Supreme Court & Appellate Litigation Chair, Lex Politica; Of Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom
Erin Morrow Hawley serves as Chair of Lex Politica's Supreme Court and Appellate Practice overseeing the firm’s strategic appellate litigation and critical motions practice in the trial courts. Erin is an experienced litigator who represents clients in constitutional, regulatory, and appellate matters in federal and state courts throughout the country.
Erin has represented dozens of clients before the Supreme Court of the United States, served as lead counsel in high-profile cases raising novel constitutional and statutory issues, and authored numerous successful petitions for certiorari and briefs in opposition. She has argued in state and federal appellate and trial courts throughout the country, including the Supreme Court of the United States. Erin represents diverse clients in high-stakes litigation from state governments to faith-based nonprofits to Fortune 100 companies. She possesses expertise on a wide range of subject matters including administrative law, the First Amendment, religious liberty, federal jurisdiction, federal preemption, equitable jurisdiction, tax law, the Affordable Care Act, and Title IX.
Erin represents clients in cases where public communications strategy is paramount. She is a sought-after speaker and writer, has testified multiple times before Congress, and is a frequent presenter on constitutional and administrative law issues, including at the Oxford Union, the National Federalist Society Convention, and university campuses across the country. She is a frequent commentator to media outlets, including Fox News, MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, WORLD, USA Today, the Federalist, and the Hill.
Erin previously oversaw Alliance Defending Freedom’s--where she still serves as Of Counsel--litigation strategies to empower women and protect the dignity of life, defend pregnancy centers’ First Amendment rights from government overreach, and safeguard Americans’ freedoms from the ever-encroaching administrative state.
United States Senator, Missouri
U.S. SENATOR JOSH HAWLEY TOOK OFFICE IN JANUARY 2019.
Raised in rural Missouri, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley previously served as Missouri’s Attorney General. There he earned a reputation for taking on the big and the powerful to protect Missouri workers and families. He has battled big government and big business, special interests, organized crime, and anyone who would threaten the well-being of Missourians.
A native of small town Lexington, Missouri in rural Lafayette County, Senator Hawley graduated from Rockhurst High School in Kansas City. After graduating from Stanford University in 2002 and Yale Law School in 2006, he moved back home to mid-Missouri with his wife, Erin, where they started a family. They are the proud parents of two young boys, Elijah and Blaise.
Senator Hawley is recognized as one of the nation’s leading constitutional lawyers. He has litigated at the Supreme Court of the United States, the federal courts of appeals, and in state court, fighting for the people’s liberties. He previously fought Obamacare at the Supreme Court — and won — as one of the lead attorneys in the landmark Hobby Lobby case. He was also a lead attorney in the Hosanna-Tabor case at the Supreme Court, protecting the rights of churches.
As Attorney General, he fought the Washington overreach threatening farms and family businesses, including the Waters of the United States Rule and the Clean Power Plan. Senator Hawley has also taken on big opioid manufacturers, challenging their unethical marketing practices that helped create an epidemic of opioid abuse. He cracked down on human trafficking in Missouri, leading the largest anti-trafficking bust in Missouri history. And he stood up to big tech, launching investigations of the most powerful companies in the world—Google and Facebook—to protect Missourians, their data, and the First Amendment.
The youngest Senator in America, Senator Hawley serves on the Senate Committees on the Judiciary; Armed Services; Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; Small Business and Entrepreneurship; and the Special Committee on Aging.
Associate Dean for Faculty Development; Diane and M.O. Miller II Research Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame Law School
Randy Kozel joined the Law School faculty in 2011. He was named the Distinguished Teacher of the Year by the Class of 2014. He also directs the Notre Dame Program on Constitutional Structure.
Kozel teaches and researches in fields including constitutional law, federal courts, information privacy, and contract law, with a particular focus on the role of precedent in legal decision making. His recent scholarship exploring the connection between precedent and interpretive philosophy has been published or is forthcoming in journals including the Northwestern University Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the California Law Review, the Vanderbilt Law Review, and the Texas Law Review. His book, entitled Settled Versus Right: A Theory of Precedent, makes the case for using precedent to bridge interpretive disagreements.
Kozel received his J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he was the Articles Committee Chair of the Harvard Law Review. He served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and for Judge Alex Kozinski at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. He has also practiced as a litigator with a large law firm and as Special Counsel to the General Counsel at General Electric Company.
Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law
James Lindgren is a law professor at Northwestern University, with a BA from Yale and a JD and a PhD in (quantitative) sociology from the University of Chicago. He is a cofounder of the Section on Scholarship of the Association of American Law Schools and a former chair of its Section on Social Science and the Law. He has published in the Yale Law Journal and the Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, California, Northwestern, Georgetown, and UCLA Law Reviews, among others. His work includes "Fall from Grace: Arming America and the Bellesiles Scandal " (Yale Law Journal, 2002) and "Term Limits for the Supreme Court: Life Tenure Reconsidered " (Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, 2006). In Evans v. US (1992), the US Supreme Court adopted Lindgren's view of the overlap of bribery and federal extortion. He blogs at the Washington Post.
Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School
Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican, and confirmed by a Democratic Senate by unanimous consent. McConnell has previously held chaired professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, and visiting professorships at Harvard and NYU. He teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional history, First Amendment, and interpretive theory. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, especially church and state, equal protection, and separation of powers. His book, “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2020, based on the Tanner Lectures in Human Values, which he delivered at Princeton in 2019. His latest book, co-authored with Nathan Chapman, “Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience,” was published by Oxford University Press in mid-2023. McConnell has argued sixteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, most recently Carney v. Adams (2020). defending a provision of the Delaware Constitution requiring political balance on that state’s courts. More recently, he was co-counsel in Gonzalez v. Google. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago, and has received honorary degrees from Notre Dame University and Michigan State. He served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and D.C. Circuit Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright. He has been Assistant General Counsel of the Office of Management & Budget, Assistant to the Solicitor General of the Department of Justice, and a member of the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. He is Senior of Counsel to the law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, and is co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Review Board.
Assistant Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School
Minor Myers joined the faculty at Brooklyn Law School after serving as a visiting assistant professor of law at the school from 2007 to 2009, teaching corporate law and property. His research interests include corporate law and local government law, and his most recent scholarship addresses the decisions of corporate special litigation committees.
Previously, Professor Myers was in private practice in the corporate and litigation departments at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York. Following law school, he clerked for Judge Peter W. Hall and then Judge Ralph K. Winter of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Supreme Court & Appellate Litigation Chair, Lex Politica; Of Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom
Erin Morrow Hawley serves as Chair of Lex Politica's Supreme Court and Appellate Practice overseeing the firm’s strategic appellate litigation and critical motions practice in the trial courts. Erin is an experienced litigator who represents clients in constitutional, regulatory, and appellate matters in federal and state courts throughout the country.
Erin has represented dozens of clients before the Supreme Court of the United States, served as lead counsel in high-profile cases raising novel constitutional and statutory issues, and authored numerous successful petitions for certiorari and briefs in opposition. She has argued in state and federal appellate and trial courts throughout the country, including the Supreme Court of the United States. Erin represents diverse clients in high-stakes litigation from state governments to faith-based nonprofits to Fortune 100 companies. She possesses expertise on a wide range of subject matters including administrative law, the First Amendment, religious liberty, federal jurisdiction, federal preemption, equitable jurisdiction, tax law, the Affordable Care Act, and Title IX.
Erin represents clients in cases where public communications strategy is paramount. She is a sought-after speaker and writer, has testified multiple times before Congress, and is a frequent presenter on constitutional and administrative law issues, including at the Oxford Union, the National Federalist Society Convention, and university campuses across the country. She is a frequent commentator to media outlets, including Fox News, MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, WORLD, USA Today, the Federalist, and the Hill.
Erin previously oversaw Alliance Defending Freedom’s--where she still serves as Of Counsel--litigation strategies to empower women and protect the dignity of life, defend pregnancy centers’ First Amendment rights from government overreach, and safeguard Americans’ freedoms from the ever-encroaching administrative state.
United States Senator, Missouri
U.S. SENATOR JOSH HAWLEY TOOK OFFICE IN JANUARY 2019.
Raised in rural Missouri, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley previously served as Missouri’s Attorney General. There he earned a reputation for taking on the big and the powerful to protect Missouri workers and families. He has battled big government and big business, special interests, organized crime, and anyone who would threaten the well-being of Missourians.
A native of small town Lexington, Missouri in rural Lafayette County, Senator Hawley graduated from Rockhurst High School in Kansas City. After graduating from Stanford University in 2002 and Yale Law School in 2006, he moved back home to mid-Missouri with his wife, Erin, where they started a family. They are the proud parents of two young boys, Elijah and Blaise.
Senator Hawley is recognized as one of the nation’s leading constitutional lawyers. He has litigated at the Supreme Court of the United States, the federal courts of appeals, and in state court, fighting for the people’s liberties. He previously fought Obamacare at the Supreme Court — and won — as one of the lead attorneys in the landmark Hobby Lobby case. He was also a lead attorney in the Hosanna-Tabor case at the Supreme Court, protecting the rights of churches.
As Attorney General, he fought the Washington overreach threatening farms and family businesses, including the Waters of the United States Rule and the Clean Power Plan. Senator Hawley has also taken on big opioid manufacturers, challenging their unethical marketing practices that helped create an epidemic of opioid abuse. He cracked down on human trafficking in Missouri, leading the largest anti-trafficking bust in Missouri history. And he stood up to big tech, launching investigations of the most powerful companies in the world—Google and Facebook—to protect Missourians, their data, and the First Amendment.
The youngest Senator in America, Senator Hawley serves on the Senate Committees on the Judiciary; Armed Services; Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; Small Business and Entrepreneurship; and the Special Committee on Aging.
Associate Dean for Faculty Development; Diane and M.O. Miller II Research Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame Law School
Randy Kozel joined the Law School faculty in 2011. He was named the Distinguished Teacher of the Year by the Class of 2014. He also directs the Notre Dame Program on Constitutional Structure.
Kozel teaches and researches in fields including constitutional law, federal courts, information privacy, and contract law, with a particular focus on the role of precedent in legal decision making. His recent scholarship exploring the connection between precedent and interpretive philosophy has been published or is forthcoming in journals including the Northwestern University Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the California Law Review, the Vanderbilt Law Review, and the Texas Law Review. His book, entitled Settled Versus Right: A Theory of Precedent, makes the case for using precedent to bridge interpretive disagreements.
Kozel received his J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he was the Articles Committee Chair of the Harvard Law Review. He served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and for Judge Alex Kozinski at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. He has also practiced as a litigator with a large law firm and as Special Counsel to the General Counsel at General Electric Company.
Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law
James Lindgren is a law professor at Northwestern University, with a BA from Yale and a JD and a PhD in (quantitative) sociology from the University of Chicago. He is a cofounder of the Section on Scholarship of the Association of American Law Schools and a former chair of its Section on Social Science and the Law. He has published in the Yale Law Journal and the Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, California, Northwestern, Georgetown, and UCLA Law Reviews, among others. His work includes "Fall from Grace: Arming America and the Bellesiles Scandal " (Yale Law Journal, 2002) and "Term Limits for the Supreme Court: Life Tenure Reconsidered " (Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, 2006). In Evans v. US (1992), the US Supreme Court adopted Lindgren's view of the overlap of bribery and federal extortion. He blogs at the Washington Post.
Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School
Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican, and confirmed by a Democratic Senate by unanimous consent. McConnell has previously held chaired professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, and visiting professorships at Harvard and NYU. He teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional history, First Amendment, and interpretive theory. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, especially church and state, equal protection, and separation of powers. His book, “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2020, based on the Tanner Lectures in Human Values, which he delivered at Princeton in 2019. His latest book, co-authored with Nathan Chapman, “Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience,” was published by Oxford University Press in mid-2023. McConnell has argued sixteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, most recently Carney v. Adams (2020). defending a provision of the Delaware Constitution requiring political balance on that state’s courts. More recently, he was co-counsel in Gonzalez v. Google. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago, and has received honorary degrees from Notre Dame University and Michigan State. He served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and D.C. Circuit Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright. He has been Assistant General Counsel of the Office of Management & Budget, Assistant to the Solicitor General of the Department of Justice, and a member of the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. He is Senior of Counsel to the law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, and is co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Review Board.
Assistant Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School
Minor Myers joined the faculty at Brooklyn Law School after serving as a visiting assistant professor of law at the school from 2007 to 2009, teaching corporate law and property. His research interests include corporate law and local government law, and his most recent scholarship addresses the decisions of corporate special litigation committees.
Previously, Professor Myers was in private practice in the corporate and litigation departments at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York. Following law school, he clerked for Judge Peter W. Hall and then Judge Ralph K. Winter of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA School of Law
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford), as well as the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. He recently retired from teaching at UCLA, after 30 years there, and is now focusing on research.
Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed. 2023), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2016), as well as over 100 academic law journal articles, mostly on First Amendment law. He is a member of The American Law Institute; the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Free Speech Law; and the creator and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog founded in 2002 (hosted at the Washington Post from 2014 to 2017 and now at Reason Magazine).
Partner, Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP
Jeff Jacobson defends consumer, privacy and securities class actions, and represents media, technology and other companies in general commercial litigation. With nearly two decades in private practice and several years of experience at the highest levels of the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, Mr. Jacobson assists his clients to resolve and minimize the reputational damage and business interruptions that can arise from litigation, particularly costly class actions. In addition, Mr. Jacobson has considerable and proven skills in managing the electronic discovery challenges presented by complex litigation and investigative matters.
During his tenure as director of the New Jersey Division of Law and chief counsel to the New Jersey Attorney General (2014-16), Mr. Jacobson oversaw law enforcement investigations involving consumer protection and data privacy, chaired the Attorney General’s Cyber Working Group, and oversaw more than 500 lawyers who represented all agencies of state government in defensive and affirmative litigation. Throughout his tenure, Jeff personally handled some of the state’s highest profile cases in state and federal court.
Because Mr. Jacobson has chaired both the prosecution and defense of major consumer fraud and privacy litigation, he is able to provide his clients with the benefit of a truly multifaceted and strategic perspective regarding even the highest-stakes claims. Mr. Jacobson has successfully defended consumer fraud and privacy-related class actions for media, electronics and consumer products companies, as well as securities class actions for U.S.-based and foreign private issuers in federal and state trial and appellate courts.
Class actions can be both costly and disruptive, so Mr. Jacobson strives to resolve such matters in his client’s favor as quickly and inexpensively as possible. This may mean moving the court to deny class certification at the earliest stage of a case, seeking quick summary judgment on key issues underlying the class motion, or devising a settlement that costs less than litigating the case. In matters requiring extensive discovery, Mr. Jacobson focuses on avoiding unnecessary tasks and minimizing vendor costs.
Mr. Jacobson has been selected to the Data Protection and Privacy and Securities Litigation lists by US Legal 500, a Legalease Publication. A description of the selection methodology can be found at www.legal500.com/assets/pages/about-us/how-it-works.html#rank. He has also been recognized as a Securities Litigation “Star” in the IFLR Benchmark Litigation Guide. A description of the selection methodology can be found at www.benchmarklitigation.com/general/research. (No aspect of these advertisements have been approved by the Supreme Court of New Jersey.)
Mr. Jacobson has written extensively on class action defense and e-discovery strategies for the New York Law Journal, Class Action Litigation Report, Product Liability Law 360, and other publications. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists, and served on a New Jersey Supreme Court task force to assess attorney ethics issues arising from metadata in electronic documents.
Adjunct Professor, George Washington University Law School
President, New England Legal Foundation
Born in New York City; educated in the New York City public schools, Columbia University and Yale Law School. Joined Ropes & Gray, LLP in Boston in 1984; became litigation partner in 1993; retired in 2004. Joined New England Legal Foundation as General Counsel in 2004 and selected as President in 2006.
Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Mark A. Perry is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and Co-Chair of the Firm’s nationwide Appellate and Constitutional Law Practice Group. His practice focuses on complex commercial litigation at both the trial and appellate levels.
Mr. Perry is an accomplished appellate lawyer who has briefed and argued many cases in the Supreme Court of the United States—including winning the landmark decisions in Lucia v. SEC, Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank, and Janus Capital Group v. First Derivative Traders—and the federal courts of appeals. (See Overview of Section 101 Patent Cases Decided After Alice v. CLS (as of March 1, 2019)). He has served as chief appellate counsel to Fortune 100 companies in significant securities, intellectual property, and employment cases. He also appears frequently in federal district courts, serving both as lead counsel and as legal strategist in complex commercial cases. He has special expertise in class actions, and teaches the upper-level course in Class Action Law and Practice at Georgetown University Law Center.
Mr. Perry is ranked by Chambers USA in Nationwide Appellate Law, which noted that he “is described as a ‘master strategist and a brilliant writer.’” He has also been recognized by Best Lawyers in America® in the fields of Appellate Practice and Securities / Capital Markets Law, by Super Lawyers in the Appellate category, and by IAM Patent—which called him “undoubtedly one of the top appellate specialists in the country”—for his work in the Federal Circuit. Mr. Perry has been named a National Litigation Star for both Appellate and General Commercial by Benchmark Litigation (which has also awarded him Appellate Lawyer of the Year), identified as a “Securities MVP” and an “Appellate MVP” by Law360, and named a Litigator of the Week by The American Lawyer. He is a Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America.
Before joining Gibson Dunn, Mr. Perry served as a law clerk to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the Supreme Court of the United States, and to Judge Alex Kozinski of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He also worked as what is now called a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States. Mr. Perry earned his law degree with high honors from the University of Chicago Law School, where he served as Executive Editor of the Law Review. His undergraduate degree was conferred by the University of California at Berkeley.
Mr. Perry is the global co-editor, and co-author of the U.S. chapter, of the international publication Getting the Deal Through: Appeals, and he is the author of the class certification chapter in the PLI treatise Securities Litigation: A Practitioner’s Guide. Other recent publications and additional information are available below. Representative matters and references are available on request.
VP and Senior Counsel for Constitutional Litigation, Center for, PC
John Vail is an original member of the Center for Constitutional Litigation, where he is Vice President and Senior Litigation Counsel. He litigates issues dealing with the right to jury trial and the right of access to courts, appearing in state and federal courts throughout the United States, including the Supreme Court.
Mr. Vail has written broadly with regard to these topics, in popular and academic publications. In speaking engagements he both informs and amuses audiences. He has shared his insights with law students as Professorial Lecturer in Law at the George Washington University Law School.
Prior to his current employment Mr. Vail worked with legal aid organizations in Tennessee, New Mexico, and North Carolina for seventeen years, with time out doing human rights work in Eastern Europe.
He has been recognized by the legal services community for “inspired vision and outstanding leadership” and has received the Public Justice Achievement Award from Trial Lawyers for Public Justice for his “outstanding work and success” in preserving the right of access to justice.
Mr. Vail is a graduate of the College of the University of Chicago and of Vanderbilt Law School.
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Don Willett serves on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Before joining the federal bench, Judge Willett served 13 years on the Supreme Court
of Texas. His career spans decades of public service, including roles as legal counsel to
a Texas Attorney General, a Texas Governor, a U.S. Attorney General, and the
President of the United States.
Raised by a heroic widowed mom in a doublewide trailer in a town of 32, Judge
Willett is his family’s first college graduate. He earned a triple-major B.B.A. from Baylor
University—where he serves on the Board of Regents—and three degrees from Duke
University—where he serves on the Board of Visitors: a J.D. with honors, an A.M. in
political science, and an LL.M. in judicial studies. After law school, he clerked on the
Fifth Circuit and practiced at Haynes and Boone before entering public service.
Judge Willett publishes widely in both leading law reviews and national media, including
The Yale Law Journal, The University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and The Wall Street
Journal. The longtime editor-in-chief of Judicature—the Scholarly Journal for Judges, he
holds academic appointments at various law schools and has received more than a
dozen Green Bag honors for “exemplary legal writing.” He was named Distinguished
Jurist of the Year by the Texas Review of Law & Politics, and he is a member of the
American Law Institute and a Life Fellow of the American, Texas, and Austin Bar
Foundations.
A onetime bull rider and professional drummer, Judge Willett was named “Tweeter
Laureate of Texas” in 2015. He is the namesake of Don R. Willett Elementary
School—home of mighty Willett Wranglers—located just a mile from where he grew up.
He and his radiant wife, Tiffany have three children—Jacob, Shane-David, and
Geneviève—plus the family pup, Amicus.
Partner, Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP
Jeff Jacobson defends consumer, privacy and securities class actions, and represents media, technology and other companies in general commercial litigation. With nearly two decades in private practice and several years of experience at the highest levels of the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, Mr. Jacobson assists his clients to resolve and minimize the reputational damage and business interruptions that can arise from litigation, particularly costly class actions. In addition, Mr. Jacobson has considerable and proven skills in managing the electronic discovery challenges presented by complex litigation and investigative matters.
During his tenure as director of the New Jersey Division of Law and chief counsel to the New Jersey Attorney General (2014-16), Mr. Jacobson oversaw law enforcement investigations involving consumer protection and data privacy, chaired the Attorney General’s Cyber Working Group, and oversaw more than 500 lawyers who represented all agencies of state government in defensive and affirmative litigation. Throughout his tenure, Jeff personally handled some of the state’s highest profile cases in state and federal court.
Because Mr. Jacobson has chaired both the prosecution and defense of major consumer fraud and privacy litigation, he is able to provide his clients with the benefit of a truly multifaceted and strategic perspective regarding even the highest-stakes claims. Mr. Jacobson has successfully defended consumer fraud and privacy-related class actions for media, electronics and consumer products companies, as well as securities class actions for U.S.-based and foreign private issuers in federal and state trial and appellate courts.
Class actions can be both costly and disruptive, so Mr. Jacobson strives to resolve such matters in his client’s favor as quickly and inexpensively as possible. This may mean moving the court to deny class certification at the earliest stage of a case, seeking quick summary judgment on key issues underlying the class motion, or devising a settlement that costs less than litigating the case. In matters requiring extensive discovery, Mr. Jacobson focuses on avoiding unnecessary tasks and minimizing vendor costs.
Mr. Jacobson has been selected to the Data Protection and Privacy and Securities Litigation lists by US Legal 500, a Legalease Publication. A description of the selection methodology can be found at www.legal500.com/assets/pages/about-us/how-it-works.html#rank. He has also been recognized as a Securities Litigation “Star” in the IFLR Benchmark Litigation Guide. A description of the selection methodology can be found at www.benchmarklitigation.com/general/research. (No aspect of these advertisements have been approved by the Supreme Court of New Jersey.)
Mr. Jacobson has written extensively on class action defense and e-discovery strategies for the New York Law Journal, Class Action Litigation Report, Product Liability Law 360, and other publications. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists, and served on a New Jersey Supreme Court task force to assess attorney ethics issues arising from metadata in electronic documents.
Adjunct Professor, George Washington University Law School
President, New England Legal Foundation
Born in New York City; educated in the New York City public schools, Columbia University and Yale Law School. Joined Ropes & Gray, LLP in Boston in 1984; became litigation partner in 1993; retired in 2004. Joined New England Legal Foundation as General Counsel in 2004 and selected as President in 2006.
Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Mark A. Perry is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and Co-Chair of the Firm’s nationwide Appellate and Constitutional Law Practice Group. His practice focuses on complex commercial litigation at both the trial and appellate levels.
Mr. Perry is an accomplished appellate lawyer who has briefed and argued many cases in the Supreme Court of the United States—including winning the landmark decisions in Lucia v. SEC, Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank, and Janus Capital Group v. First Derivative Traders—and the federal courts of appeals. (See Overview of Section 101 Patent Cases Decided After Alice v. CLS (as of March 1, 2019)). He has served as chief appellate counsel to Fortune 100 companies in significant securities, intellectual property, and employment cases. He also appears frequently in federal district courts, serving both as lead counsel and as legal strategist in complex commercial cases. He has special expertise in class actions, and teaches the upper-level course in Class Action Law and Practice at Georgetown University Law Center.
Mr. Perry is ranked by Chambers USA in Nationwide Appellate Law, which noted that he “is described as a ‘master strategist and a brilliant writer.’” He has also been recognized by Best Lawyers in America® in the fields of Appellate Practice and Securities / Capital Markets Law, by Super Lawyers in the Appellate category, and by IAM Patent—which called him “undoubtedly one of the top appellate specialists in the country”—for his work in the Federal Circuit. Mr. Perry has been named a National Litigation Star for both Appellate and General Commercial by Benchmark Litigation (which has also awarded him Appellate Lawyer of the Year), identified as a “Securities MVP” and an “Appellate MVP” by Law360, and named a Litigator of the Week by The American Lawyer. He is a Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America.
Before joining Gibson Dunn, Mr. Perry served as a law clerk to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the Supreme Court of the United States, and to Judge Alex Kozinski of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He also worked as what is now called a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States. Mr. Perry earned his law degree with high honors from the University of Chicago Law School, where he served as Executive Editor of the Law Review. His undergraduate degree was conferred by the University of California at Berkeley.
Mr. Perry is the global co-editor, and co-author of the U.S. chapter, of the international publication Getting the Deal Through: Appeals, and he is the author of the class certification chapter in the PLI treatise Securities Litigation: A Practitioner’s Guide. Other recent publications and additional information are available below. Representative matters and references are available on request.
VP and Senior Counsel for Constitutional Litigation, Center for, PC
John Vail is an original member of the Center for Constitutional Litigation, where he is Vice President and Senior Litigation Counsel. He litigates issues dealing with the right to jury trial and the right of access to courts, appearing in state and federal courts throughout the United States, including the Supreme Court.
Mr. Vail has written broadly with regard to these topics, in popular and academic publications. In speaking engagements he both informs and amuses audiences. He has shared his insights with law students as Professorial Lecturer in Law at the George Washington University Law School.
Prior to his current employment Mr. Vail worked with legal aid organizations in Tennessee, New Mexico, and North Carolina for seventeen years, with time out doing human rights work in Eastern Europe.
He has been recognized by the legal services community for “inspired vision and outstanding leadership” and has received the Public Justice Achievement Award from Trial Lawyers for Public Justice for his “outstanding work and success” in preserving the right of access to justice.
Mr. Vail is a graduate of the College of the University of Chicago and of Vanderbilt Law School.
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Don Willett serves on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Before joining the federal bench, Judge Willett served 13 years on the Supreme Court
of Texas. His career spans decades of public service, including roles as legal counsel to
a Texas Attorney General, a Texas Governor, a U.S. Attorney General, and the
President of the United States.
Raised by a heroic widowed mom in a doublewide trailer in a town of 32, Judge
Willett is his family’s first college graduate. He earned a triple-major B.B.A. from Baylor
University—where he serves on the Board of Regents—and three degrees from Duke
University—where he serves on the Board of Visitors: a J.D. with honors, an A.M. in
political science, and an LL.M. in judicial studies. After law school, he clerked on the
Fifth Circuit and practiced at Haynes and Boone before entering public service.
Judge Willett publishes widely in both leading law reviews and national media, including
The Yale Law Journal, The University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and The Wall Street
Journal. The longtime editor-in-chief of Judicature—the Scholarly Journal for Judges, he
holds academic appointments at various law schools and has received more than a
dozen Green Bag honors for “exemplary legal writing.” He was named Distinguished
Jurist of the Year by the Texas Review of Law & Politics, and he is a member of the
American Law Institute and a Life Fellow of the American, Texas, and Austin Bar
Foundations.
A onetime bull rider and professional drummer, Judge Willett was named “Tweeter
Laureate of Texas” in 2015. He is the namesake of Don R. Willett Elementary
School—home of mighty Willett Wranglers—located just a mile from where he grew up.
He and his radiant wife, Tiffany have three children—Jacob, Shane-David, and
Geneviève—plus the family pup, Amicus.
Professor of Law, Yeshiva University Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
Professor Brickman teaches Contracts, Professional Responsibility, and Land Use, among other courses. His areas of expertise include legal ethics, contingency fees, mass torts, and asbestos litigation. His writings on these and other subjects are widely cited and he is frequently quoted in the press.
Simeon E. Baldwin Professor Emeritus of Law, Yale Law School
Peter H. Schuck is the Simeon E. Baldwin Professor Emeritus of Law and Professor (Adjunct) of Law at Yale Law School where he has held the chair since 1984. He has also served as Deputy Dean. His major fields of teaching and research are tort law; immigration, citizenship, and refugee law; groups, diversity, and law; and administrative law. His most recent books include Targeting in Social Programs: Avoiding Bad Bets, Removing Bad Apples; Meditations of a Militant Moderate: Cool Views on Hot Topics; Immigration Stories; Foundations of Administrative Law; Diversity in America: Keeping Government at a Safe Distance; and The Limits of Law: Essays on Democratic Governance. He is also co-editor, with James Q. Wilson, of Understanding America. He is a member of the American Law Institute's advisory committee for the Restatement of Torts (Third), Basic Principles, and a contributing editor to The American Lawyer. Prior to joining Yale, he was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Professor Schuck holds a B.A. from Cornell, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an LL.M. in International Law from N.Y.U., and an M.A. in Government from Harvard.
Director of Litigation and Senior Attorney, Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute
Theodore H. Frank is director at the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute and the Center for Class Action Fairness. Frank founded and ran CCAF as a non-profit, public interest law firm in 2009.
Frank has won several landmark appeals and tens of millions of dollars for consumers and other plaintiffs through his class action work. Adam Liptak of The New York Times calls Frank “the leading critic of abusive class action settlements” and the American Lawyer Litigation Daily referred to him as “the indefatigable scourge of underwhelming class action settlements.”
Previously, Frank clerked for the Honorable Frank H. Easterbrook on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and was a litigator at firms in Washington and Los Angeles and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Frank is a frequent public speaker and has testified before Congress multiple times on legal issues. He has been profiled by The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, GQ, and the ABA Journal, among other publications.
In 2008, Frank was elected to membership in the American Law Institute. He also serves on the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society Litigation Practice Group. Frank graduated from The University of Chicago Law School in 1994 with high honors and as a member of the Order of the Coif and the Law Review. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and the state bars of California and Illinois.
Senior Litigation Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Peggy Little, Senior Counsel at New Civil Liberties Alliance, a new public interest law firm challenging the administrative state founded in 2017 by Professor Philip Hamburger, has over three decades of experience as a trial and appellate litigator in complex, high-stakes regulatory, mass-tort, class-action, products liability, securities, commercial and civil rights litigation representing individuals and high-profile litigants including Fortune 50 companies, financial institutions, public companies, and universities in state and federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court.
Peggy is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, where she was awarded the Potter Stewart Prize. She was a law clerk to the Hon. Ralph K. Winter on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Prior to starting her own trial and appellate law firm in 1997, where she was appellate consulting counsel to the New Haven firefighters in Ricci v.DeStefano, a landmark 2009 United States Supreme Court decision, Peggy was a partner at Tyler, Cooper & Alcorn in New Haven, Connecticut. From 2004 to early 2018, Peggy directed, part-time, the Federalist Society Pro Bono Center.
Peggy has participated in many national conferences and symposia addressing issues of current importance in constitutional law – specifically state and federal constitutional questions regarding the separation of powers and the first amendment – and regularly speaks, blogs and publishes on the topic of the unconstitutional exercise of governmental power. In May of 2017, she presented her paper, Pirates at the Parchment Gates, to a conference of state and federal judges at the Law and Economics Center at the Antonin Scalia Law School. Her work has been published by law reviews, legal publications, the Federalist Society, the Wall Street Journal, Law and Liberty and the Manhattan Institute.
Recent publications include: How the SEC silences its critics, The SEC should listen to Sen. Cotton, Lucia v. SEC, Opening Salvos in the Opioid Litigation Wars, Straight Dope on the Opioid Crisis
Partner, Dworken & Bernstein Co., L.P.A.
Patrick J. Perotti graduated from Cleveland State University with a B.A. in 1977. He was awarded his law degree, cum laude, from Cleveland Marshall College of Law in 1982.
He specializes in commercial litigation, civil rights and employment discrimination litigation, consumer benefit, and class action practice. He has frequently appeared before the Supreme Court of Ohio, and as counsel in litigation in state and federal courts throughout the country.
Mr. Perotti is a certified employment law specialist. Less than one percent of attorneys in Ohio hold this certification. He has successfully represented employment plaintiffs in the following lead cases in the Supreme Court: Mauzy v. Kelly Services (1996) 75 Ohio St.3d 578 which allows circumstantial evidence to be used as direct proof of employment discrimination; Kulch v. Structural Fibers (1997), 78 Ohio St.3d 134 which established a Greeley claim in Ohio for whistleblowing; and in Federal Court,Stanley v .The Lawson Company, 993 F.S. 1084 (N.D. Ohio 1997) which analyzes sex and religion discrimination standards under Title VII.
Mr. Perotti handles wage and hour collective actions in Ohio and across the United States. These suits challenge the failure of employers to pay overtime and other wages required by state and federal laws.
Mr. Perotti's other area of primary concentration is class actions, handling class litigation throughout Ohio and nationally. Some of his lead cases include: Rosette v. Countrywide Home Loans, Inc.(2005), 105 Ohio St.3d 296; Santos v. Ohio Bur. of Workers' Comp. (2004), 101 Ohio St.3d 1492; Martin v. Grange Mut. Ins. Co. (2001), 143 Ohio App.3d 332; Waeschle v. Oakland County Med. Exam'r, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 87399 (E.D. Mich. Oct. 29, 2008). As class counsel in numerous suits, Mr. Perotti was described by the court as having provided "exceptional representation for the class members. Taking into consideration the complexity of the legal issues at hand and the result achieved by class counsel, it is clear to the court that the legal representation in this case was superb."
In 2010, Mr. Perotti was named to the exclusive ranks of the top 75 plaintiff trial lawyers in the United States. The group, called 'Trial Lawyer Kingpins,' was chosen in a survey of defense attorneys throughout the country to identify 'the best plaintiff trial attorneys in terms of experience and influence.'
The successes of class litigation handled by Mr. Perotti won him national Public Justice 2007 Trial Lawyer of the Year finalist, with settlements totaling over $120 million
Mr. Perotti's class action practice has focused extensively on doing justice not only for class members, but also for the broader community. Through the innovative use of an obscure legal doctrine known as cy pres, Mr. Perotti has directed over $18 million in unclaimed class settlement monies to charities and nonprofits. His distribution in July 2008 of nearly $14 million from a single case was the largest cy pres of its kind in U.S. history. Monies directed from Mr. Perotti's cases helped charities dealing with hunger, housing, clothing and shelter, drug and alcohol addiction, disease prevention, adoption assistance, special needs education, handicap assistance, and a variety of others. The recipients have included Muscular Dystrophy Association, Habitat for Humanity, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, MADD, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Legal Aid Society, Leukemia Society, Boys and Girls Clubs, and dozens of others.
Mr. Perotti is a frequent lecturer at state and national conferences on employment law and is often quoted by the media on those subjects. He has been interviewed on employment law and class action matters by countless newspapers, and local and national radio and television shows, such as The New York Times, The American Lawyers, Fox & Friends New York City, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and others. His many television appearances, both local and national, focus on protection of the individual and protection of persons considered most vulnerable in society.
Mr. Perotti is a member of the National Employment Lawyers Association, the Ohio Employment Lawyers Association, the Ohio Bar Association (member of the Federal Courts and Practice Committee), the Federal Bar Association, the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association., and the Lake County Bar Association.
He was a member of the Governor's Ohio Adoption Task Force from 1990 to 1992 and was appointed chairman of the Governor's Ohio Adoption Commission in 1992. Mr. Perotti is the staff counsel of the Ohio Right to Life Society.
He is the author of a comprehensive treatise on the ADA, the FMLA, and the interaction between those laws and workers' compensation programs. He received the American Bar Association Section of Labor and Employment Law Award for significant contributions to the advancement of law on the Family and Medical Leave Act (2006).
Mr. Perotti is licensed to practice in the following courts: Federal District Court, Northern District of Ohio, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, U.S. Tax Court, U.S. Claims Court, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, U.S. Court of International Trade, U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for The Armed Forces.; U.S. District Court of Idaho (pro hac vice); U.S. District Court of Pennsylvania (western division) (pro hac vice); U.S. District Court of West Virginia (southern division) (pro hac vice); U.S. District Court of South Carolina (Aiken division) (pro hac vice); U.S. District Court of Michigan (Eastern District) (pro hac vice); District Court of Minnesota (4th District) (pro hac vice); and Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois (pro hac vice).
Professor of Law, Yeshiva University Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
Professor Brickman teaches Contracts, Professional Responsibility, and Land Use, among other courses. His areas of expertise include legal ethics, contingency fees, mass torts, and asbestos litigation. His writings on these and other subjects are widely cited and he is frequently quoted in the press.
Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise, Vanderbilt University Law School
Brian Fitzpatrick is the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School, where his research focuses on class action litigation, federal courts, judicial selection, and constitutional law. He is best known for his empirical studies of class action settlements as well as his book The Conservative Case for Class Actions (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Professor Fitzpatrick joined Vanderbilt's law faculty in 2007 after serving as the John M. Olin Fellow at New York University School of Law. He graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School and went on to clerk for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, Professor Fitzpatrick practiced commercial and appellate litigation for several years at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and served as Special Counsel for Supreme Court Nominations to U.S. Senator John Cornyn. Before earning his law degree, Fitzpatrick graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's of science in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He has received the Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor Award, which recognizes excellence in classroom teaching, for his Civil Procedure and Federal Courts courses.
Director of Litigation and Senior Attorney, Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute
Theodore H. Frank is director at the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute and the Center for Class Action Fairness. Frank founded and ran CCAF as a non-profit, public interest law firm in 2009.
Frank has won several landmark appeals and tens of millions of dollars for consumers and other plaintiffs through his class action work. Adam Liptak of The New York Times calls Frank “the leading critic of abusive class action settlements” and the American Lawyer Litigation Daily referred to him as “the indefatigable scourge of underwhelming class action settlements.”
Previously, Frank clerked for the Honorable Frank H. Easterbrook on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and was a litigator at firms in Washington and Los Angeles and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Frank is a frequent public speaker and has testified before Congress multiple times on legal issues. He has been profiled by The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, GQ, and the ABA Journal, among other publications.
In 2008, Frank was elected to membership in the American Law Institute. He also serves on the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society Litigation Practice Group. Frank graduated from The University of Chicago Law School in 1994 with high honors and as a member of the Order of the Coif and the Law Review. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and the state bars of California and Illinois.
Partner, Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP
Jeff Jacobson defends consumer, privacy and securities class actions, and represents media, technology and other companies in general commercial litigation. With nearly two decades in private practice and several years of experience at the highest levels of the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, Mr. Jacobson assists his clients to resolve and minimize the reputational damage and business interruptions that can arise from litigation, particularly costly class actions. In addition, Mr. Jacobson has considerable and proven skills in managing the electronic discovery challenges presented by complex litigation and investigative matters.
During his tenure as director of the New Jersey Division of Law and chief counsel to the New Jersey Attorney General (2014-16), Mr. Jacobson oversaw law enforcement investigations involving consumer protection and data privacy, chaired the Attorney General’s Cyber Working Group, and oversaw more than 500 lawyers who represented all agencies of state government in defensive and affirmative litigation. Throughout his tenure, Jeff personally handled some of the state’s highest profile cases in state and federal court.
Because Mr. Jacobson has chaired both the prosecution and defense of major consumer fraud and privacy litigation, he is able to provide his clients with the benefit of a truly multifaceted and strategic perspective regarding even the highest-stakes claims. Mr. Jacobson has successfully defended consumer fraud and privacy-related class actions for media, electronics and consumer products companies, as well as securities class actions for U.S.-based and foreign private issuers in federal and state trial and appellate courts.
Class actions can be both costly and disruptive, so Mr. Jacobson strives to resolve such matters in his client’s favor as quickly and inexpensively as possible. This may mean moving the court to deny class certification at the earliest stage of a case, seeking quick summary judgment on key issues underlying the class motion, or devising a settlement that costs less than litigating the case. In matters requiring extensive discovery, Mr. Jacobson focuses on avoiding unnecessary tasks and minimizing vendor costs.
Mr. Jacobson has been selected to the Data Protection and Privacy and Securities Litigation lists by US Legal 500, a Legalease Publication. A description of the selection methodology can be found at www.legal500.com/assets/pages/about-us/how-it-works.html#rank. He has also been recognized as a Securities Litigation “Star” in the IFLR Benchmark Litigation Guide. A description of the selection methodology can be found at www.benchmarklitigation.com/general/research. (No aspect of these advertisements have been approved by the Supreme Court of New Jersey.)
Mr. Jacobson has written extensively on class action defense and e-discovery strategies for the New York Law Journal, Class Action Litigation Report, Product Liability Law 360, and other publications. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists, and served on a New Jersey Supreme Court task force to assess attorney ethics issues arising from metadata in electronic documents.
Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States
Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh was born in Washington, D.C., on February 12, 1965. He married Ashley Estes in 2004, and they have two daughters - Margaret and Liza. He received a B.A. from Yale College in 1987 and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1990. He served as a law clerk for Judge Walter Stapleton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit from 1990-1991, for Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1991-1992, and for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court during the 1993 Term. In 1992-1993, he was an attorney in the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States. From 1994 to 1997 and for a period in 1998, he was Associate Counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel. He was a partner at a Washington, D.C., law firm from 1997 to 1998 and again from 1999 to 2001. From 2001 to 2003, he was Associate Counsel and then Senior Associate Counsel to President George W. Bush. From 2003 to 2006, he was Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary for President Bush. He was appointed a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2006. President Donald J. Trump nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat on October 6, 2018.
Adjunct Professor, George Washington University Law School
Professor of Law, Yeshiva University Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
Professor Brickman teaches Contracts, Professional Responsibility, and Land Use, among other courses. His areas of expertise include legal ethics, contingency fees, mass torts, and asbestos litigation. His writings on these and other subjects are widely cited and he is frequently quoted in the press.
Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise, Vanderbilt University Law School
Brian Fitzpatrick is the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School, where his research focuses on class action litigation, federal courts, judicial selection, and constitutional law. He is best known for his empirical studies of class action settlements as well as his book The Conservative Case for Class Actions (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Professor Fitzpatrick joined Vanderbilt's law faculty in 2007 after serving as the John M. Olin Fellow at New York University School of Law. He graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School and went on to clerk for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, Professor Fitzpatrick practiced commercial and appellate litigation for several years at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and served as Special Counsel for Supreme Court Nominations to U.S. Senator John Cornyn. Before earning his law degree, Fitzpatrick graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's of science in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He has received the Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor Award, which recognizes excellence in classroom teaching, for his Civil Procedure and Federal Courts courses.
Director of Litigation and Senior Attorney, Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute
Theodore H. Frank is director at the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute and the Center for Class Action Fairness. Frank founded and ran CCAF as a non-profit, public interest law firm in 2009.
Frank has won several landmark appeals and tens of millions of dollars for consumers and other plaintiffs through his class action work. Adam Liptak of The New York Times calls Frank “the leading critic of abusive class action settlements” and the American Lawyer Litigation Daily referred to him as “the indefatigable scourge of underwhelming class action settlements.”
Previously, Frank clerked for the Honorable Frank H. Easterbrook on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and was a litigator at firms in Washington and Los Angeles and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Frank is a frequent public speaker and has testified before Congress multiple times on legal issues. He has been profiled by The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, GQ, and the ABA Journal, among other publications.
In 2008, Frank was elected to membership in the American Law Institute. He also serves on the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society Litigation Practice Group. Frank graduated from The University of Chicago Law School in 1994 with high honors and as a member of the Order of the Coif and the Law Review. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and the state bars of California and Illinois.
Partner, Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP
Jeff Jacobson defends consumer, privacy and securities class actions, and represents media, technology and other companies in general commercial litigation. With nearly two decades in private practice and several years of experience at the highest levels of the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, Mr. Jacobson assists his clients to resolve and minimize the reputational damage and business interruptions that can arise from litigation, particularly costly class actions. In addition, Mr. Jacobson has considerable and proven skills in managing the electronic discovery challenges presented by complex litigation and investigative matters.
During his tenure as director of the New Jersey Division of Law and chief counsel to the New Jersey Attorney General (2014-16), Mr. Jacobson oversaw law enforcement investigations involving consumer protection and data privacy, chaired the Attorney General’s Cyber Working Group, and oversaw more than 500 lawyers who represented all agencies of state government in defensive and affirmative litigation. Throughout his tenure, Jeff personally handled some of the state’s highest profile cases in state and federal court.
Because Mr. Jacobson has chaired both the prosecution and defense of major consumer fraud and privacy litigation, he is able to provide his clients with the benefit of a truly multifaceted and strategic perspective regarding even the highest-stakes claims. Mr. Jacobson has successfully defended consumer fraud and privacy-related class actions for media, electronics and consumer products companies, as well as securities class actions for U.S.-based and foreign private issuers in federal and state trial and appellate courts.
Class actions can be both costly and disruptive, so Mr. Jacobson strives to resolve such matters in his client’s favor as quickly and inexpensively as possible. This may mean moving the court to deny class certification at the earliest stage of a case, seeking quick summary judgment on key issues underlying the class motion, or devising a settlement that costs less than litigating the case. In matters requiring extensive discovery, Mr. Jacobson focuses on avoiding unnecessary tasks and minimizing vendor costs.
Mr. Jacobson has been selected to the Data Protection and Privacy and Securities Litigation lists by US Legal 500, a Legalease Publication. A description of the selection methodology can be found at www.legal500.com/assets/pages/about-us/how-it-works.html#rank. He has also been recognized as a Securities Litigation “Star” in the IFLR Benchmark Litigation Guide. A description of the selection methodology can be found at www.benchmarklitigation.com/general/research. (No aspect of these advertisements have been approved by the Supreme Court of New Jersey.)
Mr. Jacobson has written extensively on class action defense and e-discovery strategies for the New York Law Journal, Class Action Litigation Report, Product Liability Law 360, and other publications. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists, and served on a New Jersey Supreme Court task force to assess attorney ethics issues arising from metadata in electronic documents.
Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States
Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh was born in Washington, D.C., on February 12, 1965. He married Ashley Estes in 2004, and they have two daughters - Margaret and Liza. He received a B.A. from Yale College in 1987 and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1990. He served as a law clerk for Judge Walter Stapleton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit from 1990-1991, for Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1991-1992, and for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court during the 1993 Term. In 1992-1993, he was an attorney in the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States. From 1994 to 1997 and for a period in 1998, he was Associate Counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel. He was a partner at a Washington, D.C., law firm from 1997 to 1998 and again from 1999 to 2001. From 2001 to 2003, he was Associate Counsel and then Senior Associate Counsel to President George W. Bush. From 2003 to 2006, he was Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary for President Bush. He was appointed a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2006. President Donald J. Trump nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat on October 6, 2018.
Adjunct Professor, George Washington University Law School
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Carlos Bea serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received his Bachelor's Degree from Stanford University in 1956 and his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1958. Judge Bea was born in San Sebastian, Spain, and immigrated with his family to Cuba in 1939. In 1952, he represented Cuba on the Cuban National basketball team in the Helsinki Olympics. Judge Bea became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1958. He engaged in private practice in San Francisco, principally in the area of civil trials (jury and non-jury), from 1959-75 at Dunne, Phelps & Mills and from 1975-90 at Carlos Bea, A Law Corporation. He taught courses in civil litigation advocacy at Hastings College of Law and Stanford Law School. From 1990 to 2003, Judge Bea served as a judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. He was nominated by President George W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was confirmed in 2003.
Judge Bea and his wife Louise reside in San Francisco, where they raised their four sons, Sebastian, Alexander, Nicholas, and Dominic.
Edward J. Phelps Professor of Law and Economics and Kauffman Distinguished Research Scholar in Law, Economics, and Entrepreneurship, Yale Law School
Professor George L. Priest passed away on Dec. 17, 2024. Please read his obituary here.
George L. Priest is the Edward J. Phelps Professor of Law and Economics and Kauffman Distinguished Research Scholar in Law, Economics, and Entrepreneurship at Yale Law School. An internationally recognized expert, Professor Priest has focused his research over the past two decades on antitrust, the operation of private and public insurance, and the role of the legal system in promoting economic growth. He joined Yale Law School in 1981 and is co-director of the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics and Public Policy, which facilitates the scholarly work of the Yale law and economics faculty and supports student interest and research in the field. Before coming to Yale, Professor Priest taught law at the University of Chicago, SUNY/Buffalo, and UCLA. His subject areas are antitrust; capitalism; regulated industries; torts; and insurance and public policy. Professor Priest holds a B.A. from Yale and a J.D. from the University of Chicago.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Carlos Bea serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received his Bachelor's Degree from Stanford University in 1956 and his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1958. Judge Bea was born in San Sebastian, Spain, and immigrated with his family to Cuba in 1939. In 1952, he represented Cuba on the Cuban National basketball team in the Helsinki Olympics. Judge Bea became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1958. He engaged in private practice in San Francisco, principally in the area of civil trials (jury and non-jury), from 1959-75 at Dunne, Phelps & Mills and from 1975-90 at Carlos Bea, A Law Corporation. He taught courses in civil litigation advocacy at Hastings College of Law and Stanford Law School. From 1990 to 2003, Judge Bea served as a judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. He was nominated by President George W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was confirmed in 2003.
Judge Bea and his wife Louise reside in San Francisco, where they raised their four sons, Sebastian, Alexander, Nicholas, and Dominic.
Edward J. Phelps Professor of Law and Economics and Kauffman Distinguished Research Scholar in Law, Economics, and Entrepreneurship, Yale Law School
Professor George L. Priest passed away on Dec. 17, 2024. Please read his obituary here.
George L. Priest is the Edward J. Phelps Professor of Law and Economics and Kauffman Distinguished Research Scholar in Law, Economics, and Entrepreneurship at Yale Law School. An internationally recognized expert, Professor Priest has focused his research over the past two decades on antitrust, the operation of private and public insurance, and the role of the legal system in promoting economic growth. He joined Yale Law School in 1981 and is co-director of the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics and Public Policy, which facilitates the scholarly work of the Yale law and economics faculty and supports student interest and research in the field. Before coming to Yale, Professor Priest taught law at the University of Chicago, SUNY/Buffalo, and UCLA. His subject areas are antitrust; capitalism; regulated industries; torts; and insurance and public policy. Professor Priest holds a B.A. from Yale and a J.D. from the University of Chicago.
Young Legal Scholars Paper Presentations
Erin M. Hawley, Josh Hawley, Randy J. Kozel, James T. Lindgren, Michael W. McConnell, Minor Myers, Eugene Volokh
15th Annual Faculty Conference
On January 4, 2013, at the 15th Annual Faculty Conference in New Orleans, LA, the...
Young Legal Scholars Paper Presentations
Erin M. Hawley, Josh Hawley, Randy J. Kozel, James T. Lindgren, Michael W. McConnell, Minor Myers, Eugene Volokh
15th Annual Faculty Conference
On January 4, 2013, at the 15th Annual Faculty Conference in New Orleans, LA, the...
Litigation: Business Cases in the Roberts Court: Perception and Reality
Jeffrey S. Jacobson, Alan B. Morrison, Martin J. Newhouse, Mark A. Perry, John Vail, Don R. Willett
2012 National Lawyers Convention
The Litigation Practice Group hosted this panel on "Business Cases in the Roberts Court: Perception...
Litigation: Business Cases in the Roberts Court: Perception and Reality
Jeffrey S. Jacobson, Alan B. Morrison, Martin J. Newhouse, Mark A. Perry, John Vail, Don R. Willett
2012 National Lawyers Convention
The Litigation Practice Group hosted this panel on "Business Cases in the Roberts Court: Perception...
Lawyer Barons: What Their Contingency Fees Really Cost America - Faculty Book Podcast
Lester Brickman, Peter H. Schuck
Faculty Division Podcast 09-12-12 featuring Lester Brickman and Peter Schuck
Lawyer Barons exposes the high but unseen cost of litigation driven by contingency fees, a method...
Who Should Receive Unclaimed Class Action Awards? The Tale of Cy Pres
Theodore "Ted" Frank, Margaret A. Little, Patrick Perotti
Litigation Practice Group Teleforum
Cy Pres, a doctrine borrowed from the law of trusts, has in recent years been...
Litigation: Attorneys Fees in Class Actions
Lester Brickman, Brian T. Fitzpatrick, Theodore "Ted" Frank, Jeffrey S. Jacobson, Brett M. Kavanaugh, Alan B. Morrison
2011 National Lawyers Convention
The Litigation Practice Group hosted this panel on "Attorneys Fees in Class Actions" on Thursday,...
Litigation: Attorneys Fees in Class Actions
Lester Brickman, Brian T. Fitzpatrick, Theodore "Ted" Frank, Jeffrey S. Jacobson, Brett M. Kavanaugh, Alan B. Morrison
2011 National Lawyers Convention
The Litigation Practice Group hosted this panel on "Attorneys Fees in Class Actions" on Thursday,...
Mexico's New Class Action Law
Carlos T. Bea, Eduardo Garcia, Marco Martinez, George L. Priest, Luis Daniel Rodriguez
The Future of Business Law in Mexico
This panel will discuss the new class action law in Mexico and how it compares...
Mexico's New Class Action Law
Carlos T. Bea, Eduardo Garcia, Marco Martinez, George L. Priest, Luis Daniel Rodriguez
The Future of Business Law in Mexico
This panel will discuss the new class action law in Mexico and how it compares...