In its effort to build its white-collar and investigations practice, and to further bolster its ranks of former prosecutors, New Jersey firm Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi has hired Erik Sandstedt, formerly regulatory compliance chief of McKesson Corp. and a securities litigator before that.

The move also is intended to help the firm get a larger share of clients in the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry, its managing partner said.

Sandstedt, who spent part of his early career as a federal prosecutor under Michael Chertoff, joined as of Tuesday as a partner based in the firm's West Orange headquarters. He has yearslong relationships with numerous people at the firm, most importantly, name partner Jeffrey Chiesa, who was an assistant U.S. attorney alongside Sandstedt years before becoming New Jersey attorney general.

The law department-to-law firm lateral move is perhaps less common than other lateral moves, but “it happens for a variety of reasons,” and “the main reason, I think, is to make a contribution beyond a single client,” Sandstedt said in a phone interview.

Sandstedt, in his plans to build a book of business, cited “a real need in the life sciences space for people who can thread the needle, so to speak,” between the compliance function and the “traditional” legal function at corporations.

“I would hope that my phone would ring anytime a company who knows me [has] a problem that arises,” he said.

Firm managing partner Daniel Schwartz said the hire brings the number of former prosecutors at the firm to seven, and Sandstedt should create inroads in pharmaceuticals and life sciences, “an area we are looking to do more work in.”

Chiesa Shahinian has seen a growing demand for services in the internal investigations practice, but “we have not had a lot of work in the pharmaceutical and life sciences space,” Schwartz added.

That's where Sandstedt's background and relationships come in, the firm believes. In his most recent job, Sandstedt was a senior vice president in charge of regulatory compliance at McKesson, and before that a vice president and assistant general counsel at Pfizer, where he oversaw investigations. His prosecutorial career began in 1998 in the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey, where he would come to head the Securities and Health Care Fraud Unit, and he later became deputy chief of staff and counsel to Michael Chertoff, then an assistant U.S. attorney general, in the Justice Department's Criminal Division.

In private practice, Sandstedt handled criminal and securities matters at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann, then a 40-lawyer firm where he was a partner in charge of staffing the New Jersey office, and Latham & Watkins, where he was an associate. He was one of three lead lawyers in In Re WorldCom Securities Litigation, which settled in the Southern District of New York for $6 billion, as well as other significant securities litigation matters.

He graduated from Columbia University School of Law in 1995 and University of North Carolina in 1992.

Schwartz said he sees Chiesa Shahinian as “a destination of choice” for former prosecutors, and noted other such hires, including most recently Danielle Corcione, a former assistant U.S. attorney who joined the firm from Day Pitney last year, and Lee Vartan, a former executive assistant attorney general in New Jersey and former federal prosecutor who joined from Holland & Knight in 2017.

The firm, formerly Wolff & Samson, has about 145 attorneys in three offices.

For Sandstedt, the timing for a move was right as he looked to reduce his travel, he said. He frequently traveled and worked out of McKesson's San Francisco, Atlanta and Texas offices.

“I had sort of a yearning to come back to Jersey,” said Sandstedt, a North Brunswick native.

He cited the Chiesa firm's growth strategy and regional footprint as draws, adding that he didn't seek work elsewhere.

“I thought about whether I wanted to speak with the big, national firms, and I decided that I didn't,” Sandstedt said. “I'm a Jersey guy.”

Sandstedt's hourly rates haven't been settled on yet, but most firm partners bill at a rate of between $475 and $650 an hour, and his rate will likely fall in that window, Schwartz said.

And according to Sandstedt, he might not be billing by the hour all the time.

“I spent a lot of my career working with firms on alternative fee arrangements,” Sandstedt said. “I feel like I bring kind of a unique perspective in that regard. … I have a pretty keen sense about what corporations are looking for.”

Schwartz, too, cited as an asset what he called Sandstedt's “familiarity with corporate budgets and the way they handle outside counsel.”

Chiesa Shahinian has engaged clients in AFAs “in appropriate circumstances,” Schwartz added, “but I do think Erik's arrival … will see us having more AFAs than we've had in the past.”