Barry Ostrager - 'The Big Winning Lawyer From The Big Apple'

Barry Ostrager of New York’s Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, and co-head of the firm’s litigation department is reputed not to have lost a trial in over 20 years. Already a LawFuel nominee in 2005, Ostrager handles the difficult cases, favoring the hard cases that are reputed to make good law.

Take the arbitration involving his client Andersen Consulting in its split from Andersen Worldwide. The dispute involved $14.5 billion in alleged debts but the arbitration panel accepted Ostrager’s argument the A.W. had breached their agreement and no payment was necessary.

He was also was lead lawyer for a group of insurers against Shell Oil in an environmental insurance coverage case. With $2.5 billion at stake in the 16-month trial, a jury agreed with the defense and denied coverage.

And so on. In over 50 trials over his three-decade career he’s been a winner.

Rob Moodie - 'Dressing Up In Order To Dress Down The Kiwi Judiciary'

Well, who wouldn't be a star lawyer who employs sartorial tactics to make a very sharp point about the male-dominated judiciary - and at the same time successfully take on government adversaries with well-made legal points?

What other lawyer would dress as a woman to convey his ‘feminine side’, yet outwardly display all the mustachioed, macho characteristics of the kiwi male? Dr Rob Moodie, that’s who. The feisty farmer-turned lecturer-turned farmer again-turned advocate has stirred the public’s imagination before with his unusual ‘dress’ sense, but this time it’s to make a sharp point: to illustrate the allegedly old boys network making up the New Zealand judiciary.

Notwithstanding the existence of a woman Prime Minister, a just retired woman Governor General (and Judge) a woman Speaker of the House (and lawyer) and a woman chief justice, Rob Moodie has continued to battle successfully on a number of legal fronts, successfully tackling the Police on a major employment matter and the Army on a matter that now sees him ‘dressing up’ in order to dress down the military on allegations of corruption.

Moodie may have a sense of humor, but he also displays a sharp legal mind and a healthy distaste for what he perceives to be injustice or bureaucratic bungling.

Michael Beloff, QC - 'Mr Influence'

Any lawyer who has been profiled under the headline ‘Is this the most influencial man in Britain?’ (‘Sunday Telegraph’, 12 March 2000) has to have at least some influence in the UK legal landscape and Michael Beloff has.

As a sports, public law and commercial law advocate and lecturer, Beloff has held significant judicial, tribunal and arbitral posts, as well as having served as president of Oxford University’s Trinity College. He has been recognized as a formidable legal opponent in many areas, not the least being the substantial niche he has carved as one of the country’s leading sports lawyers – if not the single dominant sports lawyer in Britain.

He has appeared in international courts and arbitrations and chaired various commissions and committees, including acting as Ethics Commissioner for the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

Gary Naftalis - ‘The Zelig of the White Collar Bar’

He’s used to honors and awards, the lawyer who was described by Wall Street Journal as “the zelig of the white collar bar: He’s everywhere.” For some 30 years, Gary Naftalis has represented individuals and corporations in all phases of complex civil, criminal, and regulatory matters, including those involving allegations of insider trading, market manipulation, accounting irregularities and other financial fraud.

A Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, Naftalis was selected recently as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America by The National Law Journal . He successfully represented Disney CEO Michael Eisner in last year's shareholder suit relating to the hiring and termination of Michael Ovitz. The Disney case was chosen as one of the top defense wins of 2005 by The National Law Journal.

His defense forestalled threatened federal prosecutions of Kidder, Peabody & Co. for alleged insider trading and Salomon Brothers over its U.S. Treasury auction bidding practices; co-authored The Grand Jury: An Institution on Trial, the leading resource on the topic; on the faculty of Columbia and Harvard Law Schools.

Joseph R Re - IP Protection for the Little Guy

The massive growth in intellectual property issues has lead to a corresponding growth in IP litigation, but for California lawyer Joseph Re he’s the man who has stood up for the little guy, securing over $400 million in damages for patent infringement cases this year.

A partner in the Orange County IP firm Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear, Re was a a recipient of the prestigious California Lawyer lawyers of the Year (CLAY) Awards, appearing in the magazine's March 2005 issue. Certainly Re’s judgments have had a significant effect not just for his clients, but for patent and IP law issues for years to come.

Re has represented small companies against major firms such as Tyco International Ltd., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Logitech Inc., a $265 million settlement, plus $65 million in advanced royalty payments, for Masimo Corp. in a patent infringement suit against a Tyco unit, after having obtained a jury award of $134.5 million.

Brad Seligman - Taking Care of Human Rights Business

First-rate civil rights attorney, currently lead counsel in a class action accusing Wal-Mart of gender discrimination, the largest civil rights class action in U.S. history when certified in 2004; litigating a narrower glass-ceiling gender discrimination case against Wal-Mart competitor Costco Wholesale Corp.; negotiated large settlements with companies such as State Farm and Lucky Stores.

For the over two decades, Brad Seligman has been a civil rights attorney specializing in class action and individual employment and civil rights litigation, currently lead counsel in the Wal-Mart gender discrimination action, one of the largest civil rights class actions in US legal history.

Seligman is founder and director of the nonprofit foundation The Impact Fund, which specializes in complex public interest suits, and leveraged it into a national network of plaintiffs-side civil rights class attorneys; gave away grants worth $4 million last year.

Since 1992, the Fund has made over $2,700,000 in grants to support such litigation. From 1988-1991, he was the managing partner of the Oakland firm of Saperstein, Seligman, Mayeda and Larkin. From September 1991 until June 1994, he was of counsel to the firm's successor, Saperstein, Mayeda and Goldstein. He was a senior Law Clerk to Judge Lawrence K. Karlton of the Eastern District of California.

He has successfully litigated over 40 civil rights class actions and countless individual employment cases including wrongful termination actions. He successfully tried and then settled the third largest sex discrimination class action recovery in history ($107.25 million) (Stender v. Lucky Stores, 803 F.Supp. 259 (N.D.Cal.1992) and settled the first major challenge to the use of psychological testing by a private employer (Soroka v. Dayton Hudson Corp dba Target Stores). He has served on the Board of Directors of Equal Rights Advocates and California Rural Legal Assistance, and was chair of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund Development Partnership. He was the co-founder of the San Francisco Bay Area Plaintiffs Employment Lawyers Association. He serves on the litigation committee for the ACLU of Northern California and was on the Steering Committee for the California State Bar Association Legal Services Statewide Planning Committee. He taught employment discrimination law at Hastings College of the Law and Golden Gate University Law School. He is a 1978 graduate of Hastings College of the Law and was a Teaching Fellow at Stanford Law School.

Charles D Swift - Driving Osama – Battling The Military

He was supposed to arrange a plea bargain. Instead, Navy Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift ended up fighting his commander in chief at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Swift, the military lawyer for Guantanamo Bay inmate Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former driver, is asking the high court to block President George W. Bush's plan to use tribunals to try terrorism suspects. The case, which raises questions about presidential wartime powers, might never have made it into court at all without Swift, 44, a 12-year veteran of the Navy's Judge Advocate General's Corps. Swift not only refused to enter a guilty plea, he filed a groundbreaking suit to challenge the tribunals, told a congressional panel that Hamdan had been abused and spent almost a month in Yemen developing his case.

``As a military officer, I deeply respect the president,'' Swift said in an interview at his northern Virginia office. ``But I also believe it's my duty as a military officer to point out when he is wrong.''

In 2004, working with Georgetown law professor Neal Katyal and the Seattle-based law firm Perkins Coie, Swift and other tribunal defense lawyers filed a friend-of-the-court brief in a Supreme Court detainee case -- even though they lacked explicit authorization to take that step. The sandy-haired, blue-eyed Swift is a Naval Academy graduate who served as a surface warfare officer for seven years before law school. He returned to the military only because a hiring freeze thwarted his goal of being a Justice Department attorney.

Twelve years later, he calls himself one of the military legal system's biggest fans, saying it does a far better job than the civilian courts of ensuring high-quality representation for impoverished criminal defendants.

Seth Waxman - The Supreme Advocate For The Supreme Court

Undoubtedly one of the top Supreme Court and appellate advocates in the US, former US solicitor General (1997 – 2001) Seth Waxman has nearly 50 oral arguments before the high court under his belt. Currently leading Wilmer Cutler’s appellate practice, he revels in complex cases involving government and public policy issues. Among the cases, the biggest patent case of the decade: eBay Inc. v. MercExchange.

But it’s not just civil and commercial work. Waxman persuaded the high court to overrule its own 1989 precedent in declaring that the execution of juveniles no longer passed constitutional muster-sparing the lives of more than 70 people.

Frequently called upon to testify before Congress on such matters as Supreme Court nominations and habeas corpus reform; legal editor and educator; leader in professional and cultural institutions; vigorous pro bono practice he has already picked up a clutch of honors, scoring "star" rating by Chambers USA and "leading lawyer" ranking in PLC's Global Counsel Handbook. He also has been ranked among Washingtonian magazine's "Top 30 Lawyers" and listed for "Bet-the-Company-Litigation" (among other categories) in The Best Lawyers in America.

Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens once described Waxman, 53 in November, as the most brilliant young lawyer he’d ever heard. Waxman now advises a host of corporate clients in high-profile appellate cases, but he also finds time to advise people like Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler, who was subpoenaed by a special prosecutor in connection with the leak that revealed the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Hire Waxman and you get a lawyer who might sit on the high court one day.

Jack McConnell - Big Tobacco & Asbestos Have Nothing On Jack

When Jack McConnell was in college, he thought he would become a “Nader’s Raider.” Going into law school, he thought he might be a public defender. Whatever he did, he wanted to take on the wealthy and powerful on behalf of the underdog.

Now, more than 20 years later, McConnell still loves fighting for justice and taking on Big Tobacco, the asbestos industry, and now, the manufacturers of lead paint.

McConnell’s exceptional legal and trial achievements have earned him a host of honors, including the National Association of Attorneys General’s Presidents Award, the Childhood Lead Action Project’s Above and Beyond the Call of Duty Award, the Rhode Island Bar Association’s Dorothy Lohman Award, CWRU's Martin Luther King, Jr. Award and the Rhode Island ARC’s Silver Bullet Award. He is an Advocate in The National College of Advocacy and the 2006 Bertram Yaffe Award Recipient.
A 1980 Brown University graduate, McConnell earned his law degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Law in 1983. After clerking for the R.I. Supreme Court, he practiced law at the firm of Mandell, Goodman, Famiglietti & Schwartz for two years before beginning work with Motley Rice attorneys in 1986.

UK – Shami Chakrabati - The Human Face Of Human Rights

It’s not an easy road for a lawyer to fight for human rights issues in Britain or the US since 9/11, but Shami Chakrabati has fought against anti-terrorist measures and legislation when it has been a wholly unpopular stance. She became the Director of Liberty (The National Council for Civil Liberties) in September 2003, seeing the organization through some of the most troubling times of its existence.
A highly effective communicator, she has voiced her argument through all media. Among her battles has been attacking the proposed ID cards, the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 (prior to and since becoming law), the wide use of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) as infringing civil liberties, draconian, unnecessary (as there are laws on the statute books which more than adequately cover the same acts) and dangerous quick fix reactionary legislations.

Among her victories has been the Roma case, in which the Courts ruled that the Government acted unlawfully in its attempts to prevent Romany Czechs from entering the UK. At its early stages the case was handled by Chakrabati herself.

Liberty has also maintained a healthy watching brief in the courts on the Home Office’s fast-track system for handling asylum seekers’ applications to remain in the UK, and also made highly publicised challenges to the Government’s detention in UK prisons of suspected terrorists without charge or trial.

In order to fund her Bar Finals Shami held several jobs for two years, including doing a bit of teaching for the University of London external law students and “pulling pints” at the Middle Temple Bar.

She is a Governor of the London School of Economics and sits on the Advisory Board of the British Institute of Human Rights and the Executive Committee of the Administrative Law Bar Association and is an Editorial Board Member of the European Human Rights Law Review. In 2004 Shami was selected by The Observer newspaper as one of 80 prodigiously talented young people who they believe will shape our lives in the 21st century. In December 2005, the BBC Radio 4 Today programme placed Shami on the shortlist of ten people who may run Britain. She was short-listed in the Channel 4 Political Awards 2006 for the "Most Inspiring Political Figure" award. In a vote made by the public, she came second behind Jamie Oliver, beating Bob Geldof, Tony Blair, David Cameron and George Galloway.

Also in 2005 Shami was named as a winner in the sixth annual Asian Women of Achievements Awards. She memorably had a single in her honour titled "Shami Chakrabarti" by the band the Dastards. Shami was awarded the title of "anarchist in a barrister’s wig" by the ”laddish” magazine, Loaded.