Founder & CEO, Strategic Policy Counsel, PLLC
Alex Dahl has nearly three decades of experience in law and advocacy, having served in all three branches of the federal government as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, a federal prosecutor, and a law clerk to a federal district court judge, as well as working in private practice as a lobbyist and civil litigator.
Alex serves as outside General Counsel to Lawyers for Civil Justice, a national coalition of corporations, law firms and defense lawyer organizations, promoting excellence and fairness in the civil justice system. LCJ is the corporate and defense bar voice for reforms aimed at securing the just, speedy and inexpensive determination of civil cases, notably including the 2015 Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which established “proportionality” in the scope of discovery and created a uniform standard for judicial handling of the loss of electronically stored information (ESI). Alex works with LCJ’s member experts to: (1) promote balance and fairness in the civil justice system; (2) reduce costs and burdens associated with litigation; and (3) promote more predictability and efficiency in litigation.
Prior to founding the firm, Alex was a shareholder at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, the second largest lobbying firm in Washington, D.C., for over 11 years. Alex represented companies and associations before Congress and the Executive Branch on a variety of policy issues.
Alex served as the Deputy Staff Director and Senior Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he spent five years working for then-Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT) on legislative strategy concerning a wide variety of bills and constitutional amendments within the Committee's jurisdiction, which includes legal reform, antitrust, intellectual property, immigration policy and criminal law.
Alex also worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia, where he prosecuted felony drug distribution and firearms cases in DC Superior Court. He was specially assigned to handle criminal intellectual property cases involving illegal sales of pirated DVD movies and music CDs.
Prior to his government service, Alex was a commercial litigator at Parsons Behle & Latimer in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he handled a variety of civil matters relating to electric utilities, securities and contract disputes.
Alex began his legal career as a law clerk for the Honorable Dee V. Benson, U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Utah.
Alex currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law.
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 and Lecturer
Adam Mortara graduated from the University of Chicago in 1996 with a B.Sc. in chemistry. He then attended Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he received a masters degree in astrophysics on a British Marshall Scholarship.
Mr. Mortara graduated from the University of Chicago Law School with highest honors in 2001. Following graduation, he clerked for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and then for Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States. After his clerkships, he was a Temple Bar Scholar of the American Inns of Court.
From 2003 to 2020, Mr. Mortara was with Bartlit Beck LLP where he tried high stakes intellectual property cases and, more notably, Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard. He retired from Bartlit Beck and founded Lawfair LLC, a civil and voting rights firm. He has been a Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School since 2007, where he teaches Federal Habeas Corpus, Federal Jurisdiction, Criminal Procedure, and Writing for the Judiciary.
Founder & CEO, Strategic Policy Counsel, PLLC
Alex Dahl has nearly three decades of experience in law and advocacy, having served in all three branches of the federal government as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, a federal prosecutor, and a law clerk to a federal district court judge, as well as working in private practice as a lobbyist and civil litigator.
Alex serves as outside General Counsel to Lawyers for Civil Justice, a national coalition of corporations, law firms and defense lawyer organizations, promoting excellence and fairness in the civil justice system. LCJ is the corporate and defense bar voice for reforms aimed at securing the just, speedy and inexpensive determination of civil cases, notably including the 2015 Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which established “proportionality” in the scope of discovery and created a uniform standard for judicial handling of the loss of electronically stored information (ESI). Alex works with LCJ’s member experts to: (1) promote balance and fairness in the civil justice system; (2) reduce costs and burdens associated with litigation; and (3) promote more predictability and efficiency in litigation.
Prior to founding the firm, Alex was a shareholder at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, the second largest lobbying firm in Washington, D.C., for over 11 years. Alex represented companies and associations before Congress and the Executive Branch on a variety of policy issues.
Alex served as the Deputy Staff Director and Senior Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he spent five years working for then-Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT) on legislative strategy concerning a wide variety of bills and constitutional amendments within the Committee's jurisdiction, which includes legal reform, antitrust, intellectual property, immigration policy and criminal law.
Alex also worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia, where he prosecuted felony drug distribution and firearms cases in DC Superior Court. He was specially assigned to handle criminal intellectual property cases involving illegal sales of pirated DVD movies and music CDs.
Prior to his government service, Alex was a commercial litigator at Parsons Behle & Latimer in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he handled a variety of civil matters relating to electric utilities, securities and contract disputes.
Alex began his legal career as a law clerk for the Honorable Dee V. Benson, U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Utah.
Alex currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law.
Senior Legal Counsel, Litigation, Medtronic
Max Heerman is Senior Legal Counsel, Litigation (in-house) for Medtronic, world's largest stand-alone medical device company. He manages the company's defense in high-risk product liability cases, including federal MDL's and other high-volume coordinated proceedings. He also manages high risk commercial cases, such as shareholder class actions. Heerman has extensive experience developing and executing litigation strategy, managing substantial litigation budgets, and overseeing all work conducted by outside counsel. He manages key components of Medtronic's network of preferred outside counsel, and work with outside groups on litigation reform issues of significant concern to the company.
Heerman's experience also includes advising business executives on litigation strategy and risk, supervising internal investigations, responding to government investigations, managing employment litigation, developing and executing on process improvements to bolster the efficiency of the Medtronic legal department, and mentoring and supervising junior attorneys, paralegals, and administrative professionals. Prior to joining Medtronic, he accummulated almost 15 years of large law firm experience litigating product liability and business disputes, including financial fraud cases and class action wage and hour claims.
Founder & CEO, Strategic Policy Counsel, PLLC
Alex Dahl has nearly three decades of experience in law and advocacy, having served in all three branches of the federal government as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, a federal prosecutor, and a law clerk to a federal district court judge, as well as working in private practice as a lobbyist and civil litigator.
Alex serves as outside General Counsel to Lawyers for Civil Justice, a national coalition of corporations, law firms and defense lawyer organizations, promoting excellence and fairness in the civil justice system. LCJ is the corporate and defense bar voice for reforms aimed at securing the just, speedy and inexpensive determination of civil cases, notably including the 2015 Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which established “proportionality” in the scope of discovery and created a uniform standard for judicial handling of the loss of electronically stored information (ESI). Alex works with LCJ’s member experts to: (1) promote balance and fairness in the civil justice system; (2) reduce costs and burdens associated with litigation; and (3) promote more predictability and efficiency in litigation.
Prior to founding the firm, Alex was a shareholder at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, the second largest lobbying firm in Washington, D.C., for over 11 years. Alex represented companies and associations before Congress and the Executive Branch on a variety of policy issues.
Alex served as the Deputy Staff Director and Senior Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he spent five years working for then-Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT) on legislative strategy concerning a wide variety of bills and constitutional amendments within the Committee's jurisdiction, which includes legal reform, antitrust, intellectual property, immigration policy and criminal law.
Alex also worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia, where he prosecuted felony drug distribution and firearms cases in DC Superior Court. He was specially assigned to handle criminal intellectual property cases involving illegal sales of pirated DVD movies and music CDs.
Prior to his government service, Alex was a commercial litigator at Parsons Behle & Latimer in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he handled a variety of civil matters relating to electric utilities, securities and contract disputes.
Alex began his legal career as a law clerk for the Honorable Dee V. Benson, U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Utah.
Alex currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law.
Earle K. Shawe Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
An expert in the field of civil procedure and federal jurisdiction, Professor A. Benjamin Spencer joined the University of Virginia School of Law in 2014. Spencer has authored two books in the area of civil procedure, Acing Civil Procedure and Civil Procedure: A Contemporary Approach. Both are used widely by professors and students throughout the country. Spencer previously served as professor, associate dean for research and director of the Frances Lewis Law Center at Washington and Lee University School of Law. He is a member of the American Law Institute and a member of the West Academic Law School Advisory Board. He serves on the Virginia State Bar Council and has served as a special assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, occasionally handling appellate cases in the Fourth Circuit on behalf of the government on a pro bono basis. In 2007, he was awarded the Virginia State Council of Higher Education “Rising Star” award, given to the most promising junior faculty member among all academic fields at all colleges and universities in Virginia. He was the first law professor to receive this award.
Prior to joining the Washington and Lee faculty, Spencer was an associate professor of law at the University of Richmond School of Law. He also formerly worked as an associate in the law firm Shearman & Sterling and as a law clerk to Judge Judith W. Rogers of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He visited Virginia Law during the 2011-12 school year.
Spencer holds a B.A. from Morehouse College, a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a master of science from the London School of Economics, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He also serves as an officer in the Judge Advocate General's Corps of the U.S. Army (Reserve).
Founder & CEO, Strategic Policy Counsel, PLLC
Alex Dahl has nearly three decades of experience in law and advocacy, having served in all three branches of the federal government as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, a federal prosecutor, and a law clerk to a federal district court judge, as well as working in private practice as a lobbyist and civil litigator.
Alex serves as outside General Counsel to Lawyers for Civil Justice, a national coalition of corporations, law firms and defense lawyer organizations, promoting excellence and fairness in the civil justice system. LCJ is the corporate and defense bar voice for reforms aimed at securing the just, speedy and inexpensive determination of civil cases, notably including the 2015 Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which established “proportionality” in the scope of discovery and created a uniform standard for judicial handling of the loss of electronically stored information (ESI). Alex works with LCJ’s member experts to: (1) promote balance and fairness in the civil justice system; (2) reduce costs and burdens associated with litigation; and (3) promote more predictability and efficiency in litigation.
Prior to founding the firm, Alex was a shareholder at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, the second largest lobbying firm in Washington, D.C., for over 11 years. Alex represented companies and associations before Congress and the Executive Branch on a variety of policy issues.
Alex served as the Deputy Staff Director and Senior Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he spent five years working for then-Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT) on legislative strategy concerning a wide variety of bills and constitutional amendments within the Committee's jurisdiction, which includes legal reform, antitrust, intellectual property, immigration policy and criminal law.
Alex also worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia, where he prosecuted felony drug distribution and firearms cases in DC Superior Court. He was specially assigned to handle criminal intellectual property cases involving illegal sales of pirated DVD movies and music CDs.
Prior to his government service, Alex was a commercial litigator at Parsons Behle & Latimer in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he handled a variety of civil matters relating to electric utilities, securities and contract disputes.
Alex began his legal career as a law clerk for the Honorable Dee V. Benson, U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Utah.
Alex currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law.
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 and Lecturer
Adam Mortara graduated from the University of Chicago in 1996 with a B.Sc. in chemistry. He then attended Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he received a masters degree in astrophysics on a British Marshall Scholarship.
Mr. Mortara graduated from the University of Chicago Law School with highest honors in 2001. Following graduation, he clerked for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and then for Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States. After his clerkships, he was a Temple Bar Scholar of the American Inns of Court.
From 2003 to 2020, Mr. Mortara was with Bartlit Beck LLP where he tried high stakes intellectual property cases and, more notably, Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard. He retired from Bartlit Beck and founded Lawfair LLC, a civil and voting rights firm. He has been a Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School since 2007, where he teaches Federal Habeas Corpus, Federal Jurisdiction, Criminal Procedure, and Writing for the Judiciary.
Founder & CEO, Strategic Policy Counsel, PLLC
Alex Dahl has nearly three decades of experience in law and advocacy, having served in all three branches of the federal government as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, a federal prosecutor, and a law clerk to a federal district court judge, as well as working in private practice as a lobbyist and civil litigator.
Alex serves as outside General Counsel to Lawyers for Civil Justice, a national coalition of corporations, law firms and defense lawyer organizations, promoting excellence and fairness in the civil justice system. LCJ is the corporate and defense bar voice for reforms aimed at securing the just, speedy and inexpensive determination of civil cases, notably including the 2015 Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which established “proportionality” in the scope of discovery and created a uniform standard for judicial handling of the loss of electronically stored information (ESI). Alex works with LCJ’s member experts to: (1) promote balance and fairness in the civil justice system; (2) reduce costs and burdens associated with litigation; and (3) promote more predictability and efficiency in litigation.
Prior to founding the firm, Alex was a shareholder at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, the second largest lobbying firm in Washington, D.C., for over 11 years. Alex represented companies and associations before Congress and the Executive Branch on a variety of policy issues.
Alex served as the Deputy Staff Director and Senior Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he spent five years working for then-Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT) on legislative strategy concerning a wide variety of bills and constitutional amendments within the Committee's jurisdiction, which includes legal reform, antitrust, intellectual property, immigration policy and criminal law.
Alex also worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia, where he prosecuted felony drug distribution and firearms cases in DC Superior Court. He was specially assigned to handle criminal intellectual property cases involving illegal sales of pirated DVD movies and music CDs.
Prior to his government service, Alex was a commercial litigator at Parsons Behle & Latimer in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he handled a variety of civil matters relating to electric utilities, securities and contract disputes.
Alex began his legal career as a law clerk for the Honorable Dee V. Benson, U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Utah.
Alex currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law.
Senior Legal Counsel, Litigation, Medtronic
Max Heerman is Senior Legal Counsel, Litigation (in-house) for Medtronic, world's largest stand-alone medical device company. He manages the company's defense in high-risk product liability cases, including federal MDL's and other high-volume coordinated proceedings. He also manages high risk commercial cases, such as shareholder class actions. Heerman has extensive experience developing and executing litigation strategy, managing substantial litigation budgets, and overseeing all work conducted by outside counsel. He manages key components of Medtronic's network of preferred outside counsel, and work with outside groups on litigation reform issues of significant concern to the company.
Heerman's experience also includes advising business executives on litigation strategy and risk, supervising internal investigations, responding to government investigations, managing employment litigation, developing and executing on process improvements to bolster the efficiency of the Medtronic legal department, and mentoring and supervising junior attorneys, paralegals, and administrative professionals. Prior to joining Medtronic, he accummulated almost 15 years of large law firm experience litigating product liability and business disputes, including financial fraud cases and class action wage and hour claims.
Founder & CEO, Strategic Policy Counsel, PLLC
Alex Dahl has nearly three decades of experience in law and advocacy, having served in all three branches of the federal government as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, a federal prosecutor, and a law clerk to a federal district court judge, as well as working in private practice as a lobbyist and civil litigator.
Alex serves as outside General Counsel to Lawyers for Civil Justice, a national coalition of corporations, law firms and defense lawyer organizations, promoting excellence and fairness in the civil justice system. LCJ is the corporate and defense bar voice for reforms aimed at securing the just, speedy and inexpensive determination of civil cases, notably including the 2015 Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which established “proportionality” in the scope of discovery and created a uniform standard for judicial handling of the loss of electronically stored information (ESI). Alex works with LCJ’s member experts to: (1) promote balance and fairness in the civil justice system; (2) reduce costs and burdens associated with litigation; and (3) promote more predictability and efficiency in litigation.
Prior to founding the firm, Alex was a shareholder at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, the second largest lobbying firm in Washington, D.C., for over 11 years. Alex represented companies and associations before Congress and the Executive Branch on a variety of policy issues.
Alex served as the Deputy Staff Director and Senior Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he spent five years working for then-Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT) on legislative strategy concerning a wide variety of bills and constitutional amendments within the Committee's jurisdiction, which includes legal reform, antitrust, intellectual property, immigration policy and criminal law.
Alex also worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia, where he prosecuted felony drug distribution and firearms cases in DC Superior Court. He was specially assigned to handle criminal intellectual property cases involving illegal sales of pirated DVD movies and music CDs.
Prior to his government service, Alex was a commercial litigator at Parsons Behle & Latimer in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he handled a variety of civil matters relating to electric utilities, securities and contract disputes.
Alex began his legal career as a law clerk for the Honorable Dee V. Benson, U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Utah.
Alex currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law.
Earle K. Shawe Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
An expert in the field of civil procedure and federal jurisdiction, Professor A. Benjamin Spencer joined the University of Virginia School of Law in 2014. Spencer has authored two books in the area of civil procedure, Acing Civil Procedure and Civil Procedure: A Contemporary Approach. Both are used widely by professors and students throughout the country. Spencer previously served as professor, associate dean for research and director of the Frances Lewis Law Center at Washington and Lee University School of Law. He is a member of the American Law Institute and a member of the West Academic Law School Advisory Board. He serves on the Virginia State Bar Council and has served as a special assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, occasionally handling appellate cases in the Fourth Circuit on behalf of the government on a pro bono basis. In 2007, he was awarded the Virginia State Council of Higher Education “Rising Star” award, given to the most promising junior faculty member among all academic fields at all colleges and universities in Virginia. He was the first law professor to receive this award.
Prior to joining the Washington and Lee faculty, Spencer was an associate professor of law at the University of Richmond School of Law. He also formerly worked as an associate in the law firm Shearman & Sterling and as a law clerk to Judge Judith W. Rogers of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He visited Virginia Law during the 2011-12 school year.
Spencer holds a B.A. from Morehouse College, a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a master of science from the London School of Economics, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He also serves as an officer in the Judge Advocate General's Corps of the U.S. Army (Reserve).
Does Litigation Finance Disclosure Threaten National Security? A Debate from the Right
Alexander R. Dahl, Theodore "Ted" Frank, Adam K. Mortara
Arguments over third-party litigation funding are nothing new. Opponents have argued the funding promotes frivolous...
Does Litigation Finance Disclosure Threaten National Security? A Debate from the Right
Washington, DCMulti-district Litigation Proceedings (MDLs)
Alexander R. Dahl, Max Heerman
We are now at the point where half of the cases on the federal civil...
Multi-district Litigation Proceedings (MDLs)
TeleforumChanging the Rules of Discovery - Podcast
Alexander R. Dahl, A. Benjamin Spencer
A “requester pays” amendment to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) would require that...
Changing the Rules of Discovery
Litigation Practice Group Teleforum
Teleforum