Jesse-Justin Cuevas is an in-demand trial lawyer representing both plaintiffs and defendants in high stakes, complex commercial litigation across the country. Cuevas has tried multiple cases and secured landmark wins and settlements for her diverse portfolio of clients who range from Fortune 100 companies to small businesses and individuals.
Cuevas’s skillset is as versatile as the industries she works with. She has successfully litigated cases related to antitrust, breach of contract, consumer and commercial fraud, state and federal False Claims Act, intellectual property, products liability, and trade secrets. Her litigation and trial successes span the consumer goods, cryptocurrency, solar and gas construction, insurance, mortgage, pharmaceutical, and streaming technology industries. The common thread among each of Cuevas’s cases is the confidence she instills in her clients and her instinctive and nimble talent for understanding complex subject matters and intelligibly translating them into facts and arguments to judges, juries, and arbitration panels.
Lawdragon Honors
| Honor | Year | Practice |
|---|---|---|
| The 2026 Lawdragon 500 X – The Next Generation | 2026 | Commercial Litigation |
| The 2025 Lawdragon 500 X – The Next Generation | 2025 | Commercial Litigation |
Cuevas has tried multiple cases to judgment, each time parachuting into the case shortly before trial is set to begin. Most recently, Cuevas and her team secured one of the biggest trial wins in the country: a $330+ million Final Award for her client, one of the largest independent power producers in the country, after a full arbitration hearing. Cuevas helped prepare the sprawling case for trial in less than six months from the filing of the complaint. At trial, Cuevas directed her client’s Chief Operating Officer and cross-examined multiple high-ranking executives for the respondents, including the other side’s Chief Accounting Officer from whom Cuevas elicited an admission of breach on the witness stand.
Shortly after securing that trial victory, Cuevas and her all-star team secured a first-of-its-kind dismissal of the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust challenge to Intercontinental Exchange, Inc.’s (ICE) proposed $11+ billion acquisition of Black Knight, Inc., just 108 days after Susman Godfrey entered the case. From the get-go, Cuevas took ownership of the piece of the case relating to the divestiture of Black Knight’s Empower and Optimal Blue mortgage technology businesses to Constellation Software—one of the most critical factual issues in the case. Defending ICE from parallel administrative and federal proceedings, Cuevas handled the depositions of several key witnesses—many of which were third parties she could not lead—and elicited some of the most important testimony in the case to defend against the FTC’s injunction and administrative actions.
Cuevas also served as counsel to the largest political subdivisions in the largest state in the nation—including the University of California system, the California State University system, and the County of Los Angeles—in a landmark suit against the “Big 4” wireless carriers for over-billing the government. In 2020, a deal worth $175 million was struck to settle the matter (award net of fees and expenses to be determined) – this is California’s second largest False Claims Act settlement in state history outside of the healthcare industry.
Cuevas also helped develop the Susman Godfrey Prize, an honor awarded annually to 1L and 2L law students of color from eligible law schools who have excelled academically and have impressive overall achievement. On the SG Prize Committee, Cuevas plays an integral role coordinating the selection, review, and awards process for Prize recipients each year. She also devotes substantial time to mentoring Prize finalists and winners, including moderating an annual federal judicial clerkship panel that helps these impressive and deserving law students navigate the exclusive and often opaque clerkship application process.