Robins Kaplan has long been known for precedent-setting, consequential work and a trial practice built for complex, high-stakes disputes. Today, the firm is building on that foundation by introducing its Fraud, Investigations & Recovery practice, bringing together experienced investigators and trial lawyers to help clients address complex matters involving fraud, misconduct and financial harm.
The team works with companies, institutions and individuals to investigate facts, assess risk, pursue recovery and prepare matters for litigation when necessary. Its lawyers draw on experience across business litigation, intellectual property and technology, antitrust, healthcare, internal investigations and other practices to address problems that rarely fit neatly within a single legal discipline.
A Practice Built for Complex Problems
The Robins Kaplan Fraud, Investigations & Recovery team took shape in stages. Bahram Samie was the first to join, returning to a firm where he had once been a summer associate. Allen Slaughter came next, followed by Carla Baumel and Lauren Roso.
The four came to Robins Kaplan from the Department of Justice and other public-sector roles, bringing complementary investigative, litigation and trial experience to an already deep bench at the firm.
They joined lawyers including former U.S. Attorneys B. Todd Jones, Brendan Johnson and Tim Purdon, giving the firm additional depth in complex investigations and high-stakes litigation.
The newer members of the team also knew one another’s work well before joining Robins Kaplan, giving the group an immediate foundation of trust.
“This is a group of people who were trained alike,” Baumel says. “We trust each other. We understand how to build something.”
Slaughter brings trial leadership and investigative judgment; Samie, experience with complex civil matters and organizational systems; Roso, litigation involving sensitive and contested factual records; and Baumel, intellectual property, antitrust and technology disputes.
What emerged was not a conventional white-collar group housed within a single department, but a team embedded across Robins Kaplan’s trial practices and able to draw on those distinct strengths depending on the demands of each matter.
“We’re calling it Fraud, Investigations & Recovery,” Slaughter says. “It sounds like a lot of words, so I just call it FIR for short.”
Slaughter’s shorthand – pronounced “fire” – captures a practice designed to move quickly across legal disciplines. FIR helps businesses, institutions and individuals uncover misconduct, respond to allegations and pursue recovery from fraud or other wrongdoing.
A matter may begin with suspected fraud, an intellectual property dispute or indications of internal misconduct, then raise questions involving cybersecurity, privacy, regulatory compliance, antitrust or other business risks. The group can investigate facts, work with forensic experts, build proof and assess how a case will withstand scrutiny from judges or juries.
“Clients don’t want to view a legal problem in isolation,” Baumel says. “They want to understand a holistic solution that gets them to the business outcome they want.”
A Trial Culture That Fits
For Samie, Baumel, Roso and Slaughter, Robins Kaplan offered a natural place to apply their investigative and litigation experience.
Founded in 1938 by two Jewish lawyers who had faced exclusion from established firms, the firm built an identity around trial advocacy, access to justice and representing clients on both sides of consequential disputes.
The firm’s commitment to trial work is tangible. Robins Kaplan maintains a dedicated advocacy center and technologically equipped courtroom used for mock trials, witness preparation, oral argument practice and jury research. Cases are evaluated and developed with trial in mind from the outset.
'Clients don’t want to view a legal problem in isolation,' Baumel says. 'They want to understand a holistic solution that gets them to the business outcome they want.'
For Baumel – a lawyer accustomed to building cases from investigation through verdict – that trial culture was central to her decision to join.
“I am a trial lawyer first, and there is no better place to be a trial lawyer than Robins Kaplan,” Baumel says. “Going to trial is not a game of chicken that we lose."
“You learn to assess complex facts quickly and make tough decisions, often without all the information you would prefer to have,” says Slaughter. “You’re always stress-testing the evidence – asking how it will play in front of a jury or withstand scrutiny from a judge.”
Making Complexity Persuasive
“It’s one thing to build a case, but then you have to translate it to a jury,” Baumel says. “We synthesize that knowledge, we learn it, we study it, we master it. And then we present it in a way that people can understand and find compelling.”
Across her career, Roso has often worked with incomplete and contested factual records, reconstructing what happened and building the case from there. “Through all of it, you’re essentially doing the same thing – investigating, building and trying cases,” she says.
Baumel sees a direct line between that discipline and the complex commercial matters she handles today. The subject matter may be different, but the central task is the same: mastering a dense record, identifying what matters most and presenting it with enough clarity and force to persuade.
Going to trial is not a game of chicken that we lose.
Trial strategy, appellate risk and the possibility of related litigation also shape how she develops a case from the outset.
“What’s going to happen next is never far from a trial lawyer’s mind,” Baumel says.
Looking Beyond the Immediate Conduct
Over years of complex litigation and investigative work, Samie developed a perspective that misconduct rarely begins and ends with an individual actor. Understanding a problem often requires looking beyond the immediate conduct to the systems, policies and accountability mechanisms surrounding it.
“I take a holistic view and assess the contributing causes of misconduct,” Samie says. “Context and nuance matter a great deal when conducting a credible investigation.”
That systems-level perspective gives Robins Kaplan’s FIR team a framework for investigating not only individual acts of wrongdoing, but the policies, incentives and failures of oversight that may have contributed to them.
A Cross-Disciplinary Approach
That same willingness to follow the facts across disciplines shapes the team's commercial work. Slaughter sees opportunity for affirmative litigation involving fraud, fiduciary misconduct, civil RICO and False Claims Act matters.
Baumel is applying the same cross-disciplinary approach to intellectual property, technology, antitrust and other complex disputes. Her work at Robins Kaplan reflects the broader premise behind FIR: Clients increasingly need lawyers who can see how a matter may move across litigation, regulatory and business concerns before those risks harden into separate crises.
A Platform for High-Stakes Problems
For the FIR team, Robins Kaplan offers a firm grounded in trial advocacy, strengthened by trusted colleagues and broad enough to serve clients on every side of a consequential dispute.
When the facts are complex and the stakes are high, Robins Kaplan brings together the investigative discipline, trial experience and cross-disciplinary perspective clients need to understand the problem, assess their options and determine the best path forward.
