig exhumed the contracts from Renren’s 2011 IPO, when it listed on the NYSE with American depository shares. And, they learned, that with an ADS, the individual investor doesn’t really own a share in the company. Instead, he owns an ADS that says, “‘I really own 15 shares of actual Renren shares but I don’t hold the shares in my own name,’”

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William M. Lafferty

LATHAM CHICAGO

MORRIS NICHOLS WILMINGTON

Meredith Kotler

David K. Lam

FRESHFIELDS BRUCKHAUS NEW YORK

WACHTELL NEW YORK

Daniel Kramer

Jeffrey A. Lamken

PAUL WEISS NEW YORK

MOLOLAMKEN WASHINGTON, D.C.

Josh Krevitt

Brent Landau

GIBSON DUNN NEW YORK

HAUSFELD PHILADELPHIA

Leslie Kroeger

Mark Lanier

COHEN MILSTEIN PALM BEACH GARDENS, FLA.

LANIER LAW FIRM HOUSTON

Richard S. Krumholz

Daryl L. Lansdale

NORTON ROSE FULBRIGHT DALLAS

NORTON ROSE FULBRIGHT SAN ANTONIO

Robert K. Kry

Lisa Laukitis

MOLOLAMKEN WASHINGTON, D.C.

SKADDEN NEW YORK

Brian LaCien

Wendi Lazar

SMITH LACIEN CHICAGO

OUTTEN & GOLDEN NEW YORK

Walter J. Lack

Mark Lebovitch

ENGSTROM LIPSCOMB & LACK LOS ANGELES

BERNSTEIN LITOWITZ NEW YORK

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Derek W. Loeser

KIRKLAND NEW YORK

KELLER ROHRBACK SEATTLE

Travis Lenkner

Kathy Love

ATTORNEY AT LAW CHICAGO

MCGINN MONTOYA ALBUQUERQUE

Karen M. Lent

Jonathan Lowy

SKADDEN NEW YORK

BRADY CENTER WASHINGTON, D.C.

Theodore Leopold

Paola Lozano

COHEN MILSTEIN PALM BEACH GARDENS, FLA.

SKADDEN NEW YORK

Marni Lerner

Kenneth Lumb

SIMPSON THACHER NEW YORK

CORBOY & DEMETRIO CHICAGO

Jeremy A. Lieberman

Loretta E. Lynch

POMERANTZ NEW YORK

PAUL WEISS NEW YORK

Chris Lind

Eric D. Madden

BARTLIT BECK CHICAGO

REID COLLINS DALLAS

David Lira

Neal Manne

ENGSTROM LIPSCOMB & LACK LOS ANGELES

SUSMAN GODFREY HOUSTON

Zoe Littlepage

Jeffrey D. Marell

LITTLEPAGE BOOTH/ATHEA HOUSTON

PAUL WEISS NEW YORK

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AFTER RENREN, COMPANIES SHOULD CHECK THEIR HUBRIS WHEN HIRING LAWYERS, FINANCIERS AND OTHERS ASSUMING THEY CAN RETAIN THE WORLD’S BEST TALENT AND PROFIT FROM THE WORLD’S LEADING FINANCIAL MARKET WHILE ESCAPING ACCOUNTABILITY WHEN BAD ACTORS RUN AMOK. Palmer explains. To issue the ADSs, Renren entered into an agreement with a New York bank – Citibank – to hold the shares in trust. All the dividends and related transactions related to the IPO flowed through the deposit agreement – in which, by the way, Renren agreed to submit to jurisdiction in New York. In the divestiture and spin-off transaction, whatever an investor chose – shares in the spun-off company or to cash out – she had to send her election to Skadden’s Manhattan office. The cash dividends had to be wired from a New York bank. The loan Renren needed to cash out the minority shareholders came in the form of a loan from California-based SoftBank – which wired the funds to Citibank in New York. Citibank used those funds to pay the special dividend out of its New York bank accounts. Even with all that, Reid says, “Were we 100 percent confident this would give us jurisdiction in New York? No. Our jurisdictional argument was more death by a thousand cuts. But we felt pretty strong there was no other place this transaction occurred.” The “if not here, then where” due process element of the argument spoke to Borrok. In his May 2020 ruling, Borrok found long-arm jurisdiction over the company “comported” with due process. “Plaintiffs have alleged that Renren raised $777 million through its IPO from New York’s capital markets, used the proceeds from the IPO to make several investments and effectively form a de facto venture capital fund (which it was prohibited from doing pursuant to the Underwriting Agreement and the Investment Company Act), and then improperly divested those investments through the Separation, which was effectuated in New York and governed by New York law,” Borrok wrote. “By tapping into New York’s capital markets to conduct the IPO, electing to do a transaction that necessarily required the use of New York’s regulatory and

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banking system to effectuate the Separation, and agreeing that New York law would govern the controlling agreements, Renren purposefully availed itself of the privileges and protections of doing business in New York. Based on these contacts, Renren certainly should reasonably anticipate being haled into court here in connection with the Transaction.” A monumental legal accomplishment, to be sure. But as those who climb mountains know, it’s only when you’ve summited one that you can appreciate with renewed clarity how high the next peak looms. Winning derivative standing under Cayman law to pursue a claim in New York courts would be even more difﬁcult than surmounting jurisdiction. It had only been done once before in a U.S. courtroom. A derivative claim for breach of ﬁduciary duty can only be pursued by the company – not its shareholders – against its own board, generally speaking. To overcome that requirement under U.S. law, a plaintiff shareholder must show that it would be futile to demand the board bring such an action. However, the rules were a bit different for Renren, because both it and its now spun-off successor were Cayman based. English law largely applies in Cayman, requiring the claim to be pursued under the law of the country of incorporation, Cayman. The team had to travel back in time a bit, to 1843, to understand how to build derivative standing. That’s when an English court was presented with a battle over the development of Victoria Park in Manchester, and, in Foss v. Harbottle, established the “proper plaintiff rule” – that for any harm alleged to have been done to a company, the proper plaintiff is the company itself. Foss set forth four exceptions to the rule, including “wrongdoer control,” which allows a minority shareholder to bring a derivative action against the company.

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“Getting derivative standing under Cayman law is exceedingly difficult, far more so than U.S. law. As far as we can tell, this is only the second case in any U.S. court in which plaintiffs have been able to get derivative jurisdiction under Cayman law. And there have been dozens and dozens and dozens of failed efforts,” says Yoder. To meet the standard of “wrongdoer control,” the team highlighted the self-dealing by Renren’s leaders. They argued that the transaction would be more properly viewed as an “asset-looting transaction” that allowed the principals to pay themselves kickbacks while keeping ownership of the spun-off company. “The defendants were standing on both sides of the deal so we argued that the transaction should be recharacterized not as an ordinary spinoff, but rather as an eluding transaction involving self-dealing. That’s how you pigeonhole it into a derivative claim that belongs to the company,” says Yoder. The Renren steal closed in June 2018. Just under two years later – and three months into the Covid lockdown – Reid faced off in the first hearing in the Renren battle with a face he remembered from 1992. That’s the year he graduated from St. John’s Law School, moving to Texas for a 5th Circuit judicial clerkship that would set him on the path to become a prosecutor, talented trial lawyer and owner of his own high-flying firm. His opponent defending Renren and seeking to have the case against it dismissed was Skadden partner Chris Malloy, who Reid remembered as a nice guy way back when. Malloy, who served as editor in chief of the St. John’s Law Review in 1993, had ascended the ranks to become a litigation partner tasked with notching a win for Renren, but also implicitly defending his firm, which had done much of the deal work under scrutiny. Certainly it was a proud day for St. John’s, and perhaps less so for Skadden. For the Reid Collins team, it was a celebration. A reckoning when Borrok ruled the shareholders had found jurisdiction in his court and specific standing to pursue their derivative claims. He left little doubt of his assessment, ruling that “allegations of deliberate and dishonest breaches of duty” by the defendants at the expense of Renren’s minority shareholders “leap off the pages of the Amended complaint.”

Borrok’s ruling opened the door to discovery beyond what the team could find in public financial documents. The team dug in, per usual, with hatchets and switchblades. Their dig yielded information that led Duff & Phelps to be added as a defendant for Bates stamping Renren’s heavily understated valuation; targeted SoftBank, whose role in the steal was far greater than publicly disclosed and which had come to dominate and control the Renren board; and focused on the majority control wielded by Chen, Chao and SoftBank. The Reid team, which grew to include 16 timekeepers, reviewed anesthesia-grade discovery, much of it in Mandarin and Japanese. Working late one night, first-year associate Aaron Brown stopped cold when he found a spreadsheet from April 2018 – titled “Exit Strategy”; (seriously, you can’t make this up). It proved while Renren’s majority shareholders were publicly proclaiming the spun-off assets to be worth $500M, and they were asking their special committee to approve the deal with that same $500M valuation, that they actually valued Renren’s holdings on a line-item basis at $1.3B. “This was a smoking gun because the whole case after we won jurisdiction and standing came down to value and Renren offered up a bunch of excuses,” says Reid. “And this spreadsheet was dated the very same month that the special committee approved the deal at a value of $500M and the same month that the deal was announced.” Brown felt lucky to have gotten pulled into the case when another team member was departing. He had worked as an investigator for the firm for a few years and knew well the priority it placed on determined digging. But he was only entering his seventh month as a lawyer when asked to dive in on 80,000 pages of documents. “We would have names of companies that we knew were part of the transaction and then look for where there was chatter about the value of them,” says Brown of the team effort. “I just happened to type in the right name of the company and I pulled up this wonderful spreadsheet named Exit Strategy. Which was like, ‘Really? You guys named it that?’ And then coincidentally, it happened to almost exactly value the case as we had valued it, it was just $100M over what we had said the assets were probably worth.” The document opened the floodgates to a frenzy. Everyone was in the documents trying to fi nd the golden nuggets because we realized, “Holy

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lot of the Mandarin language factual research in the case,” says Perry.

Double-digit days spent in the mines became the norm for most of the team, producing a third ascent that deﬁed the odds: winning a $560M pre-judgment attachment against Renren. Drinking wine one night with another leading trial lawyer who is more than a little experienced in global chicanery and resultant legal fallout, Reid mentioned his quandary. In recent months, Palmer, Yoder & Co. had uncovered evidence of fraudulent transfers after the litigation commenced of SoFi stock held by Renren and its leaders in which Renren’s holdings were being liquidated at below market prices and the proceeds were being sent to China.

“We were just trying to ﬁnd a way to stop the bleeding,” says Perry. The team spent two months researching before concluding they would add a pathway for a judge to order a pre-judgment attachment in their preliminary injunction motion. “That was basically unheard of, particularly with assets held abroad,” he says.

In January 2021, Yoder recalls, SoFi announced it was doing a SPAC merger. They turned to its voluminous registration statement and uncovered a startling disclosure: Amidst the litigation, SoFi had essentially obtained half of OPI’s interest in SoFi for a song. OPI had 34 million shares of SoFi stock and gave SoFi options for 17 million of those shares at $8.80. “We thought it was worth $15 or $16 at the time,” says Yoder. He began to draft an amended complaint to bring in SoFi on a fraudulent conveyance theory for receiving transfers mid-litigation. The global chicanery lawyer, who asked to not be named, suggested Reid pursue a pre-judgment attachment. The team was skeptical they could win such an extraordinary remedy, and focused instead on laying the groundwork for an injunction. They pulled together a 75-page memo on an aggressive yet legally sound path to enjoin the wholesale dissipation of SoFi stock from the spun-off entity. The team was given yet more gifts in the form of Chen & Co.’s duplicity. Senior associate Tyler Perry had joined the crew, which also included partner Scott Saldaña and associate Dylan Jones. Perry proved a perfect addition, having spent time with Simpson Thacher in Hong Kong and New York, where he had worked on the team that defended Alibaba in securities litigation. In a twist of fate, Perry grew up in Hong Kong, attended part of his high school years in Beijing, worked at a law ﬁrm in Shanghai and even in the Beijing Olympic Village in 2008. Fluent in Mandarin, he was able to accelerate the team’s progress through documents. “A very signiﬁcant portion of the documents we ultimately got in the case were in Mandarin, whether Mandarin text messages, emails, Word documents. I became, to a certain degree, responsible for doing a

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The team built its case on the defendants’ almost complete and ongoing dishonesty throughout the litigation, most recently regarding its sale of SoFi stock, and disclosures related to that and other corporate matters. In a delicious twist, let’s return for a moment to April 2018 at the Scottsdale National Golf Club where our saga began with Shoghi and Reid commiserating over a dirty deal. Turns out, that after claiming for years to be a resident of China, Chen actually owned property in Phoenix, about 15 miles from the Golf Club. Chen lied about that to Borrok and the Appellate division of the New York Supreme Court. He had also lied about whether he had bank accounts in New York. “That proved the silver bullet,” says Palmer. For all its consistent success, the Reid Collins team is not one to overplay its hand. They devoted just 400 words of their 23-page Memorandum of Law in support of a Preliminary Injunction or Prejudgment Attachment to the latter. “When we were able to get that in front of the court, we increased our chances of getting a preliminary injunction or an attachment order granted, just because the judge saw that these guys were not necessarily acting in perfectly good faith,” said Perry. “I think that helped tip the ball in our favor a little bit.” Reid and Palmer were cautiously optimistic about winning an injunction on May 14, 2021, when they logged on for the virtual hearing seeking an injunction or attachment. Reid had a trial starting the next Monday on his mind, but Palmer told him, “You believe in the attachment. You argue it.” Bill Reid has emerged as one of the ﬁnest litigation talents of this generation, and one reason is he brings a well-honed appreciation for the equities of a case. He learned that from Judge Reynoldo G. Garza of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, for whom Reid clerked after matriculating St. John’s. “Judge Garza always said – the equities matter more than the law,” Reid says.

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“AS FAR AS WE CAN TELL, THIS IS ONLY THE SECOND CASE IN ANY U.S. COURT IN WHICH PLAINTIFFS HAVE BEEN ABLE TO GET DERIVATIVE JURISDICTION UNDER CAYMAN LAW. AND THERE HAVE BEEN DOZENS AND DOZENS OF FAILED EFFORTS.”MICHAEL YODER And the equities spoke volumes that Chen had lied under oath to Borrok. So why should the judge trust him now, presented with abundant evidence he was selling SoFi shares below market value to relatives of SoFi board members and sending the money to China? Reid concluded his argument feeling they had made a good case for the injunction. Denied, Borrok said. “What?” Reid looked at Palmer. “I’m granting the attachment,” the judge said, before hitting the “leave meeting” button. “Holy smokes,” Palmer thought, looking at Reid as the gravity of the moment hit them: They had won a $560M attachment that would bring the force of law enforcement to stop the bleeding of Renren and OPI’s assets that properly belonged to its shareholders. “The root of the problem,” Borrok wrote, “is that the alleged self-dealing defendants have improperly looted Renren and its shareholders of its most valuable assets….” Faced with an attachment that exceeded half a billion dollars, the settlement table appeared as the next locale in the unlikely case’s journey. While Renren filed an unsuccessful emergency appeal, the attachment required any assets Renren and its leaders sold to remain in a U.S. bank account. “We really shut down their ability to sell anything, and their biggest investor, SoftBank, was looking for a liquidation event out of all of this,” says Palmer. “The pressure that led to the settlement was getting them stuck in the U.S. Sinking the ship for SoftBank and some of the others made it more difficult for them.” The case was settled for $300M in October 2021, which was fi nalized in June. Also representing plaintiffs were Grant & Eisenhofer and Gardy & Notis. Skadden, of course, had a starring role for Renren, as did Holland & Knight and then Katten Muchin. Renren offshoot OPI was defended by

McDermott. Paul Weiss, which represented Chen individually, proved critical in bringing the case to an end. It was a signature achievement for Reid Collins, whose younger lawyers got a taste of the thrill of victory in the most unlikely scenario. “It was fun getting to hop up on the 747 full altitude and try to learn to ﬂy a bit,” says Brown. For Perry, the case was exactly what he was seeking after leaving Simpson Thacher seeking “the other side of the V. I really had no idea that three years later, I would actually be able to be prosecuting a comparable case, which was honestly exactly what I wanted to do.” The partners on the team already have achieved huge ﬁnancial victories on behalf of defrauded plaintiffs. But, as Yoder says, Renren stands out as a true “trailblazing” case. “There was no roadmap, there was no governmental investigation, no parallel securities action where you could piggyback off of,” he says. “A lot of the big bankruptcy cases, you have parallel criminal actions and it’s pretty well established. This one required truly building it from the ground up.” Palmer found the case particularly satisfying because everything the team suspected – every inkling that turned into an allegation – proved, once they were able to obtain documents, to be true. “In most cases, some of the stuff you think happened doesn’t happen,” Palmer says. “That’s just how it goes. There’s another reason. There’s something else in there, or some other contributing factor. But in this one, it was just straight up what we thought.” As ever, Reid looks to the future as the punctuation on his team’s accomplishment “This is the magic of Renren,” he says. “I think our jurisdictional masterpiece can now be reproduced in other going private transactions.”

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David R. Marriott

Marco V. Masotti

CRAVATH NEW YORK

PAUL WEISS NEW YORK

Michael Marsh

Randy Mastro

AKERMAN MIAMI

GIBSON DUNN NEW YORK

Peter Martelli

Colette G. Matzzie

KIRKLAND NEW YORK

PHILLIPS & COHEN WASHINGTON, D.C.

Bradley Marten

Sigrid McCawley

MARTEN LAW SEATTLE

BOIES SCHILLER FORT LAUDERDALE

Annika K. Martin

Randi McGinn

LIEFF CABRASER NEW YORK

MCGINN MONTOYA/ATHEA ALBUQUERQUE

Keith Martin

Sean X. McKessy

NORTON ROSE FULBRIGHT WASHINGTON, D.C.

PHILLIPS & COHEN WASHINGTON, D.C.

Jenny Martinez

Scarlet McNellie

MUNCK WILSON DALLAS

NORTON ROSE FULBRIGHT DALLAS

Stacey Martinez

Marcellus McRae

NORTON ROSE FULBRIGHT AUSTIN

GIBSON DUNN LOS ANGELES

Tammy Marzigliano

Christopher Meade

OUTTEN & GOLDEN NEW YORK

BLACKROCK NEW YORK

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Richard D. Meadow

Matthew Minner

LANIER LAW FIRM HOUSTON

MINNER VINES LEXINGTON, KY.

Sasan Mehrara

David W. Mitchell

SIMPSON THACHER NEW YORK

ROBBINS GELLER SAN DIEGO

Tom Melsheimer

Steven F. Molo

WINSTON & STRAWN DALLAS

MOLOLAMKEN NEW YORK

Brian Melton

A. Elicia Montoya

SUSMAN GODFREY HOUSTON

MCGINN MONTOYA ALBUQUERQUE

Mark F. Mendelsohn

Carlos Moore

PAUL WEISS WASHINGTON, D.C.

THE COCHRAN LAW FIRM GRENADA, MISS.

Edward Micheletti

Sarah Morgan

SKADDEN WILMINGTON

VINSON & ELKINS HOUSTON

Donald A. Migliori

Peter Mougey

MOTLEY RICE MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C.

LEVIN PAPANTONIO PENSACOLA, FLA.

Betsy A. Miller

Laurence Moy

COHEN MILSTEIN WASHINGTON, D.C.

OUTTEN & GOLDEN NEW YORK

Scott D. Miller

Francis Patrick Murphy

SULLIVAN & CROMWELL NEW YORK

CORBOY & DEMETRIO CHICAGO

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Bob Townsend and George Shoen CRAVATH (NEW YORK)

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BOB TOWNSEND AND GEORGE SCHOEN CRAVATH’S GLOBAL M&A PRACTICE IS THE

gold standard: Widely respected and well known, the group has a deep bench of talent, and every single lawyer on the team is excellent at what they do. Based on the complexity and sheer number of high-quality transactions done year over year, it may surprise some people to learn that the group is pretty slim: fewer than two dozen partners. Cravath’s famous rotation system means associates spend time in several different partner groups. This means all the newer M&A partners have typically already worked with most of the senior ones. “It helps people have a common mindset about how to approach things,” says George Schoen, co-head of Cravath’s Global M&A group. “Our first-year M&A partners are fully ready to run deals.” Schoen joined Robert Townsend as co-head of the elite group in 2021, a role Townsend has been in since 2017. They made a structural shift in the group when Schoen stepped in to reflect the shape of the market, as they previously demarcated between international and domestic deals, which is no longer necessary given the amount of crossover in so many transactions. The shift is typical of how the group operates: They are business-minded and pragmatic, working nimbly across industries in all aspects of deal work, able to adjust themselves on a dime so they’re always aligned with the market they serve. Thanks to the tight-knit culture and high caliber of legal talent, Townsend and Schoen are able to have a hands-off management style and focus on their practices – they simply hire and cultivate great minds, then let them get to work. Lawdragon: What are the defining characteristics of Cravath’s global M&A group? What makes it work? Bob Townsend: We pride ourselves on being very commercial and delivering excellent and practical legal advice. To be a good M&A lawyer, you have to not only know the law, but you have to understand the situation and your client’s objectives, and provide practical solutions to issues. It’s not always in the client’s best interest to fight over everything. There are a lot of situations where the client wants to maintain a good relationship with the party on the other side and/or wants to get the deal done quickly. You need to discern the most meaningful points, focus on those and not get hung up in a negotiation war. All the partners in the group have been at Cravath

PHOTO BY NICK COLEMAN

BY ALISON PREECE

since they started, so we’re all trained in that same mindset. It’s the driving feature of our practice and permeates the entire firm. LD: How would you describe your management style? George Schoen: It’s interesting, the phrase “management style” implies a level of active management, which really isn’t how either of us approaches the role. We make sure we’re giving the younger partners all the right opportunities they need to develop as a Cravath M&A partner. We’re fortunate that we have such great colleagues and M&A partners that everyone is generally very busy and really dedicating themselves to their practice. So our focus is more from a wide angle. We look at what the M&A group as a whole is doing in a given year, what sectors we’re active in, the types of deals happening, and then see if there are adjustments to make. LD: Let’s talk SPACs. They were so hot for a while there. Can you walk us through why they’ve cooled off? GS: SPACs were initially attractive to participants for a number of reasons, including because the de-SPAC transaction represented a faster route to being a public company than a traditional IPO. And those are falling out of favor for a few reasons. To execute a de-SPAC transaction, it typically requires fresh money from new investors, usually institutional investors, to either support the valuation or backstop redemptions from the original SPAC investors. During the SPAC boom of 2020 and 2021, that fresh money was readily available because people were excited about these acquisitions and the ability to invest in a growth company at an early stage. Starting about a year ago, that institutional money started to dry up. Investors were looking at the relative success, or lack thereof, of de-SPAC transactions in terms of where those companies were trading, and they started to get more critical. We’re seeing a lot of SPACs that are liquidating because they can’t execute that de-SPAC transaction within the time horizon required. BT: So, now you have no way of knowing how many of the original investors are going to redeem. Redemption percentages have skyrocketed as SPAC performance has been poor. Then you’re basically left with having to go find new financing for the deal through a pipe and put together a package. In many cases, that winds up being at a lower valuation level than the SPAC had been talking to you about to be-

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500 gin with, so you wind up taking a haircut in order to put together enough money to be able to do a deal. Suddenly it’s a much less efficient way of doing a merger or buying a company, because the initial money just isn’t staying in. We’ve seen SPAC situations where the redemption level is 90 percent, and then you’ve lost all the efficiencies of having money already in hand. You might as well just get committed financing from a sponsor in the regular way. GS: On the heels of that, there’s a lot of litigation around de-SPAC transactions currently working its way through the courts. The first significant decision, coming out of Delaware early this year, was pretty negative on de-SPACs, regarding the conflicts between the SPAC sponsor and the rest of the shareholders. It made a lot of people in the SPAC space, including financial advisors, take notice. There are also a whole host of new SEC regulations that, if enacted, are going to make it even more challenging for SPACs to execute the de-SPAC transaction. BT: I’ve represented a couple of sellers who were running auction processes that had both SPAC and non-SPAC buyers. In both cases, the seller decided not to go with the SPAC entity, even though they were nominally offering a higher value, because of these uncertainties. LD: What impact are decarbonization and the energy transition movement having on dealmaking? GS: It really depends on the company and their perspective. Some are taking it very seriously, because they see the energy transition movement as a real business threat to what their current operations and business profile are, so they want to change and adapt in order to survive. Others are staying the course. We’ve seen companies do a spin-off to separate operations into two businesses, one that’s carbon-heavy and one that’s not. We’ve seen divestitures, or some companies just organically transitioning their business mix away from carbon-heavy businesses. We’re also seeing activists use decarbonization as one of their elements of a campaign against companies. First you had Engine No. 1 winning board seats at Exxon, as well as Dan Loeb advocating at Shell that they split up and separate their heavy carbon business from the carbon-light business. It’s definitely on a lot of people’s minds. LD: What impact has the rise of shareholder activism had on boardrooms and companies in the last 15 years?

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GS: It’s really grown as a strategy. Not only the aggregate assets under management that are dedicated to that strategy, but also just the number of activist funds that are out there. Even though if you look at activism as an asset class over the past two or three years, maybe if you disregard what’’s happened in the market this year, it hasn’t necessarily done as well as the S&P 500 over that time horizon. Still, I don’t see it going away as an asset class anytime soon. Fifteen, 20 years ago, you could count on two hands how many activist investors were out there. At this point, most public company board members have had experience with activism. Sometimes through campaigns, other times conversations that weren’t made public. But the company took into account the views of the activist, whether was it factored into a decision to undertake an M&A transaction or to change their capital allocation planning or, potentially, to make a management change. It’s become the normal framework of boards these days. They want to talk about activism, including with outside advisors. Companies want to understand what’s going on in the marketplace and make sure everyone is prepared in the event that an activist makes an outreach. BT: Yes, most public company boards are much more actively evaluating their strategies. They’re considering various alternatives, and how an activist would look at them. They look at typical things that an activist would encourage and are proactively doing the work themselves – evaluating whether there are business lines that ought to be disposed of, evaluating whether there’s a more strategic transaction. Successful companies always did that work, of course, but it’s become much more widespread and more detailed. It’s a good rationale. Aside from a strong stock price, which is probably your best defense against an activist, it’s helpful to be able to demonstrate that the board is its own activist. It doesn’t need a shareholder representative on the board to take the steps to evaluate what’s in the shareholder’s best interest, because they’re already taking those steps, whether it’s externally-driven or about board refreshment or board diversity. LD: What are some other trends in the M&A market? GS: Antitrust and financing challenges have certainly gotten stronger in the past six to 12 months, at least. Last year, there was a very robust debt financing market here in the states, and more generally globally, so it was very easy to get deals that required financing done. Now things are much choppier.

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In particular, when you’re dealing with a private equity buyer where they’re going to leverage the acquisition pretty heavily, those deals are not going off as smoothly as they were 12 months ago. We’ve seen some instances where a private equity buyer has even said, “Look, I’d love to do the deal at this price, but can we wait three months or six months? I need the financing markets to come back.” Then with the change in administration in D.C., it’s definitely a new attitude in terms of antitrust enforcement. It has changed the way a lot of people are looking at M&A, especially where it’s more of a consolidation play in a specific industry. LD: What initially attracted you both to M&A law? BT: I always tell people that I would never be an M&A lawyer if I hadn’t come to Cravath. When I first started, I didn’t really know a lot about different corporate practices. I did banking for my summer and thought I’d want to be there. But I chose Cravath because it gave you the opportunity to really learn the different practice areas in depth by rotating in your time as an associate. So, I felt I could make the most educated decision. When I first started doing M&A, as a fourth- or fifthyear associate, we got hired by Dreamworks when it was first being formed. I was the lead associate and so I spent six to nine months, mostly out in California, helping them raise their initial equity and debt financing. That was completely unique to anything I’d ever done before, both because it involved Steven Spielberg and this exciting new movie studio, but also, we were creating the company from scratch. It was basically like a joint venture negotiation. That sold me on the idea of M&A. I like the variety, the intersection of the business strategy elements, and the evolving legal framework. I thought to myself, “This would be a fun thing to do for the rest of my career.” What I like best about the practice is the people. This is a people business. I love practicing at Cravath because of people like George and the rest of the people in our department and across the firm. We have incredible, talented people in tax and benefits, in IP, environment and antitrust, the whole gamut. You can’t be successful unless you have incredibly talented people. Then, our clients. You get the opportunity to really help people change their companies and do important things for them and you can really contribute a lot of value. It’s always nice when they’re grateful and appreciative. GS: Like Bob, I didn’t do M&A at Cravath until my third rotation, so I was a mid-level associate. I actually did my first public company M&A deal with Bob

as the partner, and I just thought it was really cool. I was a senior associate on it, integrated into the real principal-to-principal discussions. We were talking to boards and management teams about why they’re doing this deal, from a business perspective. Understanding that rationale, then we translated that into, how do we make the approach to the counterparty? What are the legal considerations? I was hooked. I also appreciate the diversity of the situations that we get involved in. It’s not just pure buy-side, sell-side transactions at Cravath. We cover joint ventures, we cover activism. Deal work can involve antitrust or takeover defense or analyzing a shareholder base to see what approach might make the most sense. We do a lot of cross-border work, collaborating with lawyers around the world on transactions, understanding how the different rules work in different jurisdictions which you then factor into your US approach on deals. It’s just fascinating, and a lot of fun. LD: What advice do you have for young associates? GS: When you first start out as a junior M&A associate, you’re obviously not going to be the one running the negotiations or probably even being primarily responsible for the main acquisition or other agreement. You will probably have more direct responsibility for other aspects of the transaction. But it’s very important not to feel siloed into what’s specifically assigned to you and to try to get a more holistic understanding of the deal. That’s how you learn and grow. It also positions you to make sure that what you’re specifically tasked with works well with the rest of the deal, so you can be proactive if you see the deal is heading in a certain direction. At Cravath, we very much operate on the principle of including the whole deal team in discussions with the client and negotiations with the other side. Everyone gets a holistic understanding of the transaction. When you have that kind of mentality, it also positions you well to take on more and more responsibility with those other elements as you get more experience. BT: My biggest piece of advice is, don’t be afraid to ask questions. Ask questions. I think a lot of young lawyers are nervous about asking questions of partners or even senior associates. But everyone would much rather you ask questions and make sure you understand what you’re working on, rather than you feeling like you have to figure it out on your own. Also, you’re going to make mistakes. That’s fine, that’s how you develop. Just try not to make them more than once. Learn from your mistakes, and go make new ones.

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Saee Muzumdar

Victoria Nugent

GIBSON DUNN NEW YORK

COHEN MILSTEIN WASHINGTON, D.C.

Danielle S. Myers

Heather S. Nyong’o

ROBBINS GELLER SAN DIEGO

CLEARY GOTTLIEB SAN FRANCISCO

Frederick R. Nance

Jeannemarie O’Brien

SQUIRE PATTON CLEVELAND

WACHTELL NEW YORK

Daniel A. Neff

Paul M. “Tad” O’Connor III

WACHTELL NEW YORK

KASOWITZ NEW YORK

Sharon Nelles

Sean F. O’Shea

SULLIVAN & CROMWELL NEW YORK

CADWALADER NEW YORK

Robert J. Nelson

Kevyn D. Orr

LIEFF CABRASER SAN FRANCISCO

JONES DAY WASHINGTON, D.C.

Jennifer Newstead

Kevin J. Orsini

META MENLO PARK, CALIF.

CRAVATH NEW YORK

Sonia Nijjar

Gregory E. Ostling

SKADDEN PALO ALTO

WACHTELL NEW YORK

Sabastian V. Niles

Jennifer Pafiti

WACHTELL NEW YORK

POMERANTZ LOS ANGELES

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Brian Panish

Kimberly C. Petillo-Décossard

PANISH SHEA LOS ANGELES

CAHILL GORDON NEW YORK

Robin Panovka

Joseph Petrosinelli

WACHTELL NEW YORK

WILLIAMS & CONNOLLY WASHINGTON, D.C.

Stephanie E. Parker

Christopher V. Popov

JONES DAY ATLANTA

VINSON & ELKINS HOUSTON

Michael A. Paskin

Warren Postman

CRAVATH NEW YORK

KELLER POSTMAN WASHINGTON, D.C.

Kathy D. Patrick

A. Michael Pratt

GIBBS & BRUNS HOUSTON

GREENBERG TRAURIG PHILADELPHIA

Gerard G. Pecht

Hilary Preston

NORTON ROSE FULBRIGHT HOUSTON

VINSON & ELKINS NEW YORK

Jason L. Peltz

Peter Prieto

BARTLIT BECK CHICAGO

PODHURST MIAMI

Luis R. Penalver

Patrick Quinn

CAHILL GORDON NEW YORK

CADWALADER NEW YORK

Elizabeth Peterson

Abid R. Qureshi

KANNER & WHITELEY NEW ORLEANS

LATHAM WASHINGTON, D.C.

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Jennifer Pafiti POMERANTZ (NEW YORK)

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JENNIFER PAFITI AS HEAD OF CLIENT SERVICES AT PLAINTIFF

securities heavyweight Pomerantz, Jennifer Pafiti has her finger on the pulse of what matters to investors. She liaises regularly with influential pension funds and asset managers with investments in all the major publicly traded companies around the globe. Originally from the UK and now based in Los Angeles, Pafiti has been a part of several groundbreaking and complex securities fraud litigations in her career, including the case against the scandal-ridden Brazilian oil giant, Petrobras, in which the firm achieved a record-breaking $3B recovery for defrauded investors. When Pafiti joined Pomerantz eight years ago, she set the firm on a new course for marketing and business development. She spearheaded the development of PomTrack, the firm’s proprietary portfolio monitoring program, which uses the latest technology and a team of experts to cross-reference clients’ trading data against current and potential securities class action claims. The program now monitors investment funds with over $8T in assets under management. Pafiti also undertakes educational initiatives for investors, including organizing an annual Corporate Governance and Securities Litigation conference. This year’s theme was The Collective Power to Make Change, specifically in ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance), with President Bill Clinton as a special guest speaker. A longtime champion for women and diversity in the legal field, Pafiti is an active mentor, speaker and advocate for increasing representation. She speaks globally and acts locally: Her PomTrack team is 64 percent female and 45 percent diverse. Her motives are practical: “If you want something done,” she says, “give it to a busy woman with no spare time.” Lawdragon: Would you say institutional investors are in a uniquely powerful position to challenge bad corporate behavior? Jennifer Pafiti: While any investor should be able to challenge bad corporate behavior, the reality is that institutional investors carry more weight in this field. Beyond compensation, large investors want to see that the wrongdoings will not be repeated. And the company should absolutely pay attention, to ensure investors remain confident to continue investing in these companies.

PHOTO BY LAURA BARISONZI

BY ALISON PREECE Institutional investors are in a unique position where they can encourage corporate boards not only to settle claims financially, but to adopt governance reform. They must use their engagement with a corporation and say, “OK, we’ve got the payment now, but how are you going to convince us that this board isn’t going to repeat the fraud? What are you going to do to make changes to ensure better checks and balances? What additional promises can you give us to say that this won’t happen again? Otherwise we might want to invest elsewhere.” LD: I understand you helped develop a portfolio and monitoring service, PomTrack. Can you tell me about that? JP: We use PomTrack to monitor our clients’ assets and let them know when a company they’ve invested in has suffered some kind of stock price decline due to financial misconduct. It’s a combination of state-ofthe-art technology and an incredible team of attorneys, forensic economists, damages analysts, paralegals and professional staff. We alert our clients at the forefront of the cases that they might want to get involved in. Sometimes it’s a simple restatement of financials, or it could be in the realm of ESG like an environmental event, which clients are increasingly interested in. Either way, we let our clients know about significant loss to their investment due to some kind of financial misconduct so that they can make an informed decision about how to recover. We then analyze the case and present our findings to them with a recommendation of whether to move for lead, remain a passive class member or consider an individual action. In the last few years, we’ve grown that portfolio monitoring service from about $2.4T to nearly $8T in assets under management. LD: You’re also the Head of Client Services at Pomerantz. I find that impressive, because it’s been noted that it’s often more difficult for women in the legal profession to network and build a book of business. JP: You have to work twice as hard to prove half as much. I have sat in many scenarios with many bodies but where I am the only female attorney there. It’s still a male-dominated environment, but hopefully that’s changing so that there is more representation generally.

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500 I think it’s empowering for our newer attorneys to come in to see that one of the more senior partners who runs the client services team, is female. There is this pervasive feeling in the industry that you have to choose between being a successful female attorney and being a full and present mother. I don’t know I always get the balance completely right but I hope I am still an example of not having to choose one path over another. LD: That would go a long way in attracting female talent. How else does Pomerantz support their female attorneys and staff? JP: It’s a great firm for women. I had two children very quickly after I joined the firm, and I’m a single mom. [Managing Partner] Jeremy [Lieberman] was really great about flexibility. My job involves a lot of travel, and the firm is really supportive about me having control over when those meetings are organized. Flexibility makes such a difference. It really helps me function at my best. I manage my own teams now with the same flexibility. The PomTrack team is incredible, and they are majority female. I understand that I have to be flexible with them in order to keep them. Covid really showed us that we can work fine remotely. Many of us still like going into the office, so we have that balance now as well. LD: Was it a deliberate move to have a majority female team for PomTrack? JP: As they say, if you want something done, give it to a busy woman with no time. LD: Ha! JP: The team happens to be a majority female because the firm is very good about understanding how people work and adapting to what works well for them. Sometimes the best people for the job are women and sometimes those women have kids. Pomerantz is great about supporting the lifestyles of parents, so we can keep those good people on board. It’s also a very diverse team, again, mainly because we found the best people and figured out how to create an environment that would encourage their best work and keep them around. It’s an important focus as well these days for funds – they want to know how diverse your team is. We do well on our diversity checkpoints on RFPs, but we were also a diverse team before diversity was being measured. LD: What advice do you have for younger women starting out in the law on how to build their book of business?

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JP: I would say, first of all, nobody is going to look out for your career except you. Find yourself a really good mentor. I have been incredibly lucky – I have had two strong mentors who happen to be male, and who are very encouraging about me being a full-time mother and a full-time, successful attorney. Find someone you admire, get in touch with them and ask them to mentor you. When I’ve had people reach out to me about being their mentor or for career advice, there is no greater compliment. Also, always give yourself options, whatever options look like to you. Negotiate your terms from the outset. Perhaps you want to have a couple of days a week when you come in late to work, after dropping your kids off at school. Say that when you first come in because it’s harder to start and then renegotiate. And realize that these days, you don’t have to choose. So don’t feel that you do, because you can find good workplaces that want you for your skill and in exchange, they’ll make some adjustments for you. LD: That’s so empowering. How do you think law firms can encourage more women into leadership positions? Because that’s another bit of a hole that we have. JP: It’s the same problem across the board, not just law firms. If you look at the way companies are structured, they lack female leadership at the top. Yes, there are a few female CEOs to speak of, but overall, the percentage of women in leadership roles isn’t high enough. So how can we fix that? There should be a better ladder of progression that utilizes, builds and identifies rising pools of talent. When considering how you can progress at a place of work, ask about the leadership structure of the company. Ask about career progression. Not just the time spent at a firm, but what indicators does this firm use to promote an associate to a partner, for example. And of course, asking how diverse the partners are is also a good indication of how that’s put into practice. The future of companies and law firms is going to hinge on really good, structured management. The structured management should represent the clients, the customers, just like the leadership of this country should look like the people that it represents. LD: This would also apply to having more people of color in the legal field. JP: Absolutely. You have to reflect what you’re trying to attract. If you want more women of color, how can you outreach in that respect? You should have women

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AS THEY SAY, IF YOU WANT SOMETHING DONE, GIVE IT TO A BUSY WOMAN WITH NO TIME. of color high up in your firm. Outreach amongst peers, word of mouth, that’s crucial too. So you want to make sure you have a supportive environment. Diversity of color, sex, gender, educational background – what these really bring is diversity of thought to the table and that is what I want to see far more of. Doing the right cases is also important. Attorneys look at that. If a firm says they don’t tolerate sexual harassment or sexual discrimination, then attorneys are asking, “Can you demonstrate that in some of the cases that you invest time and money in to prosecute?” LD: Your firm must do well in that regard. You do so much ESG work these days, especially. JP: Yes, and our current case against Deutsche Bank is a good example. We’ve brought an action against the bank for their failure to keep proper tabs on their customers, which enabled the actions of people like Jeffrey Epstein and damaged the status of the bank. The case is really striking a chord with a lot of us. I’m female, and I’ve got an 18-year-old daughter. The bank knew what Epstein was doing. They didn’t question his payments to these young women, all these red-flag payments. They didn’t do their due diligence. It really becomes personal. Those are the cases that keep us on our toes and keep us interested as attorneys. You need that passion and that fire to go after them. LD: I can certainly understand that. Some lawyers really want to change the world and make a difference, and this is the kind of work that really does that. JP: Exactly. And sometimes you can make such a small difference, but the impact is really large. LD: How did you first decide you wanted to be a lawyer? JP: I sort of fell into the law. At first I wanted to be a doctor, an anesthesiologist, but I didn’t get into my medical school of choice in London, so I changed course and went to law school. I worked for some really good firms in the UK and then was ready for a new challenge, something completely different. So I quit my job and came to Los Angeles with my then six-year-old daughter, the two of us. I said, if I pass the

bar, I’ll stay for a year. Then I said, if I get a good job, I’ll stay for another year. It’s been 12 years. LD: How did you decide on this practice of protecting investors’ rights? Or did that sort of come about as well? JP: I did not know what securities fraud was probably 14 years ago. It’s a completely different system in the UK; there are some financial marketing acts, but it’s not the same protections afforded by the U.S. class action system. So I had no real knowledge of securities fraud class actions before I joined my first firm here in the U.S. I started out in general litigation and moved into securities. I love the complexity of it, and the power it has to make change. At some point, I was asked to cover for someone at an event with clients and we quickly realized I had a knack for it and enjoyed it. So now I have a nice balance between client-facing work and my litigation practice. LD: You mentioned the firm’s Managing Partner, Jeremy Lieberman, earlier. Can you tell us what you admire about him? JP: Jeremy is a fairly young leader, comparing him to some other successful firm managing partners. With youth, he has brought a very positive leadership attitude. As I mentioned, he’s allowed me to work on the terms that have made me able to be a mom and an attorney. And I’m very grateful for that. He is also very good at listening to ideas. He’s not set in his ways, he wants to hear other people’s opinions. That’s very important, because if a leader of a firm is only interested in his own opinion, then what’s the point in having other attorneys? Jeremy really appreciates diversity of thought. That is really, really important when you’re strategizing about a case. You never want to exclude an important perspective. Jeremy’s truly skilled at listening to the views of the associates, of the partners and taking them on. He hasn’t got that ego that you see with a lot of lawyers. He’s a genius in terms of how he prosecutes cases, he knows every detail about every case, which is amazing. But he still doesn’t have an ego about it. He wants to hear what others have to say, he wants your opinion. It makes for the best kind of leader.

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Shawn J. Rabin

Lorin L. Reisner

SUSMAN GODFREY NEW YORK

PAUL WEISS NEW YORK

Brian A. Ratner

Alison Ressler

HAUSFELD WASHINGTON, D.C.

SULLIVAN & CROMWELL LOS ANGELES

Sarah M. Ray

Ana C. Reyes

LATHAM SAN FRANCISCO

WILLIAMS & CONNOLLY WASHINGTON, D.C.

Shawn L. Raymond

Michael T. Reynolds

SUSMAN GODFREY HOUSTON

CRAVATH NEW YORK

Barrett H. Reasoner

Joseph F. Rice

GIBBS & BRUNS HOUSTON

MOTLEY RICE MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C.

Jennifer Recine

William Ridgway

KASOWITZ NEW YORK

SKADDEN CHICAGO

Noelle M. Reed

Robert H. Riley

SKADDEN HOUSTON

RILEY SAFER HOLMES & CANCILA CHICAGO

William T. Reid IV

David Ring

REID COLLINS AUSTIN

TAYLOR & RING LOS ANGELES

Julie G. Reiser

John Rizio-Hamilton

COHEN MILSTEIN WASHINGTON, D.C.

BERNSTEIN LITOWITZ NEW YORK

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Darren Robbins

Hannah Ross

ROBBINS GELLERS SAN DIEGO

BERNSTEIN LITOWITZ NEW YORK

John Roberts

Samuel Rudman

U.S. SUPREME COURT WASHINGTON, D.C.

ROBBINS GELLER MELVILLE, N.Y.

Sharon Robertson

Kathryn Ruemmler

COHEN MILSTEIN NEW YORK

GOLDMAN SACHS NEW YORK

Sandra Robinson

Antony L. Ryan

THE COCHRAN LAW FIRM WASHINGTON, D.C.

CRAVATH NEW YORK

Larry R. Rogers Jr.

Faiza J. Saeed

POWER ROGERS CHICAGO

CRAVATH NEW YORK

Christine G. Rolph

Kelli Sager

LATHAM WASHINGTON, D.C.

DAVIS WRIGHT TREMAINE LOS ANGELES

Steven Rosenblum

P. Anthony Sammi

WACHTELL NEW YORK

LATHAM NEW YORK

James Rosenthal

Mary Kathryn Sammons

WILKINSON STEKLOFF WASHINGTON, D.C.

SUSMAN GODFREY HOUSTON

Eric Rosof

S. Shay Samples

WACHTELL NEW YORK

HARE WYNN BIRMINGHAM, ALA.

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Ray Boucher BOUCHER LLP (LOS ANGELES)

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RAY BOUCHER EVERY YEAR, MORE THAN 300,000 FARM

workers are poisoned by the food you eat. Welcome to Death Valley.”

For more than 35 years, a poster bearing that haunting statistic has hung on Raymond Boucher’s office wall. Boucher was given the poster after one of his first landmark victories as a lawyer – a case he litigated on behalf of the family of a farm worker who was poisoned by herbicides and denied humane treatment. The gift-giver was a former client who looped Boucher into the case: Cesar Chavez. A pretty good start to a career. Since then, Boucher has won numerous historic cases in a variety of sectors, all with the same aim: giving a voice to those who would otherwise be voiceless. His clients range from farm workers denied basic rights, to employees whose companies have attempted to silence them, to children who have been sexually abused. In every case, it’s the lack of humanity that stuns and motivates Boucher. The question he asks himself continues to be, “How does this happen?” Boucher is perhaps most well-known for his work taking on the Catholic Church in cases related to its child sexual abuse scandals. In two landmark cases, he alleged that the Church systematically hid sexually abusive priests and knowingly allowed the abuses to continue. Boucher was the lead attorney in a significant sexual abuse settlement culminating with the 2007 settlement with the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, that involved several hundred survivors of childhood sexual abuse and recovered $660M. In a similar litigation, 144 victims in a case against the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, lead to a $220M settlement. Outside of the dollar amount, these cases raised international awareness for the abuses his clients, and many others, suffered at the hands of abusive priests and altered the perception of the Catholic Church. In another early case, Boucher’s trial results significantly bolstered protections for witnesses. In the early 1990s, he represented Lula Wallace, the mother of 18-year-old Demetria Wallace. Demetria was set to testify in a murder trial when she began receiving death threats. The police had assured her and her family that, despite those threats, she would be safe. She wasn’t. When Demetria was murdered, Wallace’s family rallied to fight for justice, and Boucher steered

PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE FIRM

BY EMILY JACKOWAY them there. The trial judge took the case away from the jury the morning of closing arguments. Along with a monetary settlement, the Court of Appeal issued an obligation to provide truthful information for witnesses – a decision now called the Wallace Rule. All told, Boucher has tried more than 80 cases to verdict and helped recover more than $4B. But size and dollar amount aren’t what’s most important to him. “I don’t believe that there’s such a thing as a small case or a large case,” he says. “On the plaintiffs’ side, we’re trying to help people heal. We’re trying to help give people a voice. And we’re trying to help create change. I hope that, at the end of my life, I’m able to have accomplished that in some way, shape or form.” In celebration of his tireless advocacy, Boucher was named a Lawdragon Legend this year. Lawdragon: How did you make your way to this practice area – representing victims of discrimination, malpractice and abuse? Raymond Boucher: When I was in college, I worked as a criminal investigator for the District Attorney’s office. The lesson I learned while there is that, as long as I’m in the profession, I want to work in a way where I can make decisions about the cases that I take on, as opposed to being forced to advocate for things that I don’t believe in. That may seem odd because you’re on the prosecutor’s side at the DA’s office. But, unfortunately, not all prosecutors exercise that discretion appropriately, and get too caught up in image and numbers rather than in justice and fairness, which is what the law is supposed to be about. So, I think that early experience is the thing that primarily drove me to the plaintiffs’ side. LD: Did you have any early mentors? RB: I worked for a lawyer named Neil Krupnick. I was impressed by the way that he tried to always connect with his clients and make them feel good about coming forward. But I also admired the way he helped them come out of it. It’s always hard to determine how you help people who have been injured and impacted come out of the case to find a semblance of closure. Also, in my early career I did pro bono strike violence work, I worked with Hermez Moreno on behalf of Cesar Chavez and the farm workers. To sit down in a room with Cesar and to talk with him, this amazing

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BOUCHER IS PERHAPS MOST WELL-KNOWN FOR HIS WORK TAKING ON THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN CASES RELATED TO ITS CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE SCANDALS. IN TWO LANDMARK CASES, HE ALLEGED THAT THE CHURCH SYSTEMATICALLY HID SEXUALLY ABUSIVE PRIESTS AND KNOWINGLY ALLOWED THE ABUSES TO CONTINUE. human being and thoughtful visionary, was incredible. He was humble, compassionate and thoughtful. Being involved in that civil rights component early on drove me to feel very good about the work that I do. I was able to feel good about getting up in the morning, looking in the mirror and saying, “I’m comforted by the ability to go into the office and fight for justice.” I have loved every day. LD: Speaking of Cesar Chavez, tell me about that early case involving the poisoned farm worker, Mr. Chavoya. RB: It was one of the most difficult complaints I ever wrote. These circumstances were born out of the corporate belief that working men and women are people that don’t have value. The idea that they’re expendable. You have this man who’s a good husband, a good father of several kids and a good member of his community. He’s poor. He works hard on the farms. He’s trying to give a better life to his children.

RB: At the time, farm labor laws in California were even worse than they are today. We didn’t have any cause of action against the farm or the farmer. So, our claims were against the two companies that made the pesticides, Chevron and Shell. Pre-emption was a major issue, and the law was less settled at the time. The idea we were pushing, which was novel at the time, was that if you have pesticides that are being used in conjunction with one another, testing them independently in a vacuum to see the impact on humans and animals doesn’t take into consideration the cumulative and synergistic effect of putting them on top of one another. And they often were used in conjunction. We believed there was an obligation on the industry’s part to analyze the effect of multiple pesticides and termiticides upon human health. They needed to lay out the steps that workers and farmers needed to perform for protection. Ultimately, we were able to resolve the case in a fashion that has helped the family. No judgement is ever enough to compensate for the loss of a father and a husband, but it certainly was something that assisted them in life.

The farm was violating the law by spraying the ﬁelds with different pesticides that shouldn’t have been used in conjunction with one another. They ordered the men into the ﬁelds to start working long before it was safe to do so after spraying. When Mr. Chavoya became sick and disoriented, rather than take him a quarter of a mile down the street to a clinic where he could have been treated for organophosphate poisoning, they threw him into the back of a van, drove a few hours across the border into Tijuana and dumped him at a clinic there, and he died. That’s just so inhumane – so vicious, so vile, so cruel, so despicable.

RB: I was involved in several meaningful cases early on. I represented someone who was, to me, a hero: a guy named Robert Wityczak. Bobby was a tripleamputee Vietnam vet. One of the nicest people I ever met. He was working for Rockwell International. There were allegations of mischarging between two different projects at Rockwell, where they took money from a ﬁxed-cost contract and transferred the work and labor on it to a cost-plus contract.

LD: What were the challenging elements of that case from a legal perspective?

Rockwell obviously denied it. But three employees who came forward about it, including Bobby, all got

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LD: Are there any other early cases that set the framework for your career?

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terminated. Or, in Bobby’s case, constructively discharged, because they made life so miserable for him, he had no choice but to leave. I took 60-some-odd depositions in that case, and they were my first depositions as a lawyer. Finally, I think in the 50th deposition, I got somebody to admit that they were treating him inhumanely, and to admit the truth of Bobby’s allegations. So, ultimately, we were able to resolve the case on his behalf. Now, if you look up Bobby Wityczak, what you’ll see is that he was then invited to testify before Congress. He was one of the key individuals to testify in front of Senator Grassley’s committee. But, most importantly, it is his testimony that helped develop the whistleblower law that we now have in the United States: The False Claims Act of 1986. LD: Wow. That’s amazing. RB: He was an amazing man. LD: Tell me a bit about the Wallace case, which was monumental both for the result and in your career. RB: That’s a case I still carry with me to this day. Lula Wallace, Demetria’s mother, is a heroine. It was a privilege to see the dignity, perseverance, and thoughtfulness of a woman that has been wronged by the system in so many ways. We were able to obtain an important appellate decision that expanded the government’s responsibility to protect victims and witnesses of crime. We were able to require that law enforcement, one, be honest and truthful with them, and two, that they provide protection when it’s necessary. Demetria Wallace’s death wasn’t completely in vain because she was able to change the law in a positive way that will help others who find themselves in the same kind of circumstances. One thing that I don’t think we discuss enough is how much our clients give to us as lawyers. We talk about giving them a voice, and it’s true. In sex abuse cases, in particular, we assist them in taking the power back. But we don’t give enough credit back to our clients for the way that they can impact our humanity. Seeing their tenacity and sacrifice is incredibly powerful and enlightening. LD: Speaking of sexual abuse cases, tell me a bit about your significant involvement in those matters. RB: I’m getting ready for a trial now involving sex abuse of minors – in this case, a four-year-old boy. I believe statistics say one in five girls and one in 20 boys are abused. Those numbers are way under-reported.

Most of the cases I am involved in, the abuser is someone who’s close to the family, but someone who’s been entrusted with the child in some environment – whether it’s a teacher, a coach, a mentor or a camp counselor or a priest. Of course, you do have circumstances in which this happens in familial relationships, or with close family friends, which is also a huge issue. But these are predators who are brilliant at stalking and picking out their prey. They know the children who are most vulnerable. They know the children who they’ll be able to establish trust with so that they can take advantage of that trust and sexually abuse them. It’s the grooming process. Many adults aren’t equipped to deal with the mental and emotional issues that we face in life. More so for a child who hasn’t had the opportunity to go through life experiences, so they can’t comprehend what’s happening to them. The shame that they carry, the silence that they hold – it’s years before we hear the sound of that silence and we see the impact on these young boys and girls. We can never give back a childhood. That’s the unfortunate thing about the law. But taking back the power is really about helping a survivor emerge out of silence. Hopefully, through taking back that power, they can do several things. One is to inspire others who’ve been sexually abused to ﬁnd the courage to come forward. A second is to stand up for themselves and say, unequivocally, “What you did to me was wrong, and I’m going to stand up for myself because I now have the ability to do so.” And then, through that process, they can hold the organizations and entities that allowed the abuse to take place accountable. There’s power in that. So, when it comes to representing survivors of sexual abuse, the only thing we can do is provide opportunities for them to seek some modicum of justice. In this case, it’s clearly an imperfect justice. But through that power, if they can stand up for themselves and realize that they didn’t do anything wrong, they can stop punishing themselves. Hopefully, they can ﬁnd a way to release that misplaced guilt. LD: You’re obviously very well-known for your work with cases involving the Catholic Church. Are there any other impactful cases in that space that you don’t get the chance to talk about enough? RB: Some of the early foster home cases that I did were very impactful. These foster children are at the mercy of society. They’re at the mercy of a depart-

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WE DON’T GIVE ENOUGH CREDIT BACK TO OUR CLIENTS FOR THE WAY THAT THEY CAN IMPACT OUR HUMANITY. SEEING THEIR TENACITY AND SACRIFICE IS INCREDIBLY POWERFUL AND ENLIGHTENING. ment that is perhaps well-meaning, but not well-run and not well-funded. It becomes numb and callous to these children. I also consulted on a couple of cases involving the prison system. You know, you think you can at least grasp some of the suffering inflicted on people in this country historically. But when you see things like the rampant physical and sexual abuse in the prison systems, and how the system allows it to happen, you realize your mind is not capable of imagining the ways in which we can be cruel. So, the hope is that in doing these cases, and hopefully bringing in verdicts and settlements that are substantial enough, that institutions begin to realize that they should be at the forefront of the decisions that they make, the policies that they carry out and the protections that they must ensure. LD: Tell me about the team at your firm. What do you enjoy about working with them? RB: One of the things I love about being a lawyer is working with people that I share an office with. It’s a joy to see the development and growth of lawyers. We have a lawyer, Alex Gamez, who has been with me since he passed the bar, and he tried his first case this week. The case involved the sexual abuse of a couple of young boys by their uncle. He got a $24M-plus verdict in his first trial. LD: That’s incredible. RB: It’s inspiring to see the joy that he feels in having not only accomplished that for himself, but the meaning that it had for his clients. LD: What do you look for when you’re bringing people onto your team? RB: I primarily look for people who are compassionate, thoughtful and think outside the box. People who are not afraid to fail. People who add value to what we’re doing. LD: Tell me about recent cases – I know you just had a major victory in the Porter Ranch case.

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RB: The Porter Ranch case, again, is a case that’s incredibly meaningful and gratifying, in part because of its magnitude. There are 36,211 people who are part of the case and another probably 20,000-plus that never sought to come forward. We uncovered reckless conduct by Southern California Gas in failing to maintain a well field that had enormous risks and consequences of a blowout – which is what happened. We’re still unsure of the long-term effects of the blowout on the environment, and more importantly, on the people that lived within that community. Managing and litigating a case involving 36,211 people was difficult. We obviously had an amazing team of lawyers, including Brian Panish and his firm, Robin Greenwald and the Weitz & Luxenberg firm, Paul Kiesel of Kiesel Law, Robert Nelson of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein and attorneys from Cotchett Pitre & McCarthy. I was blessed to be a part of the leadership team. Now, most of my time is taken up doing the work necessary to get this settlement over the finish line. LD: Where does the settlement stand now? RB: I think we’re probably a month away from it being finally funded, so there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Aside from that case, I’m blessed in my career to work on a lot of different matters. I’m not just in one field. So, right now I’m also working on a nursing home case involving a woman who had schizophrenia and was recognized as an elopement risk (meaning that she was at risk of wandering from the facility). Yet, she was allowed to walk out of the facility at 4:30 in the morning. A facility that had lost others to elopement, one of whom was recently severely injured as a result. So, she walked out on Christmas morning in freezing rain and is found, Christmas Day, face-down on the pavement, frozen to death. How does that happen? How do you force change? The jury system is the most effective system at making society safer. So, we’re looking forward to trying that case. And I’m looking forward to another 35 years of trying cases like that one. I love being a lawyer.

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Christina Guerola Sarchio

Allison Schneirov

DECHERT WASHINGTON, D.C.

SKADDEN NEW YORK

Lynn Lincoln Sarko

George F. Schoen

KELLER ROHRBACK SEATTLE

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John Savarese

Richard Schoenberger

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WALKUP MELODIA SAN FRANCISCO

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Robert B. Schumer

JOSEPH SAVERI LAW FIRM SAN FRANCISCO

PAUL WEISS NEW YORK

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Ronald J. Schutz

WACHTELL NEW YORK

ROBINS KAPLAN NEW YORK

Shana Scarlett

Jodi Schwartz

HAGENS BERMAN BERKELEY, CALIF.

WACHTELL NEW YORK

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BOIES SCHILLER NEW YORK

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Chase A. Scolnick

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Craig P. Seebald

KIRKLAND WASHINGTON, D.C.

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Anne McClain Sidrys

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BERNSTEIN LITOWITZ NEW YORK

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Stuart Singer

SELENDY GAY ELSBERG NEW YORK

BOIES SCHILLER FORT LAUDERDALE

Joseph Sellers

Hezekiah Sistrunk

COHEN MILSTEIN WASHINGTON, D.C.

THE COCHRAN LAW FIRM ATLANTA

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Rachel G. Skaistis

T HE COCHRAN LAW FIRM NEW YORK

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Dana Seshens

Steven Sklaver

DAVIS POLK NEW YORK

SUSMAN GODFREY LOS ANGELES

Karen Patton Seymour

Rodney E. Slater

SULLIVAN & CROMWELL NEW YORK

SQUIRE PATTON WASHINGTON, D.C.

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Daniel Slifkin

PAUL WEISS WASHINGTON, D.C.

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Daniel Small

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COHEN MILSTEIN WASHINGTON, D.C.

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T. Eiko Stange

AKERMAN WEST PALM BEACH, FLA.

WACHTELL NEW YORK

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Ann Beth Stebbins

GIBSON DUNN NEW YORK

SKADDEN NEW YORK

Thomas Sobol

Brian Stekloff

HAGENS BERMAN CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

WILKINSON STEKLOFF WASHINGTON, D.C.

David Sochia

Cate Steston

MCKOOL SMITH DALLAS

HOGAN LOVELLS WASHINGTON, D.C.

Audra J. Soloway

Bryan Stevenson

PAUL WEISS NEW YORK

EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE MONTGOMERY, ALA.

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Kosta Stojilkovic

U.S. SUPREME COURT WASHINGTON, D.C.

WILKINSON STEKLOFF WASHINGTON, D.C.

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Jocelyn Strauber

MORGAN LEWIS WASHINGTON, D.C.

SKADDEN NEW YORK

Lande Alexandra Spottswood

Leo E. Strine Jr.

VINSON & ELKINS HOUSTON

WACHTELL NEW YORK

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CADWALADER NEW YORK

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Lynn Lincoln Sarko KELLER ROHRBACK (SEATTLE)

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LYNN LINCOLN SARKO FEW LAWDRAGON 500 MEMBERS HAVE BEEN

at the center of as many monumental legal efforts targeting corporate wrongdoing as Lynn Lincoln Sarko. The Seattle-based Keller Rohrback trial lawyer has litigated on behalf of victims of a wide mix of environmental and financial catastrophes, from Exxon Valdez to Enron and Bernie Madoff, among many other high-profile cases. Sarko is now among the nation’s top plaintiffs’ lawyers fighting for recoveries in response to tragedies ranging from the devasting wildfires to the opioid epidemic – continuing a tireless practice that dates to his decision to join Keller Rohrback in 1986. For most of that time, Sarko has also served as the firm’s managing partner. Lawdragon: How do clients and other lawyers view you? Lynn Lincoln Sarko: Clients value my counsel for my ability to achieve creative resolutions to complicated legal matters, particularly in multi-party cases. I’ve been told by judges and mediators that my intuition and personality make me especially effective as an advocate. Parker Folse, an attorney whom I’ve worked with over the years, described me by saying: “While he’s vigorous in pursuing his client’s interests, he’s also charming, non-confrontational, understands people, and tries to be creative in achieving his objectives with a minimum of wasted time and conflict.” Still, others have described me as very shrewd, very adaptable. My secret is that people trust me because I’m authentic and I honor my word. LD: What was your path to becoming a lawyer?

BY LAWDRAGON NEWS associate for Arnold & Porter, then spent a short stint as a federal criminal prosecutor in the District of Columbia. In 1986 I moved to Seattle and joined my current firm, Keller Rohrback, where I segued into the field of complex civil litigation by first getting involved in a case alleging bid-rigging by the builders of nuclear power plants. Shortly thereafter, I had the honor of representing fishermen and local governments in the Exxon Valdez trial. Now much of my practice involves representing victims in fraud and environmental cases. I went from being a criminal prosecutor to essentially doing the same thing in private practice because our capitalist system only works if those who cheat are penalized. This is a principle on which I have built my career. LD: Please describe the current mix of work you do within your practice. LLS: I represent plaintiffs in large-scale, complex cases involving corporate wrongdoing. We litigate against companies that pollute, commit fraud, manipulate prices and take advantage of consumers, employees and investors. I regularly call on my background in accounting, tax, bankruptcy, constitutional law, employment law, corporate transactions, insurance coverage and environmental law. LD: You’ve also balanced that with serving as managing partner. LLS: I’ve also served as Keller Rohrback’s managing partner continuously since 1991. I suspect that I am among the longest serving managing partners of any major firm in the United States. It’s been a fabulous ride and only been made possible with a group of talented partners and management staff. We now have offices in seven cities. Our diverse federal and state complex litigation practice has seen exceptional growth over the years with a continuing bright future.

LLS: I now live on Lake Washington in Seattle, but I grew up on a farm near Marengo, Ill. It then had a population of 2,000 and no stoplights. I was fascinated by Illinois native Abraham Lincoln, who is my namesake, and by the small-town lawyers I got to know growing up. My ﬁrst competitions were showing sheep at local county fairs.

LD: Is your business background beneﬁcial as a law ﬁrm manager and practicing lawyer?

My formal college education began at the University of Wisconsin, where I earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting and ﬁnance, followed by an MBA, and then ﬁnally a law degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School, where I was the editor and chief of the Wisconsin Law Review. Following graduation, I clerked for the honorable Judge Jerome Farris of the 9th Circuit. After that, I worked as a litigation

LLS: Absolutely, yes. As I previously mentioned, I have bachelor’s and Master of Business Administration degrees in accounting and ﬁnance, as well as a JD. This, in addition to my experience in private practice in Washington D.C. serving as an Assistant United States Attorney (and international experience) has given me a solid foundation. All of that experience was supremely beneﬁcial.

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500 However, the 30-plus years of law firm management and litigation experience working with opposing counsel, co-counsel, mediators, judges, experts and institutional, governmental and individual clients have truly given me the skills needed to effectively lead our firm in these changing times. Many of the same skills that are required to handle a complex multidistrict litigation are required to lead a large law firm. These include the ability to listen to and understand the perspective of different stakeholders, the persistence and rigor to do the hard work to evaluate problems and issues, the wherewithal and political savvy to put together a talented and trusted team, and the good judgment to be decisive but not impulsive. It’s important to play the long game and understand that life can be full of surprises and disruptions. One needs to stay flexible and adaptable. LD: Is there anything in your childhood that prepared you for your current job? LLS: Funny you should ask. Growing up on a farm I was the supervisor of hundreds of farm animals on a daily basis. I had responsibility for their care and feeding and learned to relate to them and to always stay calm in, as they say, “their sickness and health.” I learned to be creative as a young boy when I needed to get a 1,200-pound steer to move where and when I wanted it to. Similarly, learning to herd a flock of sheep in the rain or driving snow has some similarities to trying to get a group of lawyers to do anything collaboratively. Being around animals daily for years also made me learn not to show fear or hesitation – while also being gentle and steady. Creative problem solving was necessary on a weekly basis. LD: Are there any cases that you are especially proud of? LLS: That is a difficult question as there are so many to choose from. I’ve had the blessing of having been involved in some of the most fascinating and highprofile cases in American jurisprudence. There were the corporate fraud cases involving Enron, WorldCom, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Tyco, HealthSouth and Bernie Madoff. There was also the environmental pollution case of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the devastation of the massive wildfire cases, as well as other environmental contamination cases. More recently I’ve enjoyed pursuing the manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies that are largely responsible for creating the nation’s opioid crisis. Being appointed to the plaintiffs’ steering committee by Judge Polster in the massive National Prescrip-

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tion Opiate Litigation, MDL 2804, and representing governments, municipalities and indigenous tribes in many western states has been a true honor. I’m also proud of the work I did on the Volkswagen Diesel Emissions MDL before Judge Breyer. The lawyers on all sides of that case were truly amazing and it’s an example of how hard-fought litigation and creative problem-solving can result in outstanding results for all those involved. Currently, I am enjoying representing several states and local governments in their litigations against Monsanto over PCB pollution. LD: Is there one that stands out? LLS: One does stand out. I was fortunate to be a member of the international legal team that represented the Marshall Islands at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. For our work in that case, the team was nominated by the International Peace Bureau for the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize, along with the former Marshall Islands Foreign Minister, Tony deBrum. The other two Keller Rohrback lawyers involved in the case were Laurie Ashton and Alison Chase. Our work on that case is most memorable. But given the current world events, and the pending cases at the ICJ involving Gambia’s request for provisional measures to protect the Rohingya people remaining in Myanmar from genocide and the Ukraine’s case against the Russian Federation under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the crime of genocide, it’s clear that we as lawyers need to continue to use our skills and talents to try to stop suffering in the world as best as we can. LD: What is unique about Keller Rohrback? LLS: I believe as a firm Keller Rohrback strives for excellence in representing our clients. We choose cases carefully and we try to make sure we have the same goals as our clients. It truly makes a difference in morale and enthusiasm when you firmly believe in what you are doing. It isn’t “just a job” for our attorneys and staff. We all come from a variety of diverse backgrounds and try to bring a high-caliber, intense approach to litigation. We strive for intellectual and analytical excellence. We are also a dynamic firm in terms of our practice specialties, so over time we have evolved to our clients’ needs and changes in the law and the economy. Our goal is to win, and we achieve that through hard and impeccable work, communication, strong ethics and creativity. We are proud of what we do, proud of our clients and proud of our results.

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Clarence Thomas

SUSMAN GODFREY NEW YORK

U.S. SUPREME COURT WASHINGTON, D.C.

Diane Sullivan

John B. Thomas

WEIL PRINCETON, N.J.

HICKS THOMAS HOUSTON

Tara D. Sutton

James D. Thompson III

ROBINS KAPLAN MINNEAPOLIS

VINSON & ELKINS HOUSTON

Cristina Swarns

Mary B. Touchstone

INNOCENCE PROJECT NEW YORK

SIMPSON THACHER NEW YORK

Bonny E. Sweeney

Robert I. Townsend III

HAUSFELD SAN FRANCISCO

CRAVATH NEW YORK

Katherine M. Swift

Max Tribble

BARTLIT BECK CHICAGO

SUSMAN GODFREY HOUSTON

Quyen L. Ta

Richard M. Trobman

KING & SPALDING SAN FRANCISCO

LATHAM NEW YORK

John C. Taylor

Richard D. Truesdell Jr.

TAYLOR RING MANHATTAN BEACH, CALIF.

DAVIS POLK NEW YORK

Anita Wallace Thomas

Lisa Tsai

NELSON MULLINS ATLANTA

REID COLLINS AUSTIN

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Ronald J. Schutz ROBINS KAPLAN (MINNEAPOLIS)

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RONALD J. SCHUTZ BORN AND RAISED ON A DAIRY FARM IN

Southern Minnesota, Robins Kaplan Chairman Ron Schutz has an easy Midwestern charm that belies an aggressive courtroom style, bold leadership and an unending hustle. Equally at home at the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan and sitting in a duck blind in the backwoods of Mississippi, Schutz is an adaptable trial lawyer who knows how to connect with judges and juries alike, no matter what jurisdiction he’s in. Schutz has put equal amounts of energy into charity work and leadership roles alongside several decades of stunning wins in complex commercial cases – all while ﬁnding time on the side to scale literal mountains, including Mount Kilimanjaro, Machu Picchu and Everest Base Camp. Schutz had aspirations from a young age of being a lawyer, even though there were no lawyers in his family. “I just knew I wanted to be in a courtroom,” he says. Equally attracted to logic, strategy and leadership, Schutz built a foundation for his career with a markedly wide breadth, pursuing engineering and serving in the army all with an eye to the law. A Fellow of the elite American College of Trial Lawyers and a Lawdragon Legend, Schutz has practiced at Robins Kaplan for over 35 years. He is currently Chair of the ﬁrm’s Executive Board. Schutz started his legal career with the U.S. Army JAG Corps doing criminal trial work for four years, serving as both defense counsel and prosecutor. He tried 20 felony-level jury court-martials during that time, securing a murder acquittal and several rape convictions. Prior to law school and military service, Schutz earned a degree in Mechanical Engineering, which has come in handy during several high-stakes cases in his career that have centered around intellectual property and technology. Schutz’s background in engineering and aptitude for math and science made him well-suited for the explosive growth of IP litigation that started in the 1990s. He secured tens of millions of dollars in recoveries in separate actions against Sony, Fuji and Canon over digital camera technology patent infringements. He even won a patent infringement case against Apple in 2011 over technology used in their iPods.

PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE FIRM

BY ALISON PREECE

Taking Down A Titan Schutz first made a name for himself as an adept and fearless lawyer in a patent infringement case involving MRI technology against General Electric, at the height of the company’s grandeur. The case was in federal court in the Eastern District of New York, before Judge Leonard Wexler. Schutz represented Fonar, a company that produced commercial MRI scanners, and Fonar’s founder, Dr. Raymond Damadian. Damadian owned the first patent on an MRI machine in the U.S. and is credited with inventing the first MR (Magnetic Resonance) scanning machine which led to the technology behind the MRIs used today. This case was contentious and very closely watched, in large part because GE was one of the largest corporations in the world at the time, run by the widely respected CEO Jack Welch. The company spared no expense with their legal team, which were all strategically chosen. One of GE’s attorneys, Doug Wyatt, “was chair of the ABA committee on patent litigation, and a big name patent litigator in New York,” says Schutz. “Then there was John Bracken chairman of the Nassau County Republican Party and a good friend of the judge who had helped him get appointed to the bench. “Then a month before trial, a new lawyer, Tim Quinn showed up. He was very happy to tell me that GE hired him because he had tried and won the most cases before Judge Wexler.” With GE pulling out all the stops, Schutz and his partner and best friend at the time, Martin Lueck, rolled up their sleeves and dug in. They were both in their 30s, trusting their guts that this case was a winner. To up the ante further, the case was on a contingency fee basis. The result is one for the history books. “We waxed them,” says Schutz. They won the case at trial for $113M, a stunning result in the IP space in 1997. Welch was not pleased: Following the win, “everybody at GE who’d been associated with the case was gone within a year,” says Schutz. GE filed an appeal, bringing in new legal counsel, Donald Dunner, a legend in the patent law world who helped birth the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals and Carter G. Phillips of Sidley and Austin, one of the premier Supreme Court practitioners at the time

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500 During the appellate process, Schutz and his team sat down with Welch to discuss options. “It was an interesting meeting,” says Schutz. “We met for an hour in Jack Welch’s private conference room at 30 Rock. He wanted to settle and offered us $85M. We said, no thank you.” The calm and understated Minnesota mindset wins again: The case was afﬁrmed on appeal, and the ﬁnal verdict of $110M was cited at the time as the largest patent jury verdict ever to be upheld on appeal. With pre- and post-judgment interest, GE wrote a check for $128M.

Respect is Earned, Loyalty is Proven Schutz’s first legal mentor was Major Tim Court, his boss in the military. “I was a hyper aggressive, young lawyer and I stepped on some toes,” says Schutz. Court intervened on his behalf and took the time to counsel Schutz on decorum and respect for his superiors. By the time Schutz landed at Robins Kaplan (at the time, Robins, Zelle, Larson & Kaplan) a few years later, these newly formed virtues were tested again when two name partners, Larry Zelle and Dale Larson, left the firm – and wanted him to join them. Schutz had thus far been working under the wing of Dale Larson on environmental insurance cases stemming from the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, commonly known as the Superfund law. The purpose of the law was to assign liability and force the cleanup of hazardous waste sites. When Schutz was an associate, “it was the height of insurance litigation between insurance companies and their policy holders over coverage for polluting events,” he says. But when Larson announced he was leaving the firm, Schutz found himself at a major turning point in his budding career. It was July 4th weekend, and he was back at his parent’s farm, out driving a tractor, when the call came in. “Twelve partners and 15 associates had left the firm to start a new one, and they wanted me and a handful of other associates to join them,” recalls Schutz. They were offering immediate partnership and a doubling of their salaries. “It was not easy,” he says, “but the five of us conferred and made the decision to stay.” Then they immediately jumped in with retention efforts. “We said to

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the chairman at the time, Elliot Kaplan, how can we help?” They made calls across the firm, and quickly stemmed the outgoing flow: Very few lawyers left after that. His loyalty and dedication – along with his consistently outstanding trial results – were never forgotten by the leadership of the firm. But that did not stop his hustle – not by a long shot. Much of the Superfund work that Schutz had been working on as an associate had left along with Larson. Shortly after the exodus, the firm had a meeting with Burlington Northern Railroad, which was facing a slew of litigation from environmental protection agencies over the creosote they had been using in their railroad tie treatment plants. Schutz proved integral to the work. “I was the only one in the firm who had deep environmental litigation experience,” he says. They decided to hire the firm and wanted Schutz to lead the work. “I was the billing partner even though I was still an associate,” he says. “They made an exception.” At the same time, he took the initiative to reach out to Eugene Lang, founder of the REFAC Technology Development Corporation, one of the first companies to operate as a non-practicing entity in the IP space. REFAC’s model was representing inventors of technologies that were now in wide usage, and helping them to reclaim their rights to their IP since they often didn’t have the resources to do that on their own. At the time, they had a big case against Yamaha over the technology behind electronic musical instruments – and Schutz discovered that the law firm they were working with had just filed a motion to withdraw from the case. Schutz got a meeting with Lang, and showed up with a three-ring binder full of facts in the case, the filing history, and his initial thoughts on ways to move the case forward. “I had done my homework,” he says. Lang was impressed, so he connected him with the inventor, Mel Clark, who “insisted” he hire Schutz. Still an associate, his talent was evident and now he had proven his loyalty as well as his ability to secure big business. Schutz made partner at the end of that year.

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Stepping Up to Leadership In 1996, nine years after joining Robins Kaplan, Schutz became the head of its Intellectual Property Litigation Department. At 40 years old, he was the youngest department head to date – and more than up for the challenge. “I enjoy the leadership piece and the law piece put together,” says Schutz. “I like having a lot of things going at once.” Schutz took naturally to the role, having developed his leadership skills early on, through his time in the military and in the military’s college program, the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). He was later elected to the firm’s executive board, and then he took over as Managing Partner at the New York office a couple years after it opened. He stepped into his current position of Chairman of the firm in May 2019, maintaining the role through the shifting sands of the pandemic. “It’s been a challenging couple of years to say the least,” says Schutz. Not least of which because he was in the midst of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro when the early lockdowns and restrictions first hit, living in a tent with no cell coverage from March 9 to March 12, 2020. “It wasn’t until March 13, when we were high enough on the mountain that the guide said: ‘If you stand on that rock and hold your left leg in the air and your right arm out, you might get a signal,’” recalls Schutz. He was able to reach his wife and asked how things were back home. “She said, ‘Well, the President closed the borders for travel from Europe with no announcement about what’s going to happen with American citizens overseas. But I’m working on it, we’ll make sure that you get back to the country,’” says Schutz. “And she said, ‘also the stock market crashed, so we don’t have any money. How’s your climb?’” Never one to leave a hard task unfinished, Schutz finished the climb, taking in the sunrise over Tanzania before getting down the mountain and taking a circuitous route back to Minneapolis. He quarantined for two weeks before heading back to the office – where he’s been every day, aside from travel, since April 2020. “Part of it’s my nature,” says Schutz. “I like to be around people. The other part of it was look, the boss should be in the office. I’m a firm believer that you spend time with the other lawyers, with staff. I walk around the office, I know everybody. I knew it was important that I’d be in the office, even if very few other people were.”

A long-time mountain climber and marathon runner, Schutz works out every morning and climbs the steps of his office building three times a week while reading emails on his iPad. But he was forced to take a pause in his active lifestyle when, in 2016, he was diagnosed with a rare form of Leukemia. “Thanks to modern medicine and chemotherapy I came out it,” he says, “but by the time I was out of chemo I was barely able to walk. It’s a blood cancer and the chemo just wipes out your red blood cells and your hemoglobin. I was highly anemic.” Never one to linger on setbacks for long, he started “putting one foot in front of the other,” rebuilding his strength. In a show of tenacity and perseverance that has been a hallmark of his life and career, ten months after getting out of chemo Schutz ran the Boston marathon. “I didn’t have a qualifying time,” he says, ever modest. He ran it with a charity team, raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Schutz also spends time with another charitable organization close to his heart, called Tee It Up for the Troops. The veteran support organization hosts charity golf tournaments to raise money for wounded veterans. One of their biggest grant recipients is Fisher House Foundation, which provides support for families of veterans who are being treated at a Veterans Affairs hospital. “They do important work,” he says. Meanwhile, Schutz’s family is expanding, as they welcomed their first grandchild into the world this past February, born to one of his three children. He and his wife and high school sweetheart, Janet, have been married for 45 years. As Chairman of Robins Kaplan, Schutz is focused on shaping the next generation of trial lawyers to develop the same work ethic and eternal hustle that made him a Legend. His advice for young associates: “Always raise your hand and ask, what can I do to help? Ask for the hardest assignment and communicate with the people who are giving them to you,” he says. “Think of every case as if you owned the case and you were going to try it yourself.” “Become invaluable so that whoever’s running the case, whether it’s a senior associate or partner, when they need an answer, you’re the first person they think about.”

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Jeroen van Kwawegen

Johnny Ward

BERNSTEIN LITOWITZ NEW YORK

WARD SMITH & HILL LONGVIEW, TEXAS

Gregory Varallo

Leah Ward

BERNSTEIN LITOWITZ WILMINGTON

SEARS SMITH GAMBRELL ATLANTA

Krishna Veeraraghavan

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Liza M. Velazquez

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UBER SAN FRANCISCO

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MANATT LOS ANGELES

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