Cooley's Mikes—Rhodes and Attanasio—on the 'Barristerization' of the Big Firm Trial Bar and What to Do About It
"I think if you had more lawyers who understood the trial dynamic and could really meaningfully assess risk at trial and were willing to do that, you'd have more clients willing to go to trial," says Attanasio, the chair of the firm's global litigation department.
February 16, 2022 at 07:30 AM
5 minute read
The original version of this story was published on Litigation Daily
(L-R)Michael Rhodes and Michael Attanasio of Cooley . Courtesy photos
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As I've started reporting about what the dearth of civil jury trials means to Big Law firm litigation practices, two of the first lawyers I've spoken with are Michael Rhodes and Michael Attanasio, the past and present chairs of the global litigation department at Cooley respectively.
For one, both have actually tried cases in the past few months, masked jurors and all.
But what put Rhodes, in particular, top of mind on the topic was a podcast interview he gave late last year to Jay Edelson, the founder of Edelson PC and his longtime adversary in privacy class actions. Although Rhodes has a solid record against Edelson, the two were on opposite sides of the $650 million settlement that Facebook reached to settle claims one of its photo-tagging features violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. Edelson represented class members and Rhodes the company. Naturally.
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