“These exceptional law students have demonstrated focus, creativity, and, above all, a relentless commitment to excellence—all foundational principles of our firm,” said Susman Godfrey Co-Managing Partner Vineet Bhatia. “We are thrilled to celebrate the recipients of the Susman Godfrey Prize, now in its sixth year, and congratulate them for their dedication to the legal community.”

Launched in 2021, the Susman Godfrey Prize is open to students of color from eligible law schools who are finishing their first or second year of their program and who have been nominated by a law school professor or administrator. The nominees initially are evaluated based on their resumes, transcripts, and letters of recommendation. After being narrowed down to a group of finalists, winners are selected after being interviewed by a team of lawyers from the firm.

“The prize is one of many ways we aim to support positive change in the civil trial profession,” said Co-Managing Partner Kalpana Srinivasan. “We look forward to seeing these aspiring lawyers’ continued accomplishments in their legal careers, in the courtroom, and beyond.”

Click here to meet the 2026 Susman Godfrey Prize winners.

Josh Dull, a Senior Partner in the New York office at CenterPeak, knows about building a top-flight team. 

Before he started his legal career, Dull was a four-year letterman at the University of Iowa, playing tight end in the powerful Big Ten conference. Following a professional football career that took him to Europe, he decided to go to law school. 

After working at law firms in Denver and Italy, Dull called an audible and went into the legal recruiting field. 

Over the last 20 years, Dull has helped elite global law firms add partners in far-flung international markets ranging from London, Hong Kong, Sao Paulo, Bogota and Mexico City to major U.S. markets like New York, Chicago, Boston, Miami, Charlotte and Atlanta. He has also represented high-profile candidates in Milan, Madrid and Paris.    

With his global perspective and experience, firms looking to expand their practices by opening offices in new cities have worked closely with Dull to successfully identify talent and execute market-entry strategies. 

Dull now teams with senior leadership from a handful of elite law firms to search for blue-chip talent to add to their roster. One recent example was Dull's placement of Brian Hamilton from Sullivan & Cromwell to Willkie Farr & Gallagher. Hamilton served as co-head of S&C’s private equity group and is widely considered one of the top M&A dealmakers in New York. 

Dull was recently recognized in Lawdragon’s 100 Global Leaders in Legal Strategy & Consulting. 

Lawdragon: What do you do as a recruiter? 

Josh Dull: I work closely with elite law firm leadership on their most mission-critical partner recruiting needs. We represent high-value law firm partners in their lateral moves to the world’s most profitable law firms, helping them maximize their compensation and leverage bigger and better platforms to expand their practices.  
 
LD: What parts of your job are professionally satisfying? You are a lawyer. Do you like helping to guide other lawyers’ careers? 

JD: When I meet a law firm partner who has reached a plateau at their current firm, or has been undercompensated, I am highly motivated to help that partner get to a better place. 

Lawyers are increasingly becoming savvier and more sophisticated – and less risk-averse when it comes to positioning themselves and their clients for greater success. Often, that means making a lateral move. I am a firm believer of the saying, “Sometimes you’ve got to move on to move up.” I also love getting to know partners on a personal level. We make the process fun for our clients and candidates.  

LD: From your vantage point as a consultant, what trends are shaping the business and keeping you busy? 

JD: The stratification and widening gap between the most profitable law firms and the rest of the AmLaw 100 has accelerated lateral partner movement in the war for talent. Many law firm leaders tell us they believe there will be eight to ten law firms that will eventually emerge as “the global elite” and will dominate market share. We have aligned ourselves with those firms and are doing their most important work. 

When I meet a law firm partner who has reached a plateau at their current firm, or has been undercompensated, I am highly motivated to help that partner get to a better place. 

LD: How has what you do changed since you started doing this? 

JD: This is still a relationship business where building trust with clients and candidates is paramount. What has changed is that the stakes are much higher. Partner compensation has exploded in recent years, with numerous firms attempting to modernize comp structures and compete for talent at the highest levels. Firms now pay their top-performing partners (and top of the market laterals) well into the $20-$30M range and beyond. 

LD: What makes your firm unique in a competitive consulting environment? 

JD: There is no other search firm in the legal space that has the relationships and direct access to law firm leaders of the most profitable and prestigious law firms than CenterPeak. There is also no other search firm that has the track record we have of placing the most high-profile lawyers with these elite firms. You can view some of our placements on our website.  

LD: What do you do for fun when you’re outside the office? 

JD: When I am outside the office, I like to enjoy anything outdoors – hiking, hanging at the beach, fishing or just going for a walk. 

In high school, Andrea Nixon didn't want to skip “senior skip day.”

To be more precise, she wanted to skip with her friends but didn't want her or any of her classmates get in trouble. So, she did what came naturally. She asked her mother for permission, went to the principal for official approval and threw open her house to her entire class on the day with no one knowing anything about her protective measures. "I kept it all under wraps," she recalls. 

Everybody got their skip day. Nobody got in trouble. Nixon got to have it both ways.

Rules are rules. But results are results. And if you're smart enough to work within the system and still get what everybody wants? That’s the mark of a closer.

Nixon has been closing ever since. A second-year partner in the structured finance group at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, she represents banks in some of the most complex lending transactions in the market – billion-dollar deals, tight timelines, high stakes and a paper trail that would make most people's eyes glaze over. She loves every word of it.

FROM ROCKY POINT TO THE SECONDARY MARKET

Nixon grew up in Rocky Point, a small town outside Wilmington, North Carolina, where land is not an abstraction. "People love dirt in the South," she says. "The first thing my dad would do if he could save up some pocket change was buy some land." That specific, tactile relationship with real property, the sense that dirt means something – stability, home – would follow her into a career built on financing it.

She arrived at Cornell already knowing she wanted to be a lawyer. What kind would take longer to figure out. After graduation she went to work at Morgan Stanley (in HR, not finance) just as the global financial crisis was taking hold. It was not the gentlest introduction to the professional world.

"If you ever saw that movie with George Clooney where he was just tasked with firing people," she says, "That was me, but I was too junior to fire anybody, so it was my job to at least walk them out with their box."

It was, she acknowledges, absolutely horrible. A whole generation of millennials, she notes, was permanently traumatized by those years in the workforce. But Nixon came out of it with something unexpected: a genuine affection for financial services. She liked institutions. She liked structure. She liked the seriousness of people who operated under strict mandates and followed the rules – even when, as that particular moment in history made painfully clear, some of them absolutely did not.

She went on to William & Mary for law school, threw herself into moot court and trial team, collected awards for it, and was hired as a litigation associate at her first firm. Then a lateral finance partner arrived, needed a junior, scanned the available first years, and landed on Nixon. She'd worked at a bank. That was enough.

"My path was kind of chosen for me," she says. "But luckily I always liked finance."

THE META LEVEL

Nixon spent her early career in commercial mortgage origination: reading surveys, reviewing environmental assessments, placing mortgages on properties and making sure the documents said what they were supposed to say. She loved it. But it was the next move, in her third year, that revealed where she truly belonged.

“It's complex until you figure it out, then it's simple," she says. Operating at the intersection of mortgage finance and capital markets, Nixon gets to watch the full economy move through her practice in real time.

She moved to what practitioners call the secondary market – or to put it another way: “the meta level.” While commercial mortgage origination meant representing the bank that made the loan to the borrower buying the property, structured finance means representing the bank that lends money to the fund that makes that loan.

"The primary market is the first loan secured by the dirt," she explains. "The secondary market is the second loan secured by the loan. That's why people call it back leverage – the leverage is first, and the back leverage is where I am."

It is, she concedes, complex. But that's the point. Her deals can run in the billions of dollars. They touch countless varied statutes from the bankruptcy code, ERISA, tax law, to sanctions and provisions that need updating every time the geopolitical landscape shifts. “It's complex until you figure it out, then it's simple," she says. Operating at the intersection of mortgage finance and capital markets, Nixon gets to watch the full economy move through her practice in real time.

When interest rates rise, fewer people buy houses, and she can feel it in her deal volume. When everyone was stuck at home during Covid and started taking out home equity lines of credit for renovations, her deal flow spiked. "I love being able to hear a story on [the NY Times podcast] "The Daily" and realize it's going to impact my practice," she says. "That's super cool."

For Nixon the news reads differently – it’s a direct feed into her next set of documents. The explosion of private credit in recent years has kept her practice in a near-constant state of high activity. When traditional banks pull back from certain asset classes, private funds step in, and those funds need financing from someone. That someone is often Nixon's client.

The complexity is not incidental to her enjoyment of the work. It is central to her enjoyment of the work. She studied for the LSAT logic games the way some people do the crossword – on the train, for fun, as a kind of daily mental calibration. "There are certain people," she says, "who can find joy in looking at a deal document and figuring out where the holes are in those words and how to plug them artfully and surgically." Put another way: She is 100 percent one of those people.

“THIS DOESN'T MAKE SENSE”

For all her love of complexity, Nixon's guiding professional principle is aggressively simple: If something doesn't make sense, say so.

It sounds obvious. But in practice, on a forty-person deal call with billions of dollars in play, and multiple law firms and institutional clients with their best game faces on, performing maximum competence for one another, the “obvious” rarely enters the conversation.

The moment she traces it back to involves her mentor and Lisa Paquette (also at Cadwalader). They were on one of those calls together with Nixon at a point in her career where she had been around long enough to suspect, when something seemed wrong, that maybe it wasn't “just her.” But suspecting it and saying it out loud in front of forty-plus people are very different things.

Nixon recalls, "Lisa just said, 'This doesn't make sense. And to me, it was the most profound, boldest, most amazing statement that anyone could have ever made."

She had watched people fluff and perform on calls when they weren't sure, and how the instinct to appear certain could crowd out the obligation to be right. What Paquette modeled in that moment was something Nixon has carried into every deal since: that calling something out clearly, without apology or judgement, is not a confession of weakness. It’s actually the job.

When traditional banks pull back from certain asset classes, private funds step in, and those funds need financing from someone. That someone is often Nixon's client.

"If something doesn't make sense, I will run it to ground and make it make sense – in plain English," she says. "Because a whole bunch of alphabet soup that nobody actually understands doesn't serve anyone, especially in a transactional document."

THE SPOKE IN THE WHEEL

Nixon's practice philosophy can be distilled into two words she returns to often: consistent and clear.

She describes her service model in terms that are almost counterintuitively egoless for a major law firm partner. “I love being a deal lawyer because I'm the spoke in the wheel,” she says.

Nixon likes being in the background. She likes it when a client can close their eyes and get the same quality of work regardless of who on her team is sending the email.

"I don't want to compare practicing law to a Big Mac," she says with a laugh, "but you know what McDonald's did. You can go anywhere and know exactly what you're going to get. I want my practice to be like that, except with premier white label service…I know that sounds insane."

It’s doesn’t. It sounds like someone who has thought hard about what it means to lead a practice rather than just occupy one. Someone for whom consistency is an absolute non-negotiable. Her emails, she admits, all look exactly (and intentionally) the same. It’s a rule: same format, every time, every client, every deal. "I'm rule-based," she says simply. "If I have a rule for how an email is supposed to look, it takes the pressure off. Otherwise, I might spend three hours composing a single email."

She calls it a nervous tic and suspects it might technically be a diagnosable condition, but she keeps doing it because it works. The rule creates consistency and removes potential overthinking, freeing up mental processing power for the matter at hand.

She describes the deal call the same way she once described appellate arguments: a body of work to be absorbed, two opposing perspectives to be understood, a gap to be identified and closed. Whether you're arguing in front of judges or walking forty people through a substantive issues list, the underlying skill is the same – read everything, understand where each side is coming from and find where they can meet.

The difference to Nixon is that makes the difference is that this isn’t combat, it’s chess.

Being a closer is an identity, not just job description. Someone who loves the punch list, the all-hands call, loves the moment it comes together where everyone gets what they want.

PARTNERSHIP IN THE DEEP END

Nixon made partner in January of 2024. She says this matter-of-factly, but the timing was anything but.

Cadwalader's then-pending merger with Hogan Lovells – one of the biggest and most scrutinized firm combinations in Big Law history – dominated the first year of her partnership in ways that compressed what might otherwise have been a decade of institutional experience into twelve months. She emerged from it changed, and more than a little grateful.

"I got a lot of lifetime experience in that first year," she says. "And it's going to impact the way I practice and the way I manage going forward."

It made clear the difference between practicing law and partnership in a firm. “Someone can spend an entire career as a lawyer and never own a stake in the company they work for. When that moment comes, something shifts,” she recalls.

If something doesn't make sense, I will run it to ground and make it make sense – in plain English. Because a whole bunch of alphabet soup that nobody actually understands doesn't serve anyone, especially in a transactional document.

"I own a very small chair in this company," she says. "And I care a lot about it. I care about its success, and I care about people's experience here."

What she understood intellectually for years – that partnership is the beginning of something, not the culmination – landed differently when she lived it. She remembers one of her mentors and Cadwalader’s New York managing partner Stu Goldstein telling her at the time: “you’ll spend less time in your career as anything other than a partner.” 

"The idea is that partnership is this pinnacle," she says, "but you've got thirty years ahead of you making your practice what it's supposed to be, and what you want it to be."

She lets that sit. "I think that's the only way to show the magnitude of what that year was for me."

When she recruits now – which she does with passion and conviction – she doesn't sell the prestige of working at Wall Street’s oldest law firm. She tells the truth: that last night, she was up until two in the morning on a document and back on email at eight.

Then she asks the candidate: "What do you think about that?" She wants them to know what they’re signing up for – and why it's worth it.

"The practice of law in a setting like this is like a form of athleticism. A mental acuity that you absolutely need. It's not for the faint of heart. But if you look to your left and to your right and you can rest assured that you are working with very smart, very hardworking people who truly care about giving the best to the client – if you have that as your base, it grounds you…and elevates you at the same time."

AFTER HOURS

When Nixon is not closing deals or composing uniformly perfectly formatted emails in the wee small hours, she is most likely with her five-year-old daughter, who operates on a schedule that recognizes no billable hours and shows no interest in the details of the secondary mortgage market.

"Talk about mental acuity," Nixon says, laughing. "A five-year-old will work you."

She grew up playing Boggle and Scrabble at Christmas with her family – "all of those little mind games are super fun" – and has carried the instinct for puzzle-solving into adulthood in ways that feel less like a hobby than a worldview. She sees deal documents the way a chess player sees a board: a system of rules, a set of positions, a problem with a solution embedded in it somewhere. The task is just to find it.

Asked what she would be if she weren't a lawyer, she doesn't hesitate.

"A librarian."

The answer surprises, then immediately doesn't. A library is a system. It has rules. Every item has a place, a number, a logic connecting it to everything else. You find what you're looking for by understanding the structure. You serve the person in front of you by navigating it better than they can.

It is, in its own way, exactly what she does.

She was also, like many people her age, shaped by "To Kill a Mockingbird." Atticus Finch was the first archetype of what a lawyer could be. She acknowledges readily that nothing in her practice looks anything like that.

"At some point," she says, "you come to terms with it."

Given what she's built – the precision, the consistency, the plain English, the many years still ahead – it seems fair to say she has.

It’s not that long a walk from the girl who got senior skip day sanctioned by the principal. She became the partner who tells recruits what working till 2 AM looks like and still makes you want to jump aboard. She’s the person in the room who will call out what doesn’t make sense…then make it make sense. For Andrea Nixon rules aren’t limitations, they’re the game board. And everybody wins.

But the question that ultimately decided the case was deceptively simple.

At its core, the dispute turned on whether Google had continued to collect user data even after users took steps to turn it off – and whether that conduct amounted to an invasion of privacy.

For Lee and Mao – litigators who have built their practices at the forefront of privacy, technology and complex class actions – Rodriguez v. Google was not just about proving liability. In a landscape defined by evolving technology and layered disclosures, it tested whether foundational privacy principles still hold.

“At the end of the day, however complex the facts, it still comes down to a basic expectation of privacy – and whether it was violated,” says Lee.

That answer came when Lee and Mao – working alongside firm founder and litigation legend David Boies as trial counsel along with co-counsel from Susman Godfrey and Morgan & Morgan – secured a $425.7 M jury verdict.

Mao and Lee served as architects in the case, embodying roles that spanned through leadership to daily legwork. As the case approached trial, they worked closely with Boies on the legal strategy, and the legal luminary left a clear imprint on his colleagues and on the outcome of the case. For Mao, watching Boies at trial was a lesson in precision and discipline.

“He started with a simple question – whether the disclosures could have been clearer – and methodically walked the witness through the record,” Mao recalls. “What followed were clear, repeated admissions – the kind we hadn’t been able to get despite multiple attempts. It was masterful.”

What’s striking is not just the scale of the win, but how decisively the complexity fell away. Despite novel technology and sophisticated defenses, the jury grounded its decision in one of the oldest legal principles on the books: invasion of privacy.

Lawdragon: Can you walk us through what was at issue in this case?

James Lee: The case centers on how Google collects data across apps that aren’t its own through software development kits – tools they offer to app developers to help build their apps. Google embeds trackers into those free kits, through which they collect detailed information about what users are doing – what they download, what they're looking at, when they look at it, what order they look at it.

Most people assume that if they’re not using a Google product, they’re not being tracked by Google. But through these software development kits, Google’s tentacles reach virtually every app developer on the planet, and they're actually tracking you through non-Google apps as well.

The problem for Google comes down to optics. To address this, they offered a privacy control called “Web & App Activity,” which claimed users would stop this data from being saved if turned off. In reality, Google saved it whether the control was turned on or off.

People have a clear sense of privacy in the physical world. In the digital world, those boundaries are less visible, which makes it easier to blur them. This case was about defining where that line is.

The disclosures about what Google could do and couldn't do were pretty clear, and Google didn’t dispute that it collected the data. Its defenses focused on how to characterize that conduct – pointing to different disclosures, or arguing that the data was pseudonymized or not tied to specific individuals. But the data included device identifiers which allowed it to be associated with a user over time.

At trial, they argued that they didn’t really make money off of it, so what did it matter? What’s the harm? The framing was that this is just data – used for business purposes, not something anyone is personally reviewing – so why should it matter?

Our position was that it does matter. People have a clear sense of privacy in the physical world. In the digital world, those boundaries are less visible, which makes it easier to blur them. This case was about defining where that line is.

LD: What was at stake if Google had won?

JL: There were huge stakes on a philosophical level – the question of whether privacy should matter online. In the real world, we have expectations of privacy. If a company says they won't record you, they won't. If that trust was broken, it would be a clear violation. Companies would go out of business for doing something like that.

When it comes to the digital world, the expectations are not as clear. If a company says they won't record and save everything you're doing, that doesn't mean they always live up to the promise. Usually there are technical caveats that users don't really understand. Big tech collects and saves vast amounts of user data, and regulation hasn’t kept up – so civil litigation has become the main way to hold these companies accountable.

The stakes here went well beyond a single case. At every stage – from motions to dismiss, to class certification, to trial – the question was whether existing laws and courts are equipped to address modern digital privacy, and whether a jury would view these violations as meaningful.

If we had lost along the way, the consequences would have been significant. It could have narrowed what types of privacy claims are actionable, limited the ability to bring cases at scale, and discouraged future enforcement altogether. These cases are complex and expensive to litigate, and without clear signals from courts and juries that the issues matter, fewer firms would be willing to take them on. There was real pressure. We understood that the outcome wouldn’t just affect our clients – it would help define how privacy is enforced going forward.

Mark Mao: Interestingly, the jury returned a verdict in our favor based on invasion of privacy, which is one of our oldest laws on the books. There were other more sophisticated, more current laws, but at the end of the day, they saw this case as an invasion of privacy.

That was an important lesson for us. Legislatures can try to keep pace with evolving technology, but jurors tend to see these cases in more fundamental terms. However complex the facts, it still comes down to a basic expectation of privacy – and whether it was violated.

​​LD: When you’re up against a company like Google, with enormous resources, what does it take to hold them accountable?

MM: The real test of whether the system works is whether lawyers representing consumers – the “little guys” – are willing and able to take these cases all the way to trial. You can have strong legal claims and clear violations of established norms, but if those cases aren’t seen through, then accountability breaks down.

James and I have always loved trials – it’s where we do our best work. It’s where strategy, narrative and advocacy come together. We’re responding to defenses, refining the theory and presenting a clear story to the jury. At some level, there’s always a question of faith. When you’re dealing with cases that may be paradigm-shifting or carry real precedential weight, you’re not just arguing the facts – you’re testing whether the system works the way it’s supposed to. There’s always a degree of uncertainty in that.

Legislatures can try to keep pace with evolving technology, but jurors tend to see these cases in more fundamental terms. However complex the facts, it still comes down to a basic expectation of privacy – and whether it was violated.

JL: Google is an extraordinarily sophisticated and well-resourced adversary, and their approach to litigation reflects that. They engage in what I would describe as a scorched earth defense – where everything is a no. Every request is resisted, every effort to get evidence is challenged, and the process can be slowed at every turn.

I think the reality is that strategy is designed to test whether the firm on the other side has the will and the resources to stay in the fight over several years. Many don’t – and that can lead to cases settling for less than their full value.

That’s where Boies Schiller has distinguished itself. In both the Incognito and Rodriguez matters, we’ve demonstrated that we’re prepared to take cases all the way to verdict. I think that signals clearly that those kinds of tactics won’t deter us from pursuing the full value of the claims – this type of strategy is not going to work when our firm is involved.

LD: How did you build the case in the early stages?

JL: Mark is probably the preeminent privacy and technology lawyer in the country, and he had already been thinking deeply about how to use litigation to address gaps in consumer privacy.  I had done large-scale class actions on behalf of plaintiffs. We saw a real opportunity here to combine those perspectives and build something that hadn’t really been tested before.

In the early stages, the focus was on developing a complaint that could withstand scrutiny. Once we reached a point where the allegations were solid we knew the case had real traction, particularly because Google didn't deny publicly the allegations in the complaint.

From there, the team expanded in phases as the case progressed. After the motion to dismiss, we built out a larger discovery team. Following class certification, the case took on even greater significance and David Boies joined to help lead the trial effort. As we approached trial, all three plaintiff firms staffed up with their top litigators to ensure we were fully resourced against the amount of talent and resources that Google was bringing.

LD: What were the biggest challenges you faced in building the case, particularly in framing the legal theory?

JL: Google did not disclose all of the information they were supposed to, and not having the information upfront made it very difficult in terms of formulating our case theory and the time and resources it took to get to trial.

We also had to really contend with Google's defenses. This notion that they do collect this data from users, but they are “pseudo-anonymized.” We had to understand the nuances of that as best we could.

And then we had to come up with a damages theory that was viable. Fortunately, in the discovery campaign, we found that Google had just happened to have done an internal analysis of what this type of data is worth. That was really helpful and took a bit of luck.

When you’re dealing with cases that may be paradigm-shifting or carry real precedential weight, you’re not just arguing the facts – you’re testing whether the system works the way it’s supposed to.

When we got to trial, we got down to first principles. David Boies was wise in making sure that we didn't get lost in the weeds of the technicals, and kept it as simple as possible. This is a disclosure case. Wherever Google tried to complicate things, our strategy at trial was to keep it as simple as possible. Google made these promises, they didn't live up to them. They lied. Period.

MM: One of the biggest challenges for me was what I’d call a “language barrier” – not in the traditional sense, but in how these concepts are framed. Google uses codewords for what they do and those words often change over time – that's not by mistake. Getting behind the technical barriers to understand what they were doing was an immense challenge at first.

Google relied on terms like “pseudonymous,” which, frankly, is a bit of a sleight of hand. They’d describe data that way, and then talk about it as if it were anonymous. But if you take a step back, that distinction doesn’t hold. You’re either identifiable or you’re not – “pseudo-anonymous” is, at some level, a contradiction.

We kept coming back to a simple analogy: if I put a mask over your face but know where you live, where you work, where you shop, your phone number, your social security number, and track everything else you do, is that really anonymous? Most people would say no. If you are “pseudo-identifiable,” that means you're identifiable. A big part of the work was cutting through that terminology and bringing the issue back to something the jury could evaluate in plain terms.

LD: Take us into the trial – what moments stand out, and were there any key risks or pivots along the way?

JL: Once we got to trial, we ended up shedding one of our privacy experts, and we also decided not to call one of our class representatives. We wanted to simplify the case as much as possible and keep the focus on the disclosures that Google made as opposed to what they actually did. The witnesses that we didn't call would've done a great job, but it was a calculated risk to keep our story consistent without getting distracted with testimony or evidence that wasn't aligned with that story.

We’d also uncovered a lot of communications from senior employees acknowledging that Google’s representations about “Web & App Activity” were inaccurate, harmful to the user and raised real privacy concerns – and that Google had done nothing about it. At trial those witnesses consistently tried to distance themselves from those statements or tried to walk them back. That made for challenging – but ultimately effective – cross-examinations. It became clear to the jury that they were being evasive and not telling the full story.

MM: The most memorable moment for me came during a cross-examination. We had a witness we hadn’t been able to crack in discovery. Two of us had taken a run at him and gotten nowhere. He was smart, composed – and frankly, I liked him, which didn’t make it any easier. Then David Boies took the cross. David is truly a master – his energy cannot be outmatched. He started with a simple question – whether the disclosures could have been clearer – and methodically walked the witness through the record. What followed were clear, repeated admissions – the kind we hadn’t been able to get despite multiple attempts. It was masterful.

For me, that moment wasn’t just a testament to David’s skill. It was something more fundamental. It was a reminder that the system does work. People actually feel compelled to say what is righteous and true, even though they've been coached to say otherwise.

At the end of the day, no matter how big the company is or how many lawyers they have, the case gets decided in a courtroom, in front of a judge and a jury. That’s the design. An adversarial process where each side presents its case, and a group of peers determines what’s true. It’s not about matching resources blow for blow – it’s about being confident that if you present the facts clearly and honestly, the system will do what it’s designed to do.

That’s something that’s deeply embedded in this firm. We believe in the rule of law, and we’re not afraid to take a case to trial. It’s not a declaration of war – it’s the system working the way it’s supposed to.

LD: What do you remember about the win?

JL: After the verdict, Mark and I were sitting with David Boies, and he leaned over and said, “A half-billion-dollar jury verdict – not many lawyers can say they’ve done that.” Then he added, “Now the real trick is getting to a billion. I’ve done that ten times.”

We all just laughed. It was a great result – and a moment I won’t forget.

These lawyers bring a vast span of skills and expertise – representing multinational corporations in their global mobility needs, advocating for family-based immigrant applications and specializing in EB-5 for investment and business.

Immigration and migration worldwide has become a fraught issue as nations try to balance ideals with burgeoning needs, hopes and dreams of an ever-more global population. And while the intersection of those helping a global German business ensure its executives can relocate to the U.S. may appear dissimilar to those helping detained immigrants fight removal orders, at Lawdragon we see a commonalty of discussion and purpose. Of the opportunity to recognize the best minds in the immigration and migration world collectively addressing a vital global issue for business, for people, for us all.

Edward Ramos is a partner at Miami’s formidable Kurzban Kurzban Tetzeli & Pratt. He is passionate about immigration advocacy, going to federal court to help clients overcome denials, in employment- and family-based scenarios, among many others. He has also handled national class actions, representing the American Immigration Lawyers Association and immigrants' rights organizations in amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Morgan Bailey is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Mayer Brown. She served for more than 10 years with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, whose 19,000 employees administer the nation’s naturalization and immigration system. She served as special advisor to the Office of the Director on laws, proposed regulations, operations and programs; and previously served as Acting Field Office Director in Kenya, and Field Office Director in China. She joined Mayer Brown in 2021 and advises multinational companies on global mobility and migration.

Mariana Ribeiro is a partner with Gunster in Miami, where she co-leads the Immigration practice group. A native of Brazil, she handles complex employment-based nonimmigrant and immigrant visa matters, including Investor visas, Professional/Specialized Knowledge visas, Intra-Company Transferee/Multinational Executive or Manager visas, Trainee visas, Extraordinary Ability visas, Labor and Consular Processing. She is also co-chair of the firm’s Women’s Leadership Forum.

In addition to our journalistic research we rely on nominations as well as vetting by peers to select those included. Those denoted with an asterisk are members of our Hall of Fame. Lawdragon has reported on and recognized leaders in Immigration Law since 2007.

Before getting into crisis strategy, Maria Stagliano pauses to check on Chester – her internet-famous toucan, whose bright plumage and oversized personality have earned him a following of his own. Chester is, in many ways, the easiest kind of public figure to manage: colorful, charismatic, instantly likable. He’s beloved by millions of fans – with only the occasional “Karen” having something negative to say.

The same is rarely true in crisis communications.

At Blue Highway Advisory, Stagliano counsels clients through high-stakes moments where narratives move fast, facts emerge unevenly and public understanding can harden long before the full story is known. Some matters unfold quietly; others draw national attention. In every case, the challenge is the same: navigating the volatile space between what appears true in public and what is actually happening out of immediate view.

“There’s always the narrative you see in the media,” Stagliano says, “and then there’s everything happening behind the scenes.”

That gap is where she works best. Stagliano’s job is not to manufacture certainty where none exists or promise neat resolutions in situations that are anything but. It is to bring clarity, context and discipline to moments defined by confusion, pressure and competing agendas. Over time, she has come to understand that most crises resist simple definitions.

“It’s not simply right or wrong,” Stagliano says. “It’s about understanding different perspectives, and making careful, strategic decisions in real time.”

If Chester belongs to a world of vivid color, virality and instant appeal, crisis communications belongs to the gray.

Lawdragon: How did you first come to PR and crisis communications?

Maria Stagliano: I knew I was interested in communications – at first I considered journalism because I love writing, but realized it didn’t satiate my desire for a more hands-on strategic role. At the time that I was trying to decide what to do for a career, there were several big stories about aviation scandals. I started thinking, “This is someone’s job to respond to these issues – I want to do that.” What really clicked for me was realizing that there are people behind the scenes shaping how companies respond in high-stakes moments. That was the work I wanted to do.

I switched into PR, and early on I was introduced to crisis communications. That was the moment it clicked – the combination of strategy, writing and real-time problem solving.

What’s kept me in it is the nature of the work itself. It’s unpredictable, and it lives in the gray. There’s always the public narrative, and then there’s everything happening behind the scenes – the nuance, the context, the constraints around what can and can’t be said. You’re constantly navigating between those layers.

That also means the work is incredibly varied. I’ve worked on everything from regulatory issues to high-profile executive matters and complex disputes. You’re always getting up to speed on new industries and new problems – often very quickly.

LD: You mentioned early on that you wanted to do crisis communications in D.C. – what drew you there?

MS: It actually wasn’t about politics – I was never interested in political communications. It was really about the concentration of high-level crisis work.

My previous communications firm, Levick, was based in D.C., and at the time it was one of the leading boutique firms handling complex, high-profile matters. I knew that was the kind of work I wanted to be doing, so I made a very intentional decision to move there after graduating.

I also completed a certificate in public affairs communications at the University of Georgia, where I was part of the inaugural fellowship cohort. That training was incredibly practical – it focused on things like messaging, talking points and op-eds – which ended up being directly applicable to the work I do now.

LD: What is it about crisis communications that drew you in?

MS: What drew me to crisis communications is the complexity. It’s unpredictable, and the issues are almost never black and white.

There’s always the narrative you see in the media, and then there’s everything happening behind the scenes – the facts, the context, the competing pressures. You’re constantly navigating what can be said publicly versus what you know internally.

Reporters are working with the information they have, and sometimes they get it right, but often they don’t have the full picture. That gap is where the work happens.

Over time, you realize that most situations live in a gray area. It’s not simply right or wrong – it’s about understanding different perspectives, and making careful, strategic decisions in real time.

LD: Once you got to Levick, what were some of the earliest types of matters you were working on?

MS: I feel like I was thrown into the deep end within my first couple weeks. I was pulled into scoping calls and active crisis matters, which meant getting exposure very quickly.

Within the first six months, I was working across a range of issues – executive and C-suite matters, high-profile individuals, data breaches, product recalls and regulatory issues. It was a broad mix, and the pace was fast.

Over time, that work expanded into more legal-adjacent matters, including intellectual property disputes, investigations and white-collar issues. That intersection between legal strategy and communications has become a significant part of my practice.

That early exposure was invaluable. It gave me a foundation not just in crisis work, but in understanding how different types of issues unfold and how to approach them strategically.

Over time, you realize that most situations live in a gray area. It’s not simply right or wrong – it’s about understanding different perspectives, and making careful, strategic decisions in real time.

LD: What drew you to Blue Highway?

MS: I worked with Levick until Richard Levick died. After he passed, I stayed through the transition to the firm becoming Leidar, but it became clear that I was ready for something different. I spent some time doing contract work with a range of firms, which gave me a broader perspective on how different teams operate – how they approach clients, and how they approach the work.

When I met [Blue Highway founder] Ian McCaleb, what stood out immediately was his commitment to a more direct and human approach. There’s an emphasis at Blue Highway on being thoughtful, but also honest – not defaulting to overly polished or overly cautious language, but actually giving clients clear, practical advice.

That was important to me. In this work, you’re not just there to agree – you need to be able to tell a client when something isn’t working, and to have real conversations about how to move forward.

He’s also built a culture that feels genuinely human. There’s a level of trust and flexibility that allows people to show up as themselves – even in small ways. I have a toucan, Chester, who occasionally appears on calls, and that’s not treated as a disruption – it’s just part of the environment.

In a market that can sometimes lean overly polished or transactional, that kind of authenticity stands out. That balance – being rigorous in the work, but grounded and genuine in how you operate – is what drew me to Blue Highway.

LD: How do you work with lawyers to navigate the intersection of legal strategy and communications?

MS: Most of our work runs through law firms, which is intentional. It helps preserve privilege and ensures everything is handled with the appropriate level of confidentiality and discretion.

We almost always start with the lawyers, and the relationship is highly collaborative. There’s a common perception that legal and PR are at odds – that lawyers want to say nothing and PR wants to say everything – but in practice, both are focused on protecting the client.

Having worked closely with legal teams from the outset, I’ve developed a strong sense of where that line is – how to advance a narrative without creating legal risk. It’s about finding the right balance: saying enough to move the story forward, but never in a way that undermines the legal strategy.

That alignment is critical regardless of the client. While most of our work is with organizations, we also advise individuals and their counsel – and the underlying principles remain the same: discretion, coordination and thoughtful messaging.

LD: Where do lawyers sometimes fall short when it comes to communications?

MS: The most common issue is that communications is brought in too late.

I’ve seen situations where the legal strategy is well developed, but communications is treated as an afterthought – something to address once the issue is already underway. That has a real impact on how effectively you can respond.

There’s often a desire to keep the circle small and focus on legal risk, but communications brings a different lens – how something will be perceived, where the blind spots are, and how a narrative may evolve. The earlier that perspective is integrated, the more effective the overall response.

There can also be hesitation around engaging publicly at all. Some lawyers prefer to keep everything strictly within the legal process, but the risk is that the public narrative continues to develop regardless. Even if the legal outcome is successful, a negative perception may already be taking hold if you haven’t told your side of the story.

It’s not about trying the case in the media. It’s about recognizing that the legal process and the public narrative often move in parallel – and both matter.

There’s also a misconception that the only options are to say everything or nothing. In reality, there’s almost always a way to engage constructively – whether that’s having counsel speak, issuing a targeted statement, or clarifying specific points.

Ultimately, it comes down to coordination and balance – integrating communications early and aligning closely with legal strategy so that both are working toward the same outcome.

LD: How do you think about your role in shaping the narrative around a client’s situation?

MS: At its core, the role is to ensure the client’s story is understood – accurately, and on their terms.

If you don’t provide that context early, others will fill in the gaps. The more thoughtfully you put it into the public domain, the less room there is for speculation, misinterpretation, or for an adversary to define the narrative.

That extends to how you engage with reporters. You don’t want your first interaction to be after something is published, asking for a correction – that’s not how you build lasting relationships.

A big part of the work is identifying the right reporters and establishing those relationships early, often in real time. In many cases, you’re not relying on existing connections – you’re building trust quickly, so that when you do engage, there’s already a foundation.

Ultimately, it comes down to coordination and balance – integrating communications early and aligning closely with legal strategy so that both are working toward the same outcome.

LD: When are you typically brought into a matter?

MS: It varies – we’re brought in at all different stages.

Ideally, it’s before anything happens. Having an established relationship makes a significant difference – you already understand the client’s voice, the potential risks, and the broader context, so when something arises, you can move quickly and strategically.

Without that, you’re building that foundation in real time – learning the client, the issue and the dynamics under pressure.

I’ve also seen situations where we’re brought in mid-crisis, or even asked to step in after another firm hasn’t worked out. That can mean responding while simultaneously getting up to speed – or even pitching for the work in the middle of an active situation – which isn’t ideal for anyone involved.

It reinforces how valuable it is to have the right team in place early.

LD: What’s one of the harder parts of the job that people might not expect?

MS: Dealing with hostile or misleading coverage. Most reporters are thoughtful and focused on getting things right. But occasionally, you encounter someone more committed to a narrative than to the full set of facts. That can create real challenges – especially when coverage lacks context or is simply inaccurate.

What’s less obvious from the outside is how personal that becomes for clients. Having your name or your company portrayed that way isn’t just a communications issue – it can be deeply upsetting. You feel that pressure alongside them.

Part of the role is managing that – working to correct the record where possible, while also helping clients navigate the emotional impact in real time.

LD: How has social media changed the way crises unfold?

MS: It’s accelerated everything. Information – and misinformation – can spread almost instantly, and each platform behaves differently in terms of audience, tone and how narratives take shape.

Part of the job is understanding that landscape but also knowing how to separate signal from noise. Not everything that gains traction online actually matters.

A big part of what we do is help clients maintain that perspective. A single post can feel overwhelming in the moment, but it doesn’t always reflect a broader issue.

LD: What happens when communications aren’t handled in a coordinated way?

MS: That’s when things can escalate quickly.

We’ve seen situations where a client puts out a statement – on social media, by email or otherwise – before aligning with legal or communications. Once something is out there, it can be picked up, shared and reframed immediately.

At that point, you’re not starting from a clean slate – you’re trying to correct or contain something that’s already taken on a life of its own.

It underscores how important it is to have alignment across legal and communications from the outset.

LD: How do you manage a client’s ongoing communications during a prolonged crisis?

MS: In longer-running situations, we work closely with internal teams – especially marketing – to review and approve content before anything goes out.

They’re not always part of the day-to-day discussions around the issue, so they may not have full visibility into the nuances or the broader strategy. Even well-intentioned posts can create complications if they’re not aligned.

More broadly, we try to keep sensitive conversations off public channels. If someone raises an issue, the goal is to move that offline as quickly as possible – direct message, email or another private channel – rather than engaging in a visible back-and-forth.

LD: Blue Highway emphasizes personality. How does that shape the way you approach this work alongside legal strategy?

MS: A lot of communications can become templated – safe, repetitive and interchangeable. Our focus is the opposite: understanding the client’s voice and positioning them in a way that actually reflects who they are.

That comes from proximity – conversations, instinct, and a real sense of how someone thinks and communicates. It’s not something you can reduce to a formula.

That’s also where AI falls short. It can mimic tone, but it can’t replace judgment – knowing what a client would or wouldn’t say, and how something will land in context.

Alongside legal strategy, that distinction matters. Lawyers are rightly focused on risk – what creates exposure and what needs to be avoided. Our role is to bring in the human dimension – how the client is perceived, and how their story is told.

When those perspectives are aligned, the result is far more effective than either one on its own.

A partner in Paul, Weiss’ Litigation Department, Benedon represents companies, boards, officers and directors in high-stakes securities class actions and derivative litigation. Her recent matters include securing a dismissal with prejudice for Amazon in a complex securities case involving overlapping fraud theories and helping Kirkland Lake Gold achieve a rare denial of class certification followed by summary judgment – outcomes that reflect careful factual development and disciplined strategic choices.

That focus is not accidental. Benedon credits her growth to being drawn early to the strategic and analytical demands of litigation, and to an approach grounded in mastering the facts as much as the law. Over the course of her career at Paul, Weiss, where she has spent her entire professional life, she has taken on increasingly senior roles at moments when the margin for error was small and the stakes for clients were especially high.

Those professional milestones came alongside major personal ones. Benedon became a mother early in her career and had three children as an associate. Rather than slowing her trajectory, she says the experience sharpened her judgment, her ability to triage and her perspective on what truly matters when multiple pressures converge. Today, as a newly elected partner, she remains focused on both her practice and mentoring younger lawyers navigating similarly demanding paths.

Benedon spoke with Lawdragon about what draws her to securities litigation, how she approaches complex fraud allegations and how she balances high‑stakes work with life outside the office.

Lawdragon: What first drew you to the law, and what made litigation – particularly commercial and securities litigation – the right fit for you?

Alison Benedon: When I was in college, I took a criminal law class as an elective, and it was the most fun I’d ever had in a classroom. That class completely changed how I thought about my future. Once I started seriously considering law, there was never any question that I would be a litigator.

What I love about commercial litigation, and securities work in particular, is the strategic and analytical thinking involved day to day. We’re handling big, messy problems for large companies, often under intense pressure and with a lot at stake. I enjoy learning a client’s business, digging deeply into the facts and understanding every aspect of the alleged fraud or disclosure issue. Being able to pull on lots of threads, figure out how they connect and then decide how best to present the story to a court is a big part of what makes the work interesting to me.

The stakes in securities litigation can also be enormous, which makes those cases both challenging and exciting. With many of our clients, even a small stock drop can translate into a massive loss in market cap, which makes securities cases especially attractive to the plaintiffs’ bar. Our goal is always to secure as early a dismissal as possible to save our clients from potential financial exposure and from the cost and burden of prolonged litigation. That challenge, and the gratification of securing positive outcomes for our clients, keeps me motivated. 

We’re handling big, messy problems for large companies, often under intense pressure and with a lot at stake.

LD: You’ve spent your entire career at Paul, Weiss. What drew you to the firm initially, and what has kept you there?

AB: Once I knew I wanted to be a litigator, Paul, Weiss stood out to me early on because of the quality of the litigation work. I clerked right out of law school and came back to the firm afterward assuming I might stay for a year or two, with the goal of learning as much as I could as a junior lawyer.

What’s kept me here is the opportunity to continue growing and taking on more responsibility. Over time, I’ve been able to work on increasingly complex matters and develop my own judgment as a lawyer, which has been incredibly valuable.

LD: What did it mean to you to be elected partner after building your career at the firm?

AB: It’s incredibly humbling. I’ve always felt lucky to be here, and I’ve taken seriously the responsibility to make the most of the opportunity. Being elected partner was meaningful not just as a personal milestone, but as recognition of the work I’ve been able to do and the trust that’s been placed in me over time.

It is also a reflection of the people who trained me and trusted me along the way. I was given meaningful opportunities to do important work, prove myself and grow. That kind of support makes a huge difference.

LD: You became a partner while also being a working mother of three. How did those experiences intersect for you?

AB: When I started as a second‑year associate after my clerkship, I was eight weeks pregnant with my first child. I then had three kids in just over four years. I assumed, incorrectly, that my family planning would interfere with my long‑term opportunities.

At every stage, I was given the space to grow at my own pace. Each time I returned from parental leave, I was staffed on high-profile matters and given real opportunities for growth. I was never pushed before I was ready, but the opportunities were there as soon as I wanted to take them on.

Having three kids close in age can be chaotic, but I think that learning to thrive in that environment has made me a better lawyer. As a parent, you learn how to triage, how to prioritize and how to decide which issues require immediate attention and which can wait. Those skills translate directly to this job.

LD: One of your recent wins was securing dismissal of a securities class action against Amazon. What made that case particularly challenging?

AB: The Amazon complaint combined two distinct theories of fraud that the plaintiffs attempted to spin into a single narrative. One theory related to Amazon’s expansion of its fulfillment and storage capacity during the pandemic, and later scaling back on that expansion plan when demand growth slowed. The other focused on allegations about how Amazon interacts with third‑party sellers on its platform. The alleged frauds overlapped in time but were otherwise unrelated.

The plaintiffs’ strategy was to blend the allegations together to create an overall impression of fraud. The challenge – and what ultimately drove the result – was pulling those stories apart and testing each theory against the actual business realities and the applicable pleading standards. Once we did that, it became clear that neither theory held up.

In the end, we successfully argued that the plaintiffs did not sufficiently claim that Amazon’s executives acted with deliberate recklessness or intent to mislead shareholders, securing an early dismissal of the case with prejudice.

Historically, class certification has been treated as somewhat of a check‑the‑box exercise for plaintiffs, and it is gratifying to see that start to change.

LD: Another significant securities win was Kirkland Lake Gold, where your team defeated class certification and later won summary judgment – both very rare results. Why was that case so important?

AB: Kirkland was an incredible case to litigate. Defeating class certification outright in a securities case is still highly unusual, and winning summary judgment after that is even rarer. But what really made the case stand out was it presented the right fact pattern at the right time when the applicable law was actively developing, and it was truly a pleasure to see our hard work pay off with a major victory for our client.

The plaintiffs' theory was based on statements by Kirkland’s CEO that described the company’s focus on organic growth, along with statements about minimum production and cost standards the company applied when evaluating potential acquisitions of other gold mines. When Kirkland later announced it was acquiring a mine, the stock dropped, and the plaintiffs essentially looked backward for any statements that touched on the subject of M&A and argued that those earlier statements were false and misleading.

A big part of our strategy was showing that the theory didn’t make sense – both legally and from an industry perspective. The plaintiffs were proceeding on what is called an “inflation maintenance” theory, which means that positive statements were propping up the company’s stock price. But in this case, the front‑end statements the plaintiffs were challenging would not have been perceived by the market as positive if plaintiffs’ interpretation of those statements was accurate. We spent a lot of time explaining the mining industry itself, including the metrics that actually matter to investors, because the theory of fraud rested on a misunderstanding of how these businesses operate.

The timing of the case also mattered. The class certification motion was pending right after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Goldman and when the Second Circuit’s decision applying it came down, so it became a real test case for how courts should analyze price impact in inflation maintenance cases. Over time, our securities litigation team has developed real expertise in litigating class certification and price impact issues, and Kirkland was an opportunity to apply that specialization in a case where the record and the law aligned in a way that allowed the court to engage seriously with those questions.

Historically, class certification has been treated as somewhat of a check‑the‑box exercise for plaintiffs, and it is gratifying to see that start to change. Cases like Kirkland show that with the right facts and the right framework, defendants can meaningfully challenge certification and, in some cases, get out of the case entirely.

LD: How would you describe yourself as an advocate?

AB: One of my partners recently described me as direct, no-nonsense and a strong advocate for my clients. I try to understand what the client actually cares about and what the key stakeholders are hoping to achieve.

In securities cases especially, credibility matters. That means being precise about the facts, following every factual lead and making arguments that are grounded in how the business actually works. I care deeply about advocating for my clients in a way that’s thoughtful, credible and effective.

LD: What are you most excited about as you look ahead in your career?

AB: I’m excited to continue mentoring younger lawyers, especially associates who may be trying to figure out how to balance demanding work with family life. I’ve benefited enormously from people who invested in me along the way, and I always try to pay it forward.

On the work side, I’m focused on continuing to build my securities litigation practice and taking on cases that raise interesting legal and factual questions, working for great clients along with great teams. There’s always more to learn, and that’s part of what keeps the work engaging.

Clay Trivett told the judge, Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, that Khalid Shaikh Mohammad believed that he was no longer in the custody of the CIA after he was transferred to the U.S. Naval Base here in September 2006 and that he did not have to talk to the FBI personnel who travelled to the base four months later to meet with him. Trivett argued that Mohammad voluntarily and proudly admitted to his leadership role in the Sept. 11 attacks throughout four days of interviews – despite being told each day that he did not have to participate, could stop the questioning at any time and faced no risk of return to his CIA captors.

Trivett repeated what has become the prosecution’s refrain over a suppression hearing that dates to the late summer of 2019: The FBI interviews on Guantanamo Bay were sufficiently attenuated from the “undeniably harsh” CIA interrogation program that elicited hundreds of coercive statements that could not be used at trial. He claimed that Mohammad grasped the difference between the two agencies and had a propagandic desire to brag about his role to anyone who would listen.

“Mr. Khalid Shaikh Mohammad could not shut up about his role as the emir of the 9/11 attacks,” Trivett argued on Tuesday morning, near the start of a presentation that lasted until mid-day Wednesday.

Trivett asked Schrama to “completely divorce” himself from any emotions he might have about the Sept. 11 attacks or the controversial former CIA interrogation program. He said the judge’s role as an impartial umpire was to call “balls and strikes” and that the decision whether Mohammad confessed voluntarily was “a fastball right down the middle.”   

So far, however, the judges in the commissions system have called the statements outside the zone. Schrama’s predecessor, Air Force Col. Matthew McCall, suppressed statements that Ammar al Baluchi, one of the four remaining defendants in the 9/11 case, gave to the FBI during his January 2007 interviews. In April 2025, McCall ruled that the CIA had tortured and conditioned al Baluchi into a compliance that rendered involuntary his subsequent confessions to the FBI.

The government appealed that ruling to the U.S. Court of Military Commission Review (CMCR), which has put al Baluchi’s case on hold. A three-judge panel from the CMCR, the first line of appellate review over the proceedings, heard oral arguments in February and is expected to rule in the coming months. Last year, a panel from that court upheld the suppression of statements made by Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, accused of planning the USS Cole attack. He was also tortured by the CIA and gave a subsequent confession to the FBI on Guantanamo Bay that is now inadmissible.

Trivett’s team also argued this week that confessions made to the FBI by 9/11 co-defendants Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al Hawsawi in January 2007 were voluntary and should be admissible. Defense teams are expected to rebut those arguments next week.

Al Baluchi’s proceedings contesting his confessions have moved ahead of his co-defendants, who in July 2024 agreed to plead guilty to planning the Sept. 11 attacks. The pleading defendants’ legal teams continue their efforts to uphold the agreements that removed the death penalty as a sentencing option before the government withdrew those deals. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which has appellate authority over the commissions system, decided by a 2-1 vote last July that Sec. of Defense Lloyd Austin acted lawfully when he backed out of the deals two days after they were signed. Schrama, the fifth judge to preside over hearings in the case, ordered the teams to resume the pretrial proceedings as they seek U.S. Supreme Court review.

The prosecution bears the burden of establishing the voluntariness of the Guantanamo interview sessions, which were led by the FBI and assisted by investigative agents from the Department of Defense. The legal standard, Trivett noted repeatedly this week, was proof by a preponderance of evidence – which he said meant “more likely than not” or “50.1 percent.” Trivett said the government easily passed that threshold.

The accused 9/11 mastermind, Mohammad, sat for interviews over roughly 12 hours with FBI Special Agent Frank Pellegrino and an FBI intelligence analyst, Brian Antol, between Jan. 12-16 of 2007. Trivett painted a case of cooperation, noting that Mohammed largely determined the duration and pace of the interviews, declining to attend on Jan. 15 and to not return after Jan. 16. Pellegrino and Antol sent word through the guard force they still wanted to meet with him, and “Mr. Mohammad just decided not to show up,” Trivett said. “He exercised the option to not go.”

Mohammad even joked with his interviewers about the FBI’s dated laptops and Pellegrino’s weight. 

“This is not a man who is frightened of his captors,” Trivett said.

Over several hours, Trivett highlighted the consistency of Mohammad’s statements to the FBI with statements he made in other contexts. Those statements include an interview Mohammad gave to Al Jazeera in 2002 before his capture in Pakistan the following year; secret recordings made of him and other detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility; Mohammad’s statements in March 2007 to the Combatant Status Review Tribunal, which was established to review the legal status of Guantanamo detainees; and oral and written statements made by Mohammad during his first military commission, which began in June 2008 during the Bush administration. (President Obama halted all commission proceedings after he assumed office in 2009. The defendants were arraigned again in a reformed commission system in May 2012.)

Among all the government’s evidence, Trivett said the FBI interviews are “qualitatively the best” statements for the level of detail elicited by Pellegrino – who had been tracking Mohammad’s activities since the mid-1990s – and for Mohammad’s total lack of remorse when discussing the destruction and death caused by the 9/11 attacks.

There would be a “huge societal cost” for not allowing this evidence to be aired at trial, Trivett argued.

Mr. Khalid Shaikh Mohammad could not shut up about his role as the emir of the 9/11 attacks,” prosecutor Clay Trivett argued.

Trivett yielded the floor to his colleague, Army Col. Joshua Bearden, on Wednesday afternoon. He presented a similar case for the voluntariness of statements by Mustafa al Hawsawi, who allegedly assisted the 9/11 operation by providing money to the hijackers. Trivett returned to the podium Thursday afternoon to present the case against Walid bin Attash, who is accused of researching flight timetables and testing how to bring weapons on to planes as part of an effort to train the hijackers. Both lawyers pointed to testimony of the FBI and Defense Department agents who interrogated the defendants, eliciting from them admissions of their roles in the 9/11 attacks during relaxed conversations framed by repeated reminders they did not have to answer questions.

A touchstone for each case is the testimony from the first Army commander of the Camp 7 detention facility at Guantanamo Bay that housed the four 9/11 defendants and 10 other high-value detainees who arrived from the black sites in September 2006. The commander, whose identity has been withheld, testified that he informed the newly arrived detainees that they were now in the custody of the Department of Defense and protected by the Geneva Conventions. In subsequent weeks, they were allowed to meet with International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegates and began limited communications with family members. The defendants’ interviews with the FBI did not begin for another 120 days or so.

In assessing the voluntariness of the statements, Schrama will weigh conflicting arguments on the operations of Camp 7, much of which has not been made public. The Senate’s report on the CIA program stated that the agency maintained “operational control” of the Camp 7 facility for an unspecified period of time after the detainees arrived. The first Camp 7 commander testified in 2019 that the guards wore military uniforms but were not actually members of the military. While he returned to the stand in July 2024, his entire testimony over three consecutive days was held in a classified session closed to the public and the defendants.

The government likely faces an additional attenuation hurdle with al Hawsawi, who spent time on Guantanamo Bay between 2003 and 2004 when the CIA used a portion of the facility as a secret black site amidst the ongoing coercive interrogations being held in other secret overseas sites. The FBI conducted its January 2007 interrogations in the same location, known as “Camp Echo 2.” However, Bearden argued that none of the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” or “EITs” were used on al Hawsawi at the Guantanamo black site because he had long been transferred into the debriefing phase of the program for cooperative detainees. Another of the original 9/11 defendants, Ramzi bin al Shibh, also spent time at the Guantanamo black site, though McCall severed him from the case in 2023 after finding him mentally incompetent to assist in his defense.

Much of the government’s case this week drew upon the secret recordings made at the Camp 7 detention facility in the years after the detainees arrived. Both Trivett and Bearden played lengthy segments of the recordings in which each of the three defendants happily discussed his role in the attacks and other topics with detainees who were not charged in the case.

The segments played in court were accompanied by typed Arabic-to-English translations displayed on monitors. The defendants did not appear to question the identities of their interviewers in the prosecution’s chosen audio selections, nor did they express any fear or feelings of coercion associated with the meetings. Mohammad can be heard telling his fellow detainee that the agents showed him their FBI badges “like in the movies” and explained to him that they could not rely on the “secret” evidence generated by CIA interrogations. 

Trivett played close to two hours of the bin Attash recordings on Thursday and Friday. Bin Attash can be heard boasting about his role in the 9/11 attacks and described in detail his sessions with FBI Special Agent Stephen Gaudin and Naval investigative agent Robert McFadden.

“There’s a big difference between those people and CIA,” bin Attash said to a fellow detainee in January 2007.

Bin Attash even hugged Gaudin goodbye after their four days of interviews, Trivett argued, while also saying he remained obligated to kill him if he ever saw him in the free world. The prosecutor added that bin Attash was thrilled to see the agents again when they returned for additional interviews in October 2007 and February 2008. The agents gave bin Attash the government’s rights advisement about the voluntary nature of the interviews so many times – in at least 27 separate instances – that bin Attash became annoyed by it, Trivett said. He also read into the record portions of letters that bin Attash wrote from Guantanamo Bay to family members in which he explained his desire for martyrdom for his role in the 9/11 attacks and praised his conditions of confinement at the detention facility.

“Those here care a great deal about health,” bin Attash wrote in one letter.

Trivett described the voluntariness case against bin Attash as “over the top.” He noted that the military judge in the USS Cole bombing case will allow that prosecution team to use portions of bin Attash’s interviews with Gaudin and McFadden against al Nashiri. (Bin Attash is not charged in al Nashiri’s commission but discussed with the agents his suspected role in assisting the October 2000 plot in Yemen.)

There’s a big difference between those people and CIA,” Walid bin Attash was recorded saying.

Prosecutors addressed the condensed periods of "enhanced measures" used on the defendants – two days for bin Attash, three days for al Hawsawi and about three weeks for Mohammad, who resisted the longest. They argued that the fear conditioned into the defendants by the CIA would have dissipated throughout their years of cooperative debriefing sessions at the black sites and been fully extinguished by their final transfer to Guantanamo Bay in 2006. In these arguments, Trivett and Bearden referred back to the testimonies of Drs. James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the former contract CIA psychologists who helped design the interrogation program.

Defense attorneys have sharply criticized this position as ignorant of the science of the human brain and dismissive of the harsh conditions and isolation that lasted for years, which included a permanent threat to resume torture if they stopped cooperating. In his closing argument to suppress al Baluchi’s statements, James Connell argued that the CIA’s intense physical violence and unyielding dominance, manipulation and control – which included more than 1,100 interrogations over three years – permanently changed his client’s brain. McCall was persuaded that the conditioning worked and that al Baluchi really had no way of knowing if he had ever left the CIA program.

The government’s portrayal of the defendants as cordial, professional and intermittently humorous during their FBI sessions – supported by extensive witness testimony for each of the defendants – has been a double-edged sword in the suppression litigation. Throughout the hearings, defense attorneys have referred to CIA cables that report on the success that personnel at the black sites had in producing the same type of interview subjects who later cooperated with the FBI.

If Schrama finds that the government has met what he's termed an “initial burden” on voluntariness, he will allow the defense teams to present suppression cases beyond their anticipated oral arguments at this hearing – a plan that reinforces the uncertain path of a case that just passed the 14-year anniversary of the arraignment.

The week began with Col. Bearden asking Schrama to set a series of deadlines that would lead to a trial beginning in about a year. Each of the four defense teams portrayed that timeline as unrealistic, in part because of the unresolved suppression litigation unfolding on separate tracks for al Baluchi and the other three defendants. If Schrama suppresses any other defendant’s statements, a government appeal could trigger another set of protracted and unpredictable delays. Bearden argued that the existence of a trial date in 2027 might factor into the government’s decision whether to appeal an adverse suppression ruling or move forward towards trial without the FBI statements as part of its case.

Once suppression is resolved, defense attorneys will file additional suppression motions over other categories of the government’s evidence – including the Camp 7 recordings played this week and intercepts of phone calls between the defendants, though not including bin Attash.

One scheduling likelihood appears to be less court time this summer. In addition to the suppression litigation, Schrama now has before him more than 90 motions that have not been ruled on. He hinted this week that he might use the summer period to issue rulings rather than preside over hearings. The next scheduled session is set for one week beginning June 22.

About the author: John Ryan (john@lawdragon.com) is a co-founder and the Editor-in-Chief of Lawdragon Inc., where he oversees all web and magazine content and provides regular coverage of the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay. When he’s not at GTMO, John is based in Brooklyn. He has covered complex legal issues for 20 years and has won multiple awards for his journalism, including a New York Press Club Award in Journalism for his coverage of the Sept. 11 case.  His book on the 9/11 case was published on Aug. 12.  

When a data breach happens, it's all hands on deck. And if that's the moment you start assembling your team, you're already three steps behind. 

This guide celebrates the lawyers who handle the most sensitive online threats, protecting valuable data – including digital assets – shaping compliance programs and protecting against corporate espionage and national security threats in the cyber realm. 

No small task in today's world. 

We're also highlighting the plaintiff-side lawyers who fight for the digital rights of consumers – including bringing claims when a breach happens and it becomes evident that a company was negligent with their data systems.

Included, too, are the lawyers navigating the insurance aspects of cyber law, dealmakers who ensure data and privacy compliance in complex tech transactions, and specialists in fintech and biometrics.

Lizzie O'Shea is an outspoken advocate for digital rights and a leading voice in Australia and internationally on the human rights behind data usage. A principal at Maurice Blackburn, she specializes in class actions seeking corporate accountability. She is a board member with Digital Rights Watch Australia and is the author of "Future Histories," which examines the widespread use of data mining and surveillance, and looks at historic technological change points to imagine a more democratic data future. 

Andrew Serwin has an astounding track record for navigating some of the largest data breaches in cyber history, including the mammoth Target breach in 2013 that woke the world up to the scale and impact of these threats. The DLA Piper partner has since secured his spot amongst the first call for leading Fortune 500 companies facing cyber crimes in all its ever-morphing forms. Serwin is a leading voice and author in the realms of data protection and security, including the seminal "Information Security and Privacy: A Practical Guide To Federal State and International Law."

Kaylee Cox Bankston is an emerging force in cyber law, with a practice that includes investigations, breach response and litigation, with a focus on data privacy and protection. The Morrison Foerster partner is especially adept at navigating the added complexity of AI, both in clients' systems and in the threats they face. She is the co-author of "The International Handbook of AI Law: A Guide to Understanding and Resolving the Legal Challenges of Artificial Intelligence."

We selected these 500 lawyers through our proprietary process, weighing robust submissions, peer critique and journalistic research. Those denoted with an asterisk are members of our esteemed Hall of Fame.