Stacey M. Sprenkel

Sprenkel joined Morrison & Foerster straight out of Columbia Law School in 2005 and has risen to head the litigation department in the firm’s San Francisco office, managing a team of nearly 100 lawyers.

That wasn’t strictly according to plan. “I was planning on going to a D.C. firm where I had summered,” said Sprenkel, who was raised in the Bay Area. But just in case she needed a backup, she sent her resume to MoFo where the document was sitting on a secretary’s counter only to be spotted by Gordon Erspamer, a prominent partner who died in 2014.

“He called me,” Sprenkel said. “That’s how Gordy was. I happened to be in the Bay Area visiting family, so I bought a suit, pinned the hem, met him and he offered me a job on the spot. And the next thing I knew I was moving back to California.”

Sprenkel also heads the firm’s Bay Area anti-corruption and compliance practice and regularly leads corporate internal investigations that span a broad range of issues including bribery, kickbacks, embezzlement, self-dealing, insider trading accounting fraud, computer fraud and abuse, economic espionage and health care fraud. The probes involve jurisdictions around the globe; the names of clients remain confidential.

She served as lead attorney on a cross-border anti-corruption investigation for a global technology company, leading a team across multiple jurisdictions in investigating allegations that bribes were paid in connection with securing contracts. She oversaw the factual investigation and conducted all of the key witness interviews. Then she reported to key stakeholders on the findings and recommendations of the review. Sprenkel is currently assisting the company in developing and implementing a remediation plan.

In another case, she led a team conducting a post-acquisition risk assessment of a newly acquired business with operations in regions considered to be at high risk of corruption. She advised the company on implementation of a remediation and risk mitigation program.

“The most interesting and trickiest thing is to figure out how to scope these investigations,” she said. “They could become unreasonably massive, so where do you credibly draw the line? The other thing is that when the investigation is international in nature, data privacy rules can vary in different countries and so can rules on attorney-client privilege. You have to be cognizant of the jurisdiction you are looking at.”

Following the lead of Erspamer, who was deeply involved in pro bono veterans work, Sprenkel champions veterans’ rights and has become a national expert on veteran issues. “I love the fact that I work with virtually every team at MoFo,” she said. “Every day is different.”

— John Roemer