Our state attorneys general team offers a rare blend of strategic advice, investigations defense, and litigation experience. We have handled every permutation of single-state matters, multi-state matters, investigations outsourced to plaintiffs’ lawyers, or some combination thereof, throughout the United States.
Our cross-disciplinary team includes lawyers who have served in state attorney general offices, as well as former prosecutors and government officials. Our lawyers maintain helpful ties to state enforcement officials and work closely with attorneys general, their senior staff, and front-line prosecutors, building and sustaining credibility. We have a strong track record of success bringing matters to resolution, including vigorously defending our clients at trial and on appeal when in their best interests.
Investigations and litigation have become mechanisms for attorneys general to pursue traditional enforcement as well as partisan goals, which poses serious risk to enterprises doing business across the country, if not around the world. Adding the involvement of county, local, and tribal jurisdictions can create the risk of thousands of actions involving numerous and sometimes conflicting authorities, rules, and strategic goals.
Coordinating an effective response for companies requires in-depth knowledge of the complicated interplay between these offices, agencies, and politics; resources that acknowledge and understand these nuanced risks; and the ability to appropriately calibrate a strategic response to every individual threat.
We are well versed in enforcement policies and responsibilities, which vary from state to state, and have a comprehensive understanding of how attorneys general approach these matters. We have deep experience defending against multistate investigative task forces and fiercely litigating against private contingency counsel hired by state attorneys general and other government or private entities. We hold lead roles as liaison defense counsel in multidistrict litigation and manage portfolios of active litigation in multiple jurisdictions throughout the country. We implement proprietary case management tools to manage thousands of potential cases and are skilled in cross-jurisdictional discovery to minimize the burden and expense of requests that go back decades.
We advise on matters related to antitrust, the environment, product liability, securities enforcement, white collar, tax, and data privacy and cybersecurity. We handle state AG matters in conjunction with or parallel to criminal proceedings, federal civil actions, and class actions. In addition, our lawyers handle the full range of consumer protection issues affecting manufacturers of consumer products and providers of consumer services, including federal, state, and local investigations and class action, qui tam, regulatory, and individual litigation matters. We understand and routinely handle matters involving unfair and deceptive acts and practices (UDAP) and state civil rights laws.
We also advise non-US businesses seeking to do business in the United States or to expand their US operations. The United States’ dual federal-state paradigm can be confusing to navigate, and our in-depth US services, in collaboration with our global platform, aim to help clients better understand how to minimize risk with state governments.