Paul Hastings Named 2022 White Collar “Practice Group of the Year” by Law360

Paul Hastings LLP has been profiled by Law360 as a 2022 White Collar “Practice Group of the Year” for the second consecutive year.

Kwame J. Manley, Litigation Department Co-Chair and former Global Chair of the Investigations and White Collar Defense practice, noted in the profile that the firm’s 35-partner, 100-associate White Collar group handled work for clients in 64 countries in 2022. Among Paul Hastings’ wins was the dismissal of all criminal charges against retired Navy Rear Admiral Bruce Loveless, who had been charged as part of the Leonard Glenn Francis bribery case.

“Our client was the only client that was not convicted. It was a hung jury,” said Mr. Manley, crediting partner Daniel Prince, who led the Loveless trial team for Paul Hastings.

Law360 also noted partner Avi Weitzman’s high-profile win for Dr. Sepehr Sarshar, the former CEO of Auspex Pharmaceuticals Inc., with prosecutors agreeing to dismiss claims of insider trading against Dr. Sarshar.

“The dismissal reflected a tacit acknowledgment by the government that its case was tainted from inception and … an innocent man was wrongly charged,” said Mr. Weitzman, who joined the firm in July 2022. “[It was a] reminder to everybody on our team that an aggressive and thoughtful pretrial strategy to challenge the government's evidence, including to challenge the propriety of its investigation, can yield great dividends.”

The profile also highlighted the work of partner Matthew Herrington, who said, “Our compliance teams and our enforcement teams are very much a handshake operation, and that tends to go over the life of a matter.” Paul Hastings was named a 2022 Compliance “Practice Group of the Year” by Law360, the only firm to win in both Compliance and White Collar.

About Paul Hastings

With widely recognized elite teams in finance, mergers & acquisitions, private equity, restructuring and special situations, litigation, employment and real estate, Paul Hastings is a premier law firm providing superior intellectual capital and execution globally to the world’s leading investment banks, asset managers and corporations.