Marc L. Mukasey of Mukasey Frenchman & Sklaroff speaks to a class at Cardozo Law School in New York City. Mukasey is a former federal prosecutor who now counts President Donald Trump as a client. (Photo by David Handschuh/NYLJ)

Yes, Marc Mukasey is one of President Donald Trump's lawyers, but he wants it known that he does a lot more than represent Trump.

"There's a perception that this is somehow a Republican law firm," Mukasey said at the Midtown Manhattan offices of his new firm, Mukasey, Frenchman & Sklaroff, in July. "It's not, obviously. … It's a trial boutique."

On one hand, it's true. Nine months old, the five-lawyer firm formed by former Greenberg Traurig lawyers has gone to trial once and has another two set for 2020, Mukasey said. Its clients have included Wall Street traders, a legal recruiter, a Navy SEAL accused of murder, law firm Pierce Bainbridge Beck Price & Hecht in suits against an ex-partner, an eye surgeon accused of Medicare fraud, and companies and people involved in criminal investigations.

On the other hand, Mukasey's ties to the Trump camp are strong. It's not front and center on the firm's website, but do an internet search of Mukasey's name, and the cases where he's represented the president or his real estate business rise above the rest. He is particularly close with Rudy Giuliani, another lawyer to Trump.

Mukasey, 52, has represented Trump in several matters in court. Politico has reported that Mukasey is also advising Trump on impeachment matters. 

Mukasey said he doesn't view the cases he's working on as political—he said they're simply lawsuits. Asked whether he has a formal or informal role in impeachment, Mukasey said simply, "no."

Unlike Mukasey, his law partners haven't been front and center on some lawsuits against Trump. Mukasey said he, Sklaroff and Frenchman had a tight bond formed amid intense trials and investigations. Frenchman, he said, is "a financial industry and financial services genius" who had a key role in helping their client Sidney Gilman get a nonprosecution agreement in United States v. Martoma. Sklaroff, the firm's managing partner, is "a terrific trial lawyer and a master litigation strategist," Mukasey said.

While Mukasey wouldn't get into how they're splitting the pie, he said in July that the majority of the boutique's work is hourly, nothing was on contingency, and the firm's trial work "is a combination of hourly and more defined structured fees."

He declined to discuss his own hourly rates or the firm's finances, such as operating budget or revenue so far. He said the first year has gone well, though as of the July interview, he wasn't making as much as he was at Greenberg.

"Don't get me wrong, I want to make money and I want to make a lot of it," Mukasey said. "But this is about doing the kind of lawyering that we want to do, with the people that we want to do it with, for the people that we want to do it with."

Asked this month whether an image that his boutique is a Republican law firm has ever cost him a client, Mukasey didn't answer directly.

"We are like emergency room doctors," he said in an email. "We don't ask, and we don't care, if our clients or their employees are Republicans or Democrats, Yankee fans or Mets fans, young or old—we fight hard for everyone."

Litigation Record

Considering that 94% of federal criminal trials ended in conviction during the most recent year for which data is available, Mukasey has an enviable record. He noted that his last three trials have ended in acquittals, wholly or in large part. There's Eddie Gallagher, the Navy SEAL court-martialed for allegedly killing a prisoner; a witness testified that it was actually he who had killed the prisoner. Gallagher was convicted of posing with a dead detainee and demoted. Trump has indicated his disapproval with the punishment, saying he would reverse a decision by the Navy seeking to oust Gallagher from the force.

When he was at Greenberg, Mukasey advised Andre Flotron, the former UBS trader who was cleared by a jury on criminal charges of market manipulation in 2018 after just a few hours of deliberation. Flotron settled a related case with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Mukasey on a cellphone call before he speaks to a class at Cardozo Law School.  (Photo by David Handschuh/NYLJ)

He continues to represent Nomura trader Michael Gramins, who was convicted of conspiracy by a jury but had his conviction thrown out by U.S. District Judge Robert Chatigny in June 2018 because of similarities between it and that of Jesse Litvak, who was cleared by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The result Mukasey secured for Gramins was reversed by a Second Circuit decision to reinstate his conviction in September; Mukasey has called the ruling a "temporary setback," and recently sought en banc review, with Kannon Shanmugam of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison as co-counsel.

The firm is also squaring off against lawyers in two pending cases. Mukasey is set to go to trial in January on behalf of a Los Angeles headhunting firm that's suing Katten Muchin Rosenman over its alleged failure to pay a fee for placing a group of lawyers with a $20 million book of business. He also represents Pierce Bainbridge, the in-your-face litigation firm, in a bicoastal dispute with its former partner Donald Lewis.

And then there's Trump.

Mukasey represents the president in efforts to prevent the disclosure of his financial records in response to a subpoena from Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., and he's appeared in a similar suit against Deutsche Bank.

He represents the Trump Organization in a case brought by Michael Cohen, the president's imprisoned ex-lawyer, who claims the company has failed to pay his legal bills as he claims it agreed to do. "In terms of my involvement, there's nothing political about it," he said. "It's a lawsuit."

He also signed papers on behalf of Trump and his family members in the New York attorney general's case against the Trump Foundation. That case concluded earlier this month with a judge ordering Trump to pay $2 million for misusing the Donald J. Trump Foundation.

In an interview, Mukasey said, like other clients, Trump demands a good lawyer to face off against a full spectrum of legal challenges. At a recent appearance at Cardozo Law, his alma mater, Mukasey said it was "an honor and a privilege" to represent Trump and described the legal theories of his defense in detail in the subpoena fight.

While some of the president's lawyers, such as Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow, are known for going on TV to defend the president, Mukasey, like the president's lawyers at Kasowitz Benson Torres or the D.C. boutique Consovoy McCarthy, mostly sticks to the courtroom.

Taking on a controversial client doesn't necessarily define a law firm, noted Mary K. Young, a law firm management consultant at the Zeughauser Group. The idea that everyone is entitled to a defense is widely acknowledged, she noted.

"Clients are most concerned about what have you done and who have you done it for and have you been successful," she said.

Technology-Focused Firm

Mukasey, son of the former federal judge and Attorney General Michael Mukasey, was one of Greenberg's leading litigators and co-chairman of its white-collar practice group. He left Greenberg about nine months after Giuliani's official departure from the firm in May 2018. Mukasey has said he left Greenberg on amicable terms and that he was motivated to launch Mukasey, Frenchman & Sklaroff because he wanted to start his own law firm.

At the new firm, Mukasey said he and his colleagues are trying to build something new, something they couldn't do at a place such as Greenberg or anywhere in Big Law, for that matter.

For instance, he said the boutique will emphasize technology. The court-martial of Gallagher, who Navy prosecutors had accused of murdering an injured prisoner, was nearly paperless, he said. The firm is looking into developing its own trial-presentation software to display documents, charts, videos and the like to juries, he said.

Currently, the firm has a small office in Manhattan. In contrast with the tension of a trial or motion argument, Mukasey's office is strangely calm; a candle was burning on his desk when Law.com visited, and the ringer on his phone is smooth piano music.

"The cases like Gallagher and Gramins and Flotron … are so intense, you'd combust if you didn't try to chill a little bit," he said, jokingly. "I never stop working, never. I don't even know how to relax, so I'm trying to do something, even through osmosis, to relax."

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