Highly technical issues look easy in the more than capable hands of Nall, who has parlayed her status as a non-stereotypical white collar criminal defense attorney into a success that sometimes catches people off-guard.
"People in boardrooms tend to be male and when they have a problem with the government they tend to go with what's familiar - they look for guys, older, gray hair," she said. "I don't have gray hair, I'm not a man," so her clients "tend to be firms that recognize the value of a having someone like me in there."
Nall said she loves bouncing into a firm in jeans, her casual, trusting vibe encouraging people to spill before they even realize what they're doing.
"My job is to find out what went wrong in a company, and I have a different skill set than a guy who's 70 years old," Nall said. "In the C-suite they see me as nonthreatening, someone they can tell anything to. Pretty soon, they've admitted to things that are problematic. That's my secret weapon."
Nall said she loves nothing more than to do a "deep dive" into challenging material. She had to learn about cryptocurrency when she represented Bitstamp Ltd., one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, in federal court when Ripple Labs Inc. alleged Bitstamp owed $75,000 for a currency used only under Ripple's protocol. The case settled in 2016 with Bitstamp adding Ripple's currency to its trading platform. Bitstamp Ltd. v. Ripple Labs Inc. et al., 3:15-cv-1503 WHO (N.D. Cal., filed April 1, 2015).
For one of the biggest data breach cases in history, Nall is serving as lead counsel for the Yahoo Inc. cyber breach investigation on behalf of executives and employees.
When a company is in crisis, Nall explained, having a group of unfamiliar, suited-up corporate attorneys come in and start asking questions "can send everybody running for the break room" In contrast, she said "the unassuming person who comes in and listens carefully is someone who gets a better result."
— L.J. Williamson
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