Cliff Sloan, Longtime Skadden Partner, Leaves Firm for Georgetown Law
The D.C. litigator recently worked alongside indicted former Skadden partner Greg Craig in a controversial engagement on behalf of Ukraine.
May 31, 2019 at 06:18 PM
3 minute read
Cliff Sloan, a longtime Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom partner, marked his last day at the firm Friday and is moving on to Georgetown University Law Center.
The Washington, D.C., litigator has argued seven times before the U.S. Supreme Court and handled matters ranging from antitrust law and intellectual property to criminal law in trial and appellate courts across the country. He was the Obama administration's special envoy for efforts to close the Guantanamo detainment center from 2013 to 2014 and served as associate counsel to President Bill Clinton, among other government roles. He is also a former publisher of Slate Magazine.
He's most recently drawn attention for his role representing Ukraine alongside former Skadden partner Greg Craig, who is fighting federal charges that he made false statements to federal investigators about that work.
While the charges against Craig had long been rumored before he was indicted in April, Sloan has not been charged in relation to the Ukraine matter, nor has he been at the center of any public speculation of wrongdoing.
He will spend his first year at Georgetown as a dean's visiting scholar and then start as a full-time visiting professor from practice in the fall of 2020. He intends to teach courses on constitutional law, criminal justice and a seminar on the death penalty.
Sloan in 2017 secured a pro bono U.S. Supreme Court victory on behalf of intellectually disabled Texas death row inmate Bobby Moore, which struck down the state's standards for evaluating intellectual disabilities in death penalty cases.
He will spend his first year writing a book on the Supreme Court during World War II, which is under contract with Public Affairs, the publisher of his 2009 book on Marbury v. Madison, The Great Decision.
Sloan leaves Skadden at a time that the firm continues to face scrutiny over its work for Ukraine, as Craig's legal defense has already shed a light on some of its internal workings.
The charges against Craig and a wider Department of Justice probe into Skadden stemmed in part from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, which resulted in the conviction of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on fraud and various other charges.
In January, Skadden reached a deal with the Department of Justice, agreeing to registering retroactively as a foreign agent for Ukraine and to pay the U.S. government more than $4.6 million, representing the amount the firm received for its work for Ukraine. That work was steered to the firm with Manafort's assistance, according to the government.
The retroactive filing included an engagement letter sent by Craig to the government of Ukraine in 2012, indicating that the two lawyers would be “responsible for and actively involved in the engagement.” Craig, a former White House counsel to Barack Obama, was to have earned $1,150 per hour for the work, while Sloan was to have earned a rate of $1,050.
Two representatives for the firm did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sloan's retirement Friday.
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