Over the years, we would ask corporate lawyers at major corporate defense firms – would you ever consider representing a whistleblower?
Almost universally, the answer has been – No, we only do corporate defense work.
In fact, corporate defense lawyers increasingly now are representing whistleblowers. They don’t want anyone to know about it. And they thought, because of the secrecy involved with protecting Dodd-Frank whistleblowers, that no one would know about it.
But thanks to recently released documents from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), pried out by Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, we know that at least three major corporate law firms – Winston & Strawn, Haynes & Boone, and Akin Gump – have successfully represented whistleblowers before the SEC. And there are probably hundreds more pending whistleblower cases represented by major corporate defense firms.
According to these documents, Michael Asaro, a partner at Akin Gump in Washington, D.C., secured an award of $800,000 for a whistleblower client.
Seth Farber, a partner at Winston & Strawn, secured an award of $2.2 million for a whistleblower client.
And Kit Addleman, a partner at Haynes & Boone, secured an award of 20 percent of the sanction for a whistleblower client.
“I have not been retained directly for the purpose of being a whistleblower’s counsel,” Addleman told Corporate Crime Reporter in response to an inquiry. “But rather I have been retained to represent specific...
Foley partner Lisa Noller, Chair of the Firm’s Litigation Department, will be speaking at the American Bar Association’s Qui Tam & Civil False Claims and Healthcare Fraud Institute in Washingt...