Craig Jennings Lavoie 

Craig Jennings Lavoie is a Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP partner who focuses on sports and private equity cases. He joined the firm in 2013 after graduating from Stanford Law School.

Then, he took leave for a year to clerk for Judge Michelle T. Friedland of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. She had been a Munger Tolles partner when Jennings Lavoie was at law school. Friedland was named to the circuit by President Barack Obama at the same time as another Munger Tolles partner, John B. Owens.

“I was Judge Friedland’s first clerk, and so on our first day at the 9th Circuit, three Munger Tolles people were there,” Jennings Lavoie said.

“A clerkship like that is really valuable for honing your legal writing skills,” he added.

Starting in 2020, he co-led the team representing Vanessa Bryant in her landmark civil rights lawsuit against Los Angeles first responders for their involvement in improper photos of the helicopter crash that killed her husband, Kobe Bryant, and their daughter, Gianna Bryant.

In a two-week jury trial in August 2022, Jennings Lavoie won a $30 million verdict for Vanessa Bryant and her co-plaintiff. Vanessa Bryant v. County of Los Angeles et al., 2:20-cv-09582 (C.D. Cal., filed Oct. 19, 2020).

Jennings Lavoie examined nine witnesses and delivered the closing argument. “I focused on three things,” he said, “the reprehensibility of the conduct in showing off the photos like a party trick in bars and elsewhere; the false statements by police under oath, with a lot of minimizing; and the destruction of evidence.”

He and the Munger Tolles team fought for a got a despoilation of evidence judgment as part of the case.

“They went after her hard in depositions,” Jennings Lavoie said of the defense. “They won records from her psychologist. But she persevered.”

In addition, he was a member of the team representing Vanessa Bryant and her children in a wrongful death suit against the helicopter company that was transporting Kobe Bryant, Gianna Bryant and six others who perished in the crash. The matter settled for a confidential sum shortly after discovery began. Bryant et al. v. Island Express Helicopters et al., 2:20-cv-08953 (C.D. Cal., filed Sept. 30, 2020).

The outcome of the Bryant litigation was a Daily Journal Top Verdict. Jennings Lavoie and the Munger Tolles team also won a 2023 CLAY award for their work on the case.

“I really enjoy being a lawyer here,” Jennings Lavoie said. “Each year, your level of autonomy increases.”

–John Roemer