Someone should call the NYPD.
Because Susman Godfrey is killing it in New York.
In the past two years alone, the firm led by its New York contingent has won:
NFL: $4.8B
Baha Mar: $1.6B
Everly: $1.07B
Opioids: $693M
Google: $440M
And that’s not even counting the landmark $787M settlement against Fox on behalf of Dominion Voting Systems.
Bill Carmody and the mighty team of bet-on-yourself trial lawyers should be charged with breaking and entering, at the very least, for the way they have taken over the high end New York litigation market.
“I can see where we started, a pee-wee sublease on 57th, and I can certainly see where we are now. We have fancy floors at One Manhattan West,” says Carmody, the group’s senior partner, who moved from Dallas, helped catapult the firm’s New York presence and coined the SGNY brand.
“Mostly, I remember all of us working and hustling around the clock, doing anything we could to survive and prosper,” he says. “Now, though, it’s all a blur.”
Winning billions upon billions in verdicts, judgments and settlements, hiring the nation’s top legal talent, and making vast sums by betting on yourself can be a bit much.
But New York can do that to you.
As can the trajectory of Susman Godfrey’s ascent to the top of the heap in New York. It is an epic and unlikely tale that starts with a legendary founder and three Cavalier King Charles spaniels moseying through Central Park; Carmody blazing down a Dallas highway with partner Shawn Rabin riding a terrified shotgun; the befriending of the maitre’d at Restaurant Daniel; and a sleight of hand with the prosecutor-husband of the now-Senior Rabbi of one of Manhattan’s foremost Synagogues.
Take that, Ocean’s 11.
Like all grand plans, this one started with an idea. The kernel of a notion of a plan. Launched by the iconic late Steve Susman to take his firm, Susman Godfrey, to New York. The firm was building a national imprint, and his Yale connections, Texas Law network and years of huge litigation against and for the nation’s most powerful interests should have made it a natural.
But there he was, in 2006, sitting in Central Park with his dogs, when he wasn’t surrounded by boxes, and one associate at his 1,500 square foot sublease on the 5th floor of the IBM building at 57th & Madison.
“Carmody,” he growled into the phone, “I hear you have an interest coming to New York. I'm leaving. Do you want to come up here and take over?”
They don’t call it a New York minute for nothing. Carmody didn’t blink.
Like all grand plans, this one started with an idea. The kernel of a notion of a plan. Launched by the iconic late Steve Susman to take his firm, Susman Godfrey, to New York.
“As much as I loved Dallas, I thought New York City – being the biggest legal market in America – was the ultimate stage and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to try to make it there with the remarkable reputation that Steve, Lee [Godfrey], Neal [Manne] and others had built,” he says.
On Jan. 4, 2007, he arrived in New York. Bear in mind Carmody had only joined Susman Godfrey in November 2000 – and as an of counsel who had to prove himself to join the partnership.
Where to start? He graduated from the University of Tulsa School of Law by way of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, ran nightclubs, built his own practice in Dallas and caught Steve Susman’s eye in the mid ‘90s from a mass mailing he did to every lawyer in the state of Texas after he won a $61M jury verdict. He wined and dined the elusive Susman, somehow got the golden ticket and would go on to play a key role in Susman Godfrey’s emergence as a national litigation powerhouse.
Even New York doesn’t have elevators that fast.
But back to 2007, and Carmody’s arrival in New York. The plot thickens.
He put down his bags on the Upper East Side in a furnished residence set up by Susman’s daughter, Stacy. And almost ... blinked.
“The excitement for a moment or so turned to a deep terrifying fear because I realized I knew literally one human being in all of New York City,” says Carmody.
But that one human being was Markus Draxler, then maître d' at Restaurant Daniel, the flagship of world-famous chef Daniel Boulud. Already a foodie and proprietor of good times, Carmody had been to New York many times over the years for cases and gotten to know Draxler. And Draxler had a network that could open the doors to any restaurant, which became Carmody’s stock in trade.
Steve Susman, it turns out, had also been working his connections on his way back to Houston. A mutual friend had introduced him in 2006 to Jacob Buchdahl, a fellow Yale alum, who started his career at Davis Polk and was entering his fifth year with the U.S. Attorney’s office in New York.
“Tell him to send me his resume,” Susman wrote. Well, that’s not really what Buchdahl had in mind. But next thing you know, there he was – perched between Steve Susman and Lee Godfrey at the Regency Bar.
“I just felt like I was in the presence of giants who, by the way, I had never heard much about before,” says Buchdahl.
Susman's pitch was, "You ought to come work for me right now. And you’ll be the first person we hire in New York,” Buchdahl recalls. And I thought to myself, "Well, that sounds intriguing, but who are these people?"
Susman Godfrey provoked a mighty shrug when Buchdahl asked around the U.S. Attorney’s Office, but ears pricked up when he started phoning around the country.
“People were like, ‘Oh, wow, Susman Godfrey. I didn't know they were opening an office in New York,’” said Buchdahl. He flew to Houston, met with lawyers at the firm and was intrigued.
But it seemed a bit of a risk. Buchdahl wasn’t alone in that assessment – the firm, too, was on the fence about scaling the heights of New York. It had dabbled in Dallas, Seattle and Los Angeles –- but there was an audacity to New York.
Not unlike the man whose name was first on the door.
The legend, or so it goes, is that Susman Godfrey New York initially came to be because Steve Susman had grandchildren in New York. And wanted to spend more time with them. He wanted to open an office, and the firm didn’t think it was a good idea. So Susman said – in so many words and almost certainly with an f-bomb or 3 – "Well, I tell you what, we got two options here: Either I start a Susman office there or I leave Susman Godfrey and I just start my own thing there."
Double down. Also, Susman initially told Buchdahl he’d be the senior lawyer at this new outpost. Not too long after, Steve called – excited! – with the big news that Carmody was heading to New York.
“My first thought was, Steve, that’s the opposite of what you just told me,” Buchdahl recalls. “But then I realized, I don't really know what I'm doing yet, and it will be great to have a true senior commercial trial lawyer who can bring real experience to this.”
Carmody recalls meeting Buchdahl – he walked into the indispensable P.J. Clarke’s on 3rd Avenue wearing a fedora, “very Dick Tracy” – and immediately understood the enormous connections he would bring to the firm: Yale, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Davis Polk and the not uninteresting matter of his spouse, Angela Buchdahl, then senior cantor of the Central Synagogue in New York.
It would be so wrong to say bada-bing here ... but when in Rome ... or, at least at this point on Madison Avenue ...
They were unlike anybody else I had met from law firms. They had such a different energy.
The rest of the core team came together piece by piece, each lawyer bringing something the New York office needed. Susman Godfrey rarely hired laterals, and Carmody and Buchdahl were those unusual exceptions. They wanted lawyers whose strengths complemented their own – and someone who knew the Susman Godfrey way of trying cases from the inside out.
So, Carmody convinced Shawn Rabin, his consummate inside man from Susman Godfrey’s Dallas office, to relocate to New York. Carmody and Rabin had done many trials together and shared a vision for the niche they could fill in the market. Rabin had initially been reluctant to leave Texas, where he grew up and had a thriving practice. But Carmody – tearing down a freeway at 100 mph – presented the move as a rare opportunity: New York was the epicenter of the legal community for litigation. Even if the cases weren’t all filed there, that’s where the best and biggest companies are, and where the best and biggest cases come from. Rabin took some convincing, but after a few dinners at, you got it, Daniel and a shared vision with Carmody for what the New York office could become, he too moved to the big city.
“It was a good opportunity to grow something from the start,” says Rabin. “And the reality back then was when you would hustle business in Texas, everybody already knew Steve Susman. He was larger than life. It was hard to introduce yourself to general counsel and corporations that didn’t already have a connection to Susman Godfrey.”
That wasn’t quite the case in New York. While everyone had heard of Susman Godfrey, they didn’t necessarily know someone who worked at the firm. “So, it was basically taking a brand that everyone had heard of – but they may not have a personal connection – and using that as a platform to both market yourself and get interest in new cases,” says Rabin.
Their first associate hire was Arun Subramanian, who was just completing his U.S. Supreme Court clerkship with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. From the beginning, Subramanian was a key figure in SGNY’s growth and helped lay the foundation for what the office would become. He has since gone on to become a highly respected federal judge in Manhattan.
Another Dallas veteran, Stephen Shackelford, completed what Carmody considered Susman Godfrey’s SEAL Team 6.
“We couldn’t be the Navy,” Carmody says. “That’s how the big firms operated – they had a ship for every mission. We were never going to be a full-service firm that tried to do everything. We wanted to be the top SEAL team: the best trained, hardest working and the most competitive unit of stand-up trial lawyers built for bet-the-company cases.”
Shackelford grew up in Jackson, Miss., the son of an accomplished plaintiff lawyer who had represented hundreds of working people injured in accidents, by bad products or negligent companies. Shackelford Jr. vaulted to Harvard for undergrad and law school, finishing first in his class. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and planned to continue on, joining a Washington, D.C., appellate practice; kind of a yawn, but the well-trod high-end lawyer path.
Or, a friend said, he could talk to Susman Godfrey.
“My first exposure to the firm was I flew to New York while I was right at the end of my clerkship, and had dinner with Bill Carmody and Steve Susman,” says Shackelford.
“They were unlike anybody else I had met from law firms. I don't want to say bad things about other law firms by any means, but they had such a different energy,” says Shackelford. He traveled to Dallas and met with young attorneys who said that while they worked really, really hard – it was the fun kind of 3,000 hours a year.
The lights are brightest at Yankee Stadium, and they rose to the moment with swagger and a fast ball no one saw coming.
“They didn’t do it that much, but when they did it's because they went to trial and examined witnesses," says Shackelford. He was sold and joined Carmody and Rabin in Dallas. A year after he made partner, he was recruited to apply to a special program GE’s general counsel Brackett Denniston ran that created essentially his own private law clerk. Susman Godfrey was entirely supportive.
Well, almost.
“What the fuck are you thinking,” roared Steve Susman, who insisted Shackelford ask Denniston to see the press release announcing he would join. I said, "Steve, they're not going to put out ... "
"Why not? Why the fuck not? You're a Susman Godfrey partner," he bellowed. "If you think you're going to bring GE as a client, we're never having GE as a client.”
While Shackelford was ensconced at GE, Carmody and the New York team were perfecting their pitch. The lights are brightest at Yankee Stadium, and they rose to the moment with swagger and a fast ball no one saw coming.
“The single biggest thing I did to drive our success in New York was define what our pitch was,” Carmody says. “Why us, when clients already had their choice of great firms with long histories in New York?
The answer was simple: New York City needed real trial lawyers who were willing to bet on their own results.
105.8 mph right across home plate.
It takes a hustler to know a hustler. And Carmody captured the disconnect between New York’s storied litigators and their clients.
New York CEOs and entrepreneurs – hell, the whole state of mind – is to bet on yourself.
“These are people who made it to the top because they hustled for it – nobody handed them anything,” says Carmody. “They got there by taking chances, betting on themselves and delivering results.”
But their well-heeled lawyers – and here comes the slider, crossing low and inside – charge by the hour. Meaning the longer a matter takes, the more the lawyers make. Given that litigation is incredibly costly and a massive business disruption, does that make sense? Don’t you want it done fast? And shouldn’t the lawyer be paid more for fixing the problem in much less time?
Carmody explained to an increasingly attentive audience that Susman Godfrey’s “small fledgling outpost” offered something distinctive: stand-up trial lawyers who tried more cases than most and were willing to share in both their clients’ risk and their reward.
It was quite a trick: taking a Lone Ranger from a firm built on elite academic credentials and federal clerkships, putting him on the mound, and selling that pitch on the streets of New York.
Cutter. Strike three. SGNY has made its bones from headline-grabbing cases and hundreds of business disputes you’ve never heard of but which more than kept the lights on.
Among those clients? Yep. GE. Denniston wanted some input on trial strategy for a major trial coming up in Florida. After Susman Godfrey attended a moot session and provided some feedback, GE hired Carmody and Rabin. Everyone kept asking Shackelford whether he was excited to hang out with Carmody and Rabin while they tried the case for four weeks in Florida.
“And I was thinking this is the worst thing in the world,” because he wanted to be doing the trial with them, he says. The case settled and Shackelford returned to the firm – in New York, where he’s gone on to leading roles in numerous all-star cases, including helping conceive Dominion’s unprecedented $787M takedown of Fox. He was prepared to give the opening argument for Susman’s all-star team when Fox folded.
New York, New York. The Empire State Building. Broadway.
One, singular sensation, every little step he takes.
The founder. The lawyers. The firm.
One thrilling combination. Every move that she makes.
The moment.
Biscayne Bay sparkled on New Year’s Eve as 2023 gave way to a run that has made law firm history. Champagne fizzed, cigars smoldered.
Do you smell magic or do you taste it?
So much had happened since Carmody and the team arrived in the city that never sleeps.
They had magnified the iconic presence of Steve Susman, whose swagger they refracted into a law firm whose impact was far beyond anyone’s dreams. Built a team for the ages with legal chops, charisma and an unprecedented desire to share a client’s true risk and reward.
Carmody, Buchdahl, Rabin, Shackelford, Subramanian, Seth Ard and the rest of SGNY had hustled like there was no tomorrow, amassing an astounding track record since 2007 – winning billions for hedge fund owners, cities, aerospace companies and pharmaceutical whistleblowers. The firm bet on their clients, who in turn went all in on Susman Godfrey. They transformed from a ‘who?’ into a ‘what’ – a top choice for Supreme Court clerks as well as billionaire and blue-chip clients. The corps of 65 lawyers include eight who have clerked at the U.S. Supreme Court. Along the way, they also incited a tectonic shift from big firm primacy to litigation boutiques as the dominant players in a litigation landscape now glittering with elite stars hired to step in when it’s all on the line.
Foremost among them is Bill Carmody, whose career has outgrown even his own ambitions. In the so-called tech trial of the century, he defended Uber against Waymo in their battle to be first in the autonomous vehicle market; won the dismissal of Dan Loeb and Third Point from Fairfax’s $8B lawsuit; represented WeWork founder Adam Neumann in a dispute with SoftBank that ended in a $480M settlement, plus $50M in legal fees. In Baltimore’s opioid litigation, he recovered record settlements of more than $427M and also won a $266M jury verdict. And, as co-lead class counsel with David Boies in a privacy case against Google, he helped secure a record $440M judgment.
“We succeeded at building elite teams that parachute into the biggest and most challenging trials,” says Carmody, who had relocated to Miami Beach during Covid and now shuttles from city to city as trials require.
It’s showtime folks.
As the world welcomed 2024, SGNY’s trial lawyers had their tickets punched for New York, Los Angeles, Baltimore, San Francisco, Wilmington and Portland.
“I vividly remember New Year’s Eve 2023 in Miami Beach with friends – champagne, the whole thing – and thinking, ‘Enjoy tonight, because tomorrow it starts,’” Carmody says. “I had the NFL trial and the Baltimore opioid trial both coming in 2024. I knew how much was on the line. I had no idea what the year would bring. I just knew I wanted the ball.”
They were about to hit it out of every ballpark they touched. In 2024 and 2025, the firm made history, winning three awards topping a billion dollars apiece.
In the spring of 2024, they took on the mighty NFL over its oh-so-lucrative Sunday Ticket offering. Led by Carmody, Susman Godfrey claimed the NFL had violated antitrust law by restricting out-of-market Sunday afternoon games to inflate the price of Sunday Ticket. In June, a Los Angeles jury awarded $4.8B to a class of Sunday Ticket subscribers. The judge later threw out the verdict. That ruling was reversed and liability has been entered against the NFL. A new trial has been ordered on damages, where the class sought $7B. It was already the largest antitrust verdict in history.
The fall of 2024, a team led by Buchdahl battled in New York state court on behalf of BML Properties against China Construction America over development of the multi-billion-dollar Bahamian Baha Mar resort complex, and the failure of China Construction as the construction manager and general contractor to open the resort to guests by March 2015. Buchdahl, along with Elisha Barron, Tamar Lusztig and Stephanie Spies delivered their client a $1.6B judgment.
In Feb. 2025, Rabin and Krysta Kauble Pachman secured $1.07B against Walgreens for Everly Health in a breach of contract and Lanham Act claim. During Covid, Walgreens partnered with Everly to use its doctor network to process web-requested Covid-19 tests. Instead of referring the tests to outside doctors, as promised, Walgreens had its internal pharmacists review the results, in breach of its contract. It was the largest amount ever for a Lanham Act claim.
Three for three. The hits keep coming.
New York is larger than life. That’s the appeal. To go up against the best. And come out on top.
That was what drove Steve Susman, who has gained lawyer immortality in the six years since he passed – his firm and legend growing with each year.
“Every day of my life, I’m grateful to Steve and to this firm for taking a chance on me,” Carmody says. “Steve saw that a law firm could be built differently, and I was lucky enough to be part of that vision. We started in New York City in a tiny sublease. To see what we’ve built from there – it’s beyond anything I could have imagined.”
Put your lighters in the air. Let’s hear it for SGNY.
