Nearly four years ago, federal prosecutors charged Maryland attorney Jeremy Schulman with wrongfully representing his authority to act on behalf of the government of Somalia, resulting in more than $12 million in funds being released to his former law firm. Prosecutors didn’t dispute that $9 million of the funds—assets frozen after the outbreak of the country’s civil war in the early 1990s—were returned to Somalia with the rest withheld for fees and expenses.

Our Litigators of the Week are Paul Butler, Allison Coffin and Madeline Bardi of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, who have been chipping away at the government’s case against Schulman over the past four years alongside co-counsel Stanley Woodward of Brand Woodward.