Attorney, Rathje Woodward LLC
Brian Murray is a first-chair trial and appellate lawyer with a nationwide practice, practicing at Rathje Woodward LLC. A former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, he represents companies and individuals in complex commercial litigation, class actions and civil government enforcement and regulatory matters. In addition, Brian has briefed over a hundred appeals, and has personally argued over 30 of them — including cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, nearly every federal court of appeals, and a number of state supreme and intermediate appellate courts. Brian also served as Deputy to the Associate Attorney General for the United States Department of Justice. In this senior leadership office at the DOJ, Brian counseled Department and executive branch principals and helped formulate policies and strategies for investigating, litigating, and resolving civil regulatory and enforcement matters. Brian relies on his deep experience in guiding his clients through pressing legal challenges.
Brian is routinely called upon to present clients’ most complex and business-critical matters to tribunals nationwide. Notable first-chair jury trial wins include a full defense verdict in a sprawling civil rights class action against the City of Chicago. Key appellate wins include a victory at the Supreme Court that changed the course of CERCLA law, and multiple wins in courts across the country for pharmaceutical companies combatting consumer fraud claims related to drug pricing. Other engagements over the last twenty years have included matters involving environmental, consumer fraud, RICO, antitrust, Title VII, the FAA, and other statutory and common-law claims; enforcement litigation involving the False Claims Act, environmental, and constitutional claims; and other complex civil matters.
Brian has taught Complex Litigation and Class Actions at the University of Chicago Law School for almost a decade. He is a member of the Seventh Circuit Bar Association, the Chicago-Lincoln and Robert Jones American Inns of Court, and the Illinois Appellate Lawyers’ Association. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and on PBS’s Chicago Tonight.
Dr. John Eastman is the former Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service and former Dean at Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1999, specializing in Constitutional Law, Legal History, and Property. He is a founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute that he founded in 1999. He has a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a B.A. in Politics and Economics from the University of Dallas. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage.
Prior to joining the Chapman law faculty, Dr. Eastman served as a law clerk to the Honorable Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, and to the Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced law with the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Dr. Eastman has also represented numerous clients in important constitutional law matters and has argued before the Supreme Court. On behalf of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, he has participated as amicus curiae before the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and State Supreme Courts in more than one hundred cases of constitutional significance, including Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (the school vouchers case), Kelo v. New London, Ct. (eminent domain), and Van Orden v. Perry (the 10 Commandments case). He has also appeared as an expert legal commentator on numerous television and radio programs, including C-SPAN, Fox News, PBS, NewsHour, and The O'Reilly Factor.
Partner, Schaerr | Jaffe LLP
Erik Jaffe has been involved in appeals on a broad range of legal issues, including First Amendment challenges to campaign finance reform, Commerce Clause challenges to Health Care Reform and other federal legislation, Equal Protection Clause challenges to affirmative action in education, First Amendment challenges to school vouchers, Fifth Amendment challenges to takings of property, Second Amendment challenges to restrictions on gun ownership, and a wide variety of cases involving patents, copyrights, ERISA, securities fraud, federal preemption, environmental regulation, and other state and federal constitutional and statutory matters. He has represented businesses and non-profit groups, Judges, Senators, former government officials, Nobel Prize winners, and a broad cross-section of private individuals. Mr. Jaffe has been involved in over 120 Supreme Court matters, including filing over 30 cert. petitions, representing half-a-dozen parties on the merits, and filing over 70 amicus briefs at both the cert. and merits stages.
A 1990 graduate of the Columbia University School of Law, Mr. Jaffe was a law clerk to Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1990 to 1991. Following that clerkship he spent five years in litigation practice with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly. In the summer of 1996 he left Williams & Connolly to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. At the end of that clerkship he started his own practice, and he was a sole practitioner from 1997 to 2018. He joined the firm of Schaerr | Jaffe LLP in 2018.
Associate Professor, Notre Dame Law School
Prof. Stephen C. Yelderman is Associate Professor at the University of Notre Dame School of Law. He has research and teaching interests in intellectual property (including patents), property, antitrust, bankruptcy, trusts & estates, and local government law. He clerked for Judge Gorsuch on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and formerly an Honor Attorney with the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. He graduated with High Honors and was a member of the University of Chicago Law Review and held an Olin Fellowship while in Law School. He also earned a Masters in Electrical Engineering from Stanford and worked as a patent analyst and patent agent prior to Law School.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Partner, Arnold & Porter
John Elwood is the head of Arnold & Porter’s Appellate and Supreme Court practice. He has argued before the Supreme Court nine times, and appeared before most of the federal courts of appeals. He has successfully argued cases across a broad cross-section of subjects, with particular experience in environmental law, the False Claims Act, government contracting, and federal criminal law
Mr. Elwood’s work has earned him recognition as one of Washington’s top Supreme Court lawyers (Washingtonian, 2013), as one of “a small group of lawyers” with an “outsized influence at the U.S. Supreme Court” (Reuters, 2014), and as one of the country’s most innovative lawyers (Financial Times, 2014). Chambers USA reports that “[t]he much-admired John Elwood is praised for his advocacy skills” (2013), and describes Mr. Elwood as “phenomenal” (2014), “incredibly talented” (2012), and “a much-loved and widely respected lawyer who is quick on his feet” (2010).
Before joining the firm, Mr. Elwood served in senior-level positions in the U.S. Department of Justice. Beginning as an Assistant to the Solicitor General, and continuing with the firm, he has briefed more than 20 merits cases before the Supreme Court of the United States, and has briefed approximately 135 cases at the certiorari stage. As the senior Deputy in the Office of Legal Counsel, he advised the White House and federal agencies on a range of constitutional, statutory, and regulatory issues.
Attorney, Rathje Woodward LLC
Brian Murray is a first-chair trial and appellate lawyer with a nationwide practice, practicing at Rathje Woodward LLC. A former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, he represents companies and individuals in complex commercial litigation, class actions and civil government enforcement and regulatory matters. In addition, Brian has briefed over a hundred appeals, and has personally argued over 30 of them — including cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, nearly every federal court of appeals, and a number of state supreme and intermediate appellate courts. Brian also served as Deputy to the Associate Attorney General for the United States Department of Justice. In this senior leadership office at the DOJ, Brian counseled Department and executive branch principals and helped formulate policies and strategies for investigating, litigating, and resolving civil regulatory and enforcement matters. Brian relies on his deep experience in guiding his clients through pressing legal challenges.
Brian is routinely called upon to present clients’ most complex and business-critical matters to tribunals nationwide. Notable first-chair jury trial wins include a full defense verdict in a sprawling civil rights class action against the City of Chicago. Key appellate wins include a victory at the Supreme Court that changed the course of CERCLA law, and multiple wins in courts across the country for pharmaceutical companies combatting consumer fraud claims related to drug pricing. Other engagements over the last twenty years have included matters involving environmental, consumer fraud, RICO, antitrust, Title VII, the FAA, and other statutory and common-law claims; enforcement litigation involving the False Claims Act, environmental, and constitutional claims; and other complex civil matters.
Brian has taught Complex Litigation and Class Actions at the University of Chicago Law School for almost a decade. He is a member of the Seventh Circuit Bar Association, the Chicago-Lincoln and Robert Jones American Inns of Court, and the Illinois Appellate Lawyers’ Association. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and on PBS’s Chicago Tonight.
Managing Partner, Schiff Hardin LLP
Ronald S. Safer concentrates in white collar criminal defense and also participates in our firm's civil litigation practice.
Mr. Safer, working with Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions, obtained a not guilty verdict for the firm's client, Julie Rea Harper. This trial involved the defense of a mother being retried for the murder of her son, even though a convicted felon in another state had confessed to the crime. Mr. Safer and his litigation team successfully discredited the prosecution's case, and her acquittal highlighted the need to reform the special prosecutor system in Illinois. ABC-TV's20/20 broadcast a feature story on this case, spotlighting Mr. Safer, in March 2007.
Mr. Safer has lectured for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on various subjects including the use of RICO, complex financial frauds, and numerous areas of trial practice.
Mr. Safer continues to lecture for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) concerning complex investigations.
Mr. Safer was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Illinois from 1989 until he rejoined Schiff Hardin in 1999.
As Chief of the Criminal Division at the time he left the U.S. Attorney's Office, Mr. Safer oversaw all financial fraud cases and supervised all 100 Assistant U.S. Attorneys in the division. Earlier, he served as Deputy Chief of the Special Prosecution Section (also overseeing all financial fraud cases) and Deputy Chief of the General Crimes Division.
Mr. Safer successfully prosecuted literally hundreds of defendants during his tenure in the U.S. Attorney's Office, including:
Mr. Safer's role in the Gangster Disciples prosecution was described in a feature story in Newsweek, November 1, 1999. Mr. Safer also is spotlighted in the City Confidential and American Justice television programs produced for the A&E cable television network and on "The Prosecutors" television program produced for theDiscovery Channel.
Partner, Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP
Gil M. Soffer is Co-Chair of the firm's National White Collar Practice. He joined the Firm in August 2000, after six years as a federal prosecutor. Mr. Soffer concentrates his practice in white collar criminal litigation, particularly corporate fraud litigation; corporate investigations; insurance litigation; and anti-fraud counseling and litigation. Mr. Soffer is also involved in a wide range of matters involving reinsurance, health care, and alternative dispute resolution.
In January 2008, Mr. Soffer accepted a position as Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General in Washington, D.C., and shortly thereafter was appointed Associate Deputy Attorney General. During his year-long term with the Department of Justice, Mr. Soffer advised the Deputy Attorney General on criminal matters at the Department, with particular emphasis on corporate fraud prosecutions. He played an integral role in drafting the Department's Corporate Monitor Principles and Corporate Charging Principles, and provided training on the latter policy to U.S. Attorneys' Offices nationwide. Mr. Soffer also managed the President's Corporate Fraud Task Force and briefed members of Congress about criminal matters within the Department of Justice.
Mr. Soffer had previously served in the Department of Justice when he was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the United States Attorney's Office in Chicago (1994 - 2000). In that capacity, he prosecuted a wide range of federal crimes, including bank, mail, wire, tax, and insurance fraud; narcotics and firearms trafficking; bank robbery; embezzlement; and money laundering. In November 1996, Mr. Soffer received the Director's Award for Superior Performance as an Assistant U.S. Attorney from then-Attorney General Janet Reno.
Mr. Soffer graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 1986 and earned his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1989. Upon graduating from law school, Mr. Soffer clerked in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois under Judge John A. Nordberg. After his clerkship, Mr. Soffer became an associate with the law firm of McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen in San Francisco, where he practiced in the general litigation department.
Mr. Soffer is a member of the American Bar Association and is admitted to practice in Illinois and California. He has served as an Adjunct Professor at Loyola University Law School, where he taught Federal Criminal Prosecution. Mr. Soffer has lectured on subjects ranging from corporate internal investigations to deferred prosecution agreements, appeared regularly as a legal expert on the ABC News Now program Guilt or Innocence, and testified before Congress about the use and selection of corporate monitors in criminal cases.
In December 2009, Mr. Soffer was appointed by Illinois Governor Quinn to serve as a Commissioner on the Illinois Executive Ethics Commission. The nine-member Commission was formed to promote ethics in the executive branch of public service and to ensure that state business is conducted with fairness and integrity. Toward that end, the Commission adjudicates alleged violations of the Illinois Ethics Act and provides guidance to the State's ethics officers.
Attorney, Rathje Woodward LLC
Brian Murray is a first-chair trial and appellate lawyer with a nationwide practice, practicing at Rathje Woodward LLC. A former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, he represents companies and individuals in complex commercial litigation, class actions and civil government enforcement and regulatory matters. In addition, Brian has briefed over a hundred appeals, and has personally argued over 30 of them — including cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, nearly every federal court of appeals, and a number of state supreme and intermediate appellate courts. Brian also served as Deputy to the Associate Attorney General for the United States Department of Justice. In this senior leadership office at the DOJ, Brian counseled Department and executive branch principals and helped formulate policies and strategies for investigating, litigating, and resolving civil regulatory and enforcement matters. Brian relies on his deep experience in guiding his clients through pressing legal challenges.
Brian is routinely called upon to present clients’ most complex and business-critical matters to tribunals nationwide. Notable first-chair jury trial wins include a full defense verdict in a sprawling civil rights class action against the City of Chicago. Key appellate wins include a victory at the Supreme Court that changed the course of CERCLA law, and multiple wins in courts across the country for pharmaceutical companies combatting consumer fraud claims related to drug pricing. Other engagements over the last twenty years have included matters involving environmental, consumer fraud, RICO, antitrust, Title VII, the FAA, and other statutory and common-law claims; enforcement litigation involving the False Claims Act, environmental, and constitutional claims; and other complex civil matters.
Brian has taught Complex Litigation and Class Actions at the University of Chicago Law School for almost a decade. He is a member of the Seventh Circuit Bar Association, the Chicago-Lincoln and Robert Jones American Inns of Court, and the Illinois Appellate Lawyers’ Association. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and on PBS’s Chicago Tonight.
Attorney, Rathje Woodward LLC
Brian Murray is a first-chair trial and appellate lawyer with a nationwide practice, practicing at Rathje Woodward LLC. A former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, he represents companies and individuals in complex commercial litigation, class actions and civil government enforcement and regulatory matters. In addition, Brian has briefed over a hundred appeals, and has personally argued over 30 of them — including cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, nearly every federal court of appeals, and a number of state supreme and intermediate appellate courts. Brian also served as Deputy to the Associate Attorney General for the United States Department of Justice. In this senior leadership office at the DOJ, Brian counseled Department and executive branch principals and helped formulate policies and strategies for investigating, litigating, and resolving civil regulatory and enforcement matters. Brian relies on his deep experience in guiding his clients through pressing legal challenges.
Brian is routinely called upon to present clients’ most complex and business-critical matters to tribunals nationwide. Notable first-chair jury trial wins include a full defense verdict in a sprawling civil rights class action against the City of Chicago. Key appellate wins include a victory at the Supreme Court that changed the course of CERCLA law, and multiple wins in courts across the country for pharmaceutical companies combatting consumer fraud claims related to drug pricing. Other engagements over the last twenty years have included matters involving environmental, consumer fraud, RICO, antitrust, Title VII, the FAA, and other statutory and common-law claims; enforcement litigation involving the False Claims Act, environmental, and constitutional claims; and other complex civil matters.
Brian has taught Complex Litigation and Class Actions at the University of Chicago Law School for almost a decade. He is a member of the Seventh Circuit Bar Association, the Chicago-Lincoln and Robert Jones American Inns of Court, and the Illinois Appellate Lawyers’ Association. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and on PBS’s Chicago Tonight.
Supreme Court Update: June 17 Decisions - Podcast
Brian J. Murray, John C. Eastman, Erik S. Jaffe, Stephen Yelderman, Dean Reuter
Practice Groups Podcast
On Monday, June 17th, the U.S. Supreme Court decided five important cases. Listen to experts...
Honest Services Fraud: What's Left?
John P. Elwood, Brian J. Murray, Ronald S. Safer, Gil Soffer
Chicago Lawyers Chapter and Criminal Law & Procedure Practice Group
Last year, in its "Honest Services Cases" the Supreme Court purported to confine the statute...
Gay Marriage and the Federal Judicial Confirmation Process
David S. Petron, Brian J. Murray
Last year saw momentous advances in civil rights for homosexual persons. First, in Lawrence v....
Gay Marriage and the Federal Judicial Nomination Process
David S. Petron, Brian J. Murray
Last year saw momentous advances in civil rights for homosexual persons. First, in Lawrence v....