Refining A Practice Through Ever-Changing Times with Jonathan Harris of Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler

Trial law is a multifaceted and complicated practice. Each new client brings their particular goals and expectations, fueled by specific circumstances and singular needs – no two alike. Each case carries its own world to uncover, to learn inside and out, to argue and ultimately persuade the jury and appeal to the judge. But if you ask Jon Harris, the practice itself is simple compared to the people. People are complex and unique – with their own concerns, influences, nuances and contradictions. They’re also, according to Harris, what truly matters at the end of the day.

“When representing individuals, my team and I make an extraordinary effort to understand our clients as human beings," says Harris. "Of course, getting a great result in the case is paramount – but in order to do that we need to understand how this case fits into our client's life and career, where they've been and where they are going." 

Harris has carved a unique path throughout the years, one that has shaped the way he approaches his practice. He started his career in law in the deep end at Curtis Mallet. One of the first cases to land on Harris’ desk was a behemoth – Harris' legendary mentor Peter Fleming Jr. represented Alan Rosenthal, the former head of the convertible bond desk at Drexel, against the U.S. government in connection with the enormous and highly publicized securities fraud case, SEC v. Drexel.

“He was charged with multiple counts of serious securities fraud,” says Harris. “And he was acquitted by a jury on all counts but one – a minor thing, and he did not get jail time. That is where I learned to love juries.”

After four years of high-octane work at Curtis Mallet, Harris was ready for a new challenge and new experiences. He took time off from law to write a thriller, Seizing Amber, and followed his entrepreneurial ambitions by launching a high end fashion accessory line carried in luxury retailers nationwide. After selling his interest, he returned to practicing at Curtis Mallet.

Having now built a business and been a client himself, Harris possessed a valuable understanding of the million tiny hurricanes one must handle as a business owner, and was able to see cases through the lens of his clients. Adding ‘business advisor’ to his portfolio, Harris eventually left Curtis Mallet for Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossman (where, he says, he "learned to be a plaintiffs' lawyer from the best") and then was ready for the next step – opening his own firm.

Now as Founder and Managing Partner at Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler, Harris is one of New York's leading trial lawyers, representing C-Suite executives, founders, hedge fund leaders and institutional clients. He also runs the business of the firm and provides a platform for his lawyers to realize the fullness of their potential.

“The most fulfilling thing is to build a firm and see your people succeed,” says Harris. “Our people are the most important thing.”

Lawdragon: What first drew you to a legal career?

Jon Harris: My dad was in real estate. He met a lot of people in his work, and he told me that the lawyers he worked with had the most interesting careers. They got to learn about lots of different things, meet lots of different people and solve interesting problems.

Trying a case is part art, part hard work, part skill. It's not a paint by numbers event.

LD: What brought you to Curtis Mallet after law school?

JH: They had a very famous trial lawyer named Peter Fleming and I went there to learn how to try cases from Peter. He was a very prominent white collar criminal defense lawyer – so we did those cases and related civil cases. He was a wonderful person and a great mentor, and Curtis Mallet was a really interesting firm. In addition to working with Peter, I spent a couple of years doing very large corporate deals for the Mexican national oil company, Pemex. It was great.

LD: What did you find most compelling early on about those cases?

JH: Trying a case is part art, part hard work, part skill. It's not a paint by numbers event and I really like that. It's fun and challenging. And each case is different. When I started, I mostly did jury cases and I love jurors because jurors start with very little preconceived notions, whereas judges have been around a long time, they've seen a lot of cases. My experience is judges can be quick to put a case in a bucket – more likely to make a snap judgment. Jurors are a more open.

LD: Can you tell us about your first jury trial?

JH: My first jury trial was with Peter and two other excellent attorneys at the firm. I was a junior lawyer at the time, and we were representing a fellow named Alan Rosenthal, who was the only person from Drexel to go to trial. He was an old friend of Michael Milken’s. Milken brought Rosenthal into Drexel and he eventually became the co-head of convertible bonds. The government asked Rosenthal to be a witness against Milken, he refused, they indicted him and we defended him. He was charged with multiple counts of serious securities fraud, and he was acquitted on all counts but one – a very minor thing, he did not get jail time.

I loved it because it was the summer in New York and I remember the first day the jury came in, they were dressed in shorts and t-shirts. Then they realized it was a big trial, an important case, and from then on, that jury was on it: they dressed up and they paid so much attention. And in a case where all the media had basically already convicted Alan in the court of public opinion, that jury listened to the evidence and they acquitted him.

LD: Was Peter Fleming a mentor to you?

JH: Peter was a great mentor. I learned so much from Peter. Not just technically how to try a case, but also how to treat people, how to interact with your clients, other lawyers and human beings under stress. Peter was such a gentleman – I miss him, I try cases the way he would, and I quote him all the time.

Another mentor of mine was George Kahale, who was the managing partner of Curtis Mallet. George had a terrific way of treating people. He never cared about their personal lives, he cared about how they handled our clients, how they treated their colleagues and how they respected their work. He was way ahead of his time. Also of course, George is the best business lawyer I've ever seen. I learned how to do deals from him – but the most important thing is how to treat people.

Dick Vermeil is a famous football coach. He retired and then he came back and he won a Super Bowl, and then he retired and came back again. And some relatively young reporter was asking him, do you think the game has passed you by? And he said, “Hey, football is easy, people are hard.”

It's all about the people – that's really the most important stuff I learned from Peter and from George and we’ve really tried to incorporate that into the firm.

LD: What led you to opening your own firm, Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler?

JH: I had a little bit of an unconventional path. I practiced for about five or six years, and then I took off for about five or six years. I started a successful fashion accessories business with a partner and then I sold my interest. Our products were carried nationwide in Neiman Marcus. We were in Barneys in New York, Fred Segal in LA, Le Bon Marche in Paris. When I sold, I started another one, less successful this time. So when I came back to practicing law, it was with a very different perspective. Now I'd been a client and I'd done things and had a different feel for it. I knew what it was like running a business, and I knew I liked running a business. So when I came back to law, it was with the idea that I would start my own firm when I was ready.

When I came back to practicing law, it was with a very different perspective. Now I'd been a client and I'd done things and had a different feel for it. I knew what it was like running a business.

LD: What was your vision for the firm?

JH: Andrew St. Laurent has been my main partner for almost 16 years, and now we're more than 30 lawyers. Our vision and mantra has always been really simple – we want to do the highest-quality work, add value for our clients and be a place where people enjoy their work.

LD: How does the firm look now compared to what you expected when you started?

JH: I think we are a larger firm than we envisioned, and we are interested in becoming larger – and that surprises me. Law firms have gotten much bigger in the past 20 years. When I got out of law school, a really large firm had 300 lawyers. Now, the Kirklands of the world are 2,000 lawyers. We do very high quality work and that is never going to change, and I think that in order to continue to get hired for that work, we need to be responsive to our clients and be bigger.

LD: Can you tell me a bit about your day-to-day as Managing Partner?

JH: Sure. I keep a busy client schedule and just finished trying an arbitration. I spend a lot of time building our team at all levels – staff, associates and partners – because the heart of the firm is our people. And, I spend an enormous amount of time working on integrating AI into our processes in a way that will add value for our clients and keep us ahead of the curve. It’s a lot all at once, but I like that. The most fulfilling thing is to build a firm and see the people at your firm succeed. The people are the most important thing, and to create opportunities together is super fulfilling.

LD: Looking back, are there any matters over the course of your career that stand out?

JH: There have been a lot of matters which have been impactful for me and for my clients. I tried a case, a jury trial, twice for Bill Zanker, the founder of the Learning Annex. We won the first time. We won so much money – $20M – that the judge ordered a retrial on damages. The next time we tried the case, the other side brought in Paul, Weiss for the retrial, and we won even more money.

Zanker organized massive conferences at places like Madison Square Garden, where people like famous football coaches and Tony Robbins would come and speak, and Donald Trump was always his keynote speaker. Zanker was a great teacher of public speaking, and gave me lessons on how to speak to juries.  

I remember I was practicing my opening for Bill for the first trial and he just looked at me and said, “Jon, that sucks.” He was right – it did suck. He gave me a bunch of notes, I worked on it all night and of course, it was just so much better. That was an impactful case for my career because it's about keeping your eyes open, paying attention and trying to keep learning and keep getting better. Times change too, and you have to adjust your style to changing times.

LD: What changes have you noticed?

JH: It used to be my long-held view that you don't litigate in the press. Allegations are just allegations. Now, my view is that if you don't forcefully deny and bring receipts publicly, everybody will believe allegations against you. And that has been a big sea change.

The other big trend is that arbitration becomes increasingly more like going to court. When I first did arbitration, it was a very different set of procedures, it was streamlined. Now you have a lot of the motions and the expenses that you have in court, except now you're just in a fancy conference room with an arbitrator instead of in a courtroom with a judge and a jury. I've done a lot of arbitrations in my life. I've been successful in arbitrations, but I think it's a mistake making arbitration more like court.

It used to be my long-held view that you don't litigate in the press. Allegations are just allegations. Now, my view is that if you don't forcefully deny and bring receipts publicly, everybody will believe allegations against you. And that has been a big sea change.

LD: Tell us about your work with in-house forensic psychologist Dr. Monica Delgado.

JH: We work very closely with Monica and she is a core part of my team. First of all, we're trying to get the emotion right when we tell the story to a judge or a jury, and we're also trying to have our clients be able to tell their story truthfully and effectively, which can be hard under pressure. So we’re trying to tell our story, and understand what's really important to what's going on, and also to try, if we can, to understand the other side. I have very close relationships with my clients – I become friends with many of them. We try really hard to understand that the legal case is just one aspect of what's going on in their lives. We also try to make it so that when they come out of the case, their lives are in good shape – not just that the case is in good shape.

Monica is a huge asset – whether it's helping get the client ready or helping me to understand the emotion and the human elements of what's going on in the case, or trying to understand what the other side might be going through. Also helping me with picking a jury. She is absolutely invaluable. I work with her on all of my cases.

LD: Can you talk a bit about your client relationships?

JH: Most of my clients are individuals, who I’m meeting generally at an important and / or difficult point in their life. I make a massive effort to understand my clients as human beings because I'm not just trying to win a case. I'm trying to understand what their objective is, what they want to do next in life and how this fits into the rest of their life.