Meet David Lender, the co-chair of Weil Gotshal & Manges' global litigation department and one of the finalists for The American Lawyer's Litigator of the Year in 2019.  He shared his thoughts on his firm's litigation practice with Lit Daily.

Lit Daily: Tell us a little about yourself—beyond what is in your law firm bio.

David Lender: I was raised by hard-working parents in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn and attended New York City public schools. My first job (assisting my dad) was as a pothole inspector. We would get up early on Saturday mornings and drive around Brooklyn inspecting potholes that had been reported. After attending Edward R. Murrow High School, I attended Duke University, and, later, Duke Law, with the goal of becoming a trial lawyer. 

Within three months of joining Weil, I worked on my first trial. However, I got my first chance to cut my teeth on real trial work as a third-year associate when I worked on a four-and-a-half month trial in San Antonio. That year I met my wife, who is a published author and marketing executive. We have two daughters, ages 15 and 18, with whom we love to travel and see the rest of the country. One of our favorite recent trips was visiting Mount Rushmore and Badlands National Park.

When I'm not at trial or with my family, you can find me taking in a Duke basketball or Mets game.

How big is your litigation department and where are most of your litigators concentrated geographically?

Weil's Litigation Department has more than 350 lawyers across our U.S. and European offices. Aside from our headquarters in New York, we have impressive cross-disciplinary teams in Silicon Valley, D.C., Dallas, Houston, Miami and Princeton, as well as London, Paris and Frankfurt. This footprint enables us to advocate for our clients effectively and efficiently in key business and legal jurisdictions, and also supports us when we need to litigate far from home. 

In what three areas of litigation do you have the deepest bench?  

We have an incredibly deep bench in corporate and securities disputes, consumer litigation, and IP litigation, which collectively have helped us establish decades-long relationships with some of the top players in the pharmaceutical, consumer products, and media/entertainment sectors, among others. 

Our corporate and securities litigation practice offers our clients tools to defend and prosecute claims targeting core business strategies and decision-making. Our strengths include the defense of complex 10b class actions—including some of the largest such cases ever filed or tried—as well as M&A litigation, and fiduciary duty and derivative claims attacking the judgment of corporate directors. 

Our Delaware law practice is first-rate and has graduated a number of notable alums who have become leaders at other firms and even justices on the Delaware Supreme Court. Of late, we've handled and won major cases for AIG, Campbell Soup, Morgan Stanley, Signet Jewelers and Willis Towers Watson. 

Our consumer litigation practice likewise provides critical defense on a variety of fronts, including product liability and consumer fraud class actions and MDLs, mass torts, and advertising litigation, among others. 

Our strength is our nationwide presence enabled by leaders in each of our U.S. offices—including Ed Soto in Florida, David Singh in California, Diane Sullivan in New Jersey, Carrie Mahan in D.C., and a large bench in New York—who are tackling some of the highest profile cases out there. These include major product defect cases, ADA class actions, the talc mass tort, and litigation brought by municipalities on behalf of consumers focusing on contaminants in drinking water. 

We are experts at developing and working towards business-oriented outcomes—whether at trial or via settlement—and helping clients work through the attendant PR and crisis management aspects that typically come with the territory. 

We approach IP disputes with a similarly diverse bench that provides immense value to clients looking to protect their valuable IP or secure favorable outcomes in disputes over licensing agreements. Our IP teams were, and are, pathbreakers. We were one of the first global firms to open an office in Silicon Valley, where our patent practice has been based in part for decades and has grown alongside the technology and life sciences clients with which we partner. 

Our IP/Media practice dates back to the time of one of our founders, Horace Manges, who was a thought leader in the area of copyright law and laid the foundation for a practice that remains today an undisputed leader, including in complex secondary liability claims and multi-billion dollar music licensing disputes—the latest of which our partners Benjamin Marks, Randi Singer, and Todd Larson are scheduled to try before the Copyright Royalty Board in the coming weeks. 

As head of the department, what are some of your goals and priorities?

My department co-chair Jonathan Polkes and I are very focused on talent retention, developing the next generation of top trial lawyers, and promoting and adding diverse candidates.  

In the last three years, Weil has promoted six litigators to partner, including two women, one of whom is Asian American, and two African American men, one of whom is LGBTQ+. Over this same period, Weil has added three lateral litigation partners, two of whom are women. 

These promotions and additions have increased the diversity of our team while also supporting our strategic goals of growing our appellate practice, first-chair trial bench, and our litigation practice in Silicon Valley and Texas. While we have made some progress in diversity, it very much remains a priority.

We have a strong and deeply embedded culture of mentoring that supports our talent retention and development efforts. We know that the best way to learn is by doing, so we encourage our senior lawyers to give less-seasoned lawyers a chance to get courtroom experience and broaden their focus.  

I personally benefited from this mentoring from our former department chair Jim Quinn, who took me under his wing and gave me incredible opportunities. I draw on lessons I learned from him to effectively mentor and advocate for our next generation of trial lawyers at Weil. 

For instance, we recently won a complete defense jury trial victory for C&S Wholesale Grocers in an antitrust class action—cases that rarely get tried. I led the case with my partners Eric Hochstadt, who is a rising star in antitrust litigation, as well as Luna Barrington, who was recently promoted in January. All three of us played lead roles in trying the case before the jury in Minnesota federal court. 

Towards the end of 2019, I tried another challenging case (that we also won) with Eric, Luna, and another one of our newly-promoted partners, Bambo Obaro, who is based in our Silicon Valley office. Many of our senior partners focus on the promotion and growth of our younger attorneys, and have secured impressive outcomes for clients in the process.  

This mindset of developing the next generation across practices through mentorship and sponsorship distinguishes our department, and Weil generally, and it is something that Jonathan and I seek to encourage through our leadership.

What do you see as the hallmarks of your firm's litigators?  What makes you different?

Time in court actually trying cases is a Weil hallmark that definitely sets us apart from other firms. 

To put this into greater context, the victory for C&S Wholesale Grocers mentioned above was my 20th first-chair trial decision in my 25 years of practice. And I am just one example. Many of my partners, including Diane Sullivan, Ed Reines, Jonathan Polkes, and Ed Soto, among others, all have similar records across various practice areas, from products to antitrust to patent to securities. 

What makes us so effective in these situations is our ability to hone in on the critical flaws and openings in our adversaries' cases and aggressively pursue and exploit them, particularly in complicated cases involving complex economics or technology that require clear and compelling presentations to juries. 

We also embrace a transactional perspective in our work that helps us advance our clients' cases in an efficient manner—recognizing favorable outcomes and opportunities to exert leverage even as positions change.  In part, this comes from having the opportunity to work closely with extremely talented attorneys outside of our litigation department, such as M&A, business finance & restructuring, tax, and technology and IP transactions, on both litigation and transactional engagements. 

Indeed, our litigators generally play a part on our transactional matters with those teams from the outset so they can help assess potential dispute triggers, and more effectively litigate a case caused by them. This supports our business-minded approach and enhances our ability to try to see around the corners and anticipate dispute resolution needs down the line.

How many lateral litigation partners have you hired in the last 12 months?  What do you look for in lateral hires?

Since March of last year, we have added two lateral litigation partners, Susan Shin in New York and Zachary Tripp in Washington, D.C.  

Susan is part of our complex commercial litigation practice and is a seasoned trial attorney and commercial litigator. Susan is just completing her first trial at Weil. 

Zack is co-head of Weil's appellate practice. He joined Weil from the U.S. Department of Justice, where he was an assistant to the Solicitor General. He has argued 11 cases before the Supreme Court, winning nine. Zack already is playing a lead role on a number of important appeals just two months after his arrival.

Earlier, we welcomed Sarah Coyne as a partner in our white collar defense, regulatory and investigations practice. She served for 11 years as an assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York, where she was chief of the Business and Securities Fraud Section, and another three years as an assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of New Jersey. Sarah, too, has extensive trial and appellate experience.

We look for individuals who share our core values relating to client service. These include developing a comprehensive understanding of our clients' businesses and culture, focusing on both the situation at hand and the long-term, as well as a commitment to help solve problems in the most efficient, cost-effective way. We also look for those who are committed to corporate citizenship and supporting the communities in which we live and work. This is deeply embedded in our culture at Weil. For litigation candidates specifically, trial experience is a key factor. 

What were some of your firm's biggest in-court wins in the past year?

A great example of how we closely collaborate across departments at the firm to deliver value in the litigation context is our successful work in several trials for Sears in connection with its chapter 11 proceedings. 

We kicked off 2019 by securing a $5.2 billion sale order permitting ESL Investments to purchase Sears following an expedited three-day evidentiary bench trial in New York bankruptcy court that saved the century-old retailer from liquidation and preserved tens of thousands of jobs. Key to this victory was aggressively attacking the unsecured creditors committee's valuation expert's testimony at trial. 

This was the first of several major trial victories we achieved over the course of this engagement, working closely with our business finance and restructuring, public company advisory group, and tax colleagues on a round-the-clock basis over many months.

We also achieved a number of pre-trial dispositive outcomes that underscore our strength in managing multi-jurisdictional disputes and in class action jurisprudence. For example, my partner Ed Reines used the MDL process to consolidate a series of significant patent disputes filed against HP and its customers into a more advantageous jurisdiction before a well-respected patent jurist in Texas federal court, realizing significant defense cost savings before defeating the claims on summary judgment. Ed was named "Litigator of the Week" by Am Law for this victory. 

Additionally, my partner Ed Soto successfully orchestrated a transfer motion practice on behalf of Dometic that moved a number of nationwide and state-wide product defect class actions to Florida, where we were able to defeat the consolidated complaint at the class certification phase.

Meanwhile, our securities litigation practice again delivered another banner year, winning complete victories that defeated three distinct 10-year-long, multi-billion dollar disputes. These included a major victory in December 2018 before the Tenth Circuit that brought to a complete close an investor class action arising out of the $22 billion acquisition of Archstone-Smith Trust—one of the largest go-private REIT transactions in history. 

We succeeded the following month in dismissing a $4 billion dispute against Morgan Stanley related to the leveraged buyout of the Tribune Co., and again in July 2019 with a win for Willis Towers Watson at the Fifth Circuit that upheld a $120 million settlement in multi-billion dollar litigation arising out of the R. Allen Stanford Ponzi scheme. In the latter case, we developed a novel settlement that barred all other pending suits—even those in state court—overruling objections by the state court and other plaintiffs.

Where are you looking to build or expand in the next year?

In the next year, we will continue to focus on expanding our white collar and appellate practices. We have added considerable strength recently in some of these areas and plan to grow further through both internal promotions and lateral additions.  

For prior Litigation Leader profiles, click here.