Debra Wong Yang

Yang has been a state court judge, the U.S. attorney for the Central District and is now a partner at a major law firm involved in sensitive investigations, privacy and cybersecurity law plus consumer protection. So she's seen it all, but even so, her work for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie beginning in 2014 amid the Bridgegate criminal and legislative investigations stood out.

"I love it all," she said of her work. "I enjoy the complexity of the reputational market and legal valuations, covering dynamic and highly-charged environments."

Christie's office retained Yang and a Gibson Dunn team to conduct a comprehensive and speedy probe of allegations concerning the George Washington Bridge toll lane realignment scandal at Fort Lee plus Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer's allegations concerning Superstorm Sandy aid allocations to her city. Over two months, Yang and the team interviewed more than 70 witnesses and reviewed more than 250,000 documents, responded to subpoenas from the U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey and the New Jersey Special Committee on Investigations and prepared a 340-page report of findings and recommendations.

It wasn't all smooth sailing. In December 2015, U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton of Trenton, N.J., accused Gibson Dunn of gamesmanship in its document management practices that obscured the paper trail. "Although GDC did not delete or shred documents," the judge wrote in a ruling, "the process of overwriting their interview notes and drafts of the summaries had the same effect. This was a clever tactic, but when public investigations are involved, straightforward lawyering is superior to calculated strategy."

Yang pushed back. "The way we kept our notes is not so out of the norm now, and the white collar defense bar is agreeing with us," she said. She cited a March 24, 2016, article in London-based Global Investigations Review reporting that despite Wigenton's criticism, "lawyers say such tactics are becoming increasingly routine." To Yang, the reasons are evident. "We look for cutting-edge solutions," she said. "These were extremely sensitive matters, and we worried about leaks. You don't want to have multiple copies of notes floating around in a world of cyberhacking. The judge had her criticisms, but we were always ethical and aboveboard."

Elsewhere, Yang is coordinating all state and federal governmental inquiries into client DraftKings, the fantasy sports contest provider, following allegations that it is an illegal gambling site and that employees may have used insider data to win money on rival sites. "It's consumed much of my last five months," Yang said. "I sit on the captain's deck, strategizing, managing crises. I'm the team leader of a pretty big team." She said that in the course of representing the company, she's become a player. "I've become an aficionado now," she said of the fantasy sports realm. "But I'm good at none of it."

? John Roemer