Adam Kamenstein

Los Angeles

Adam Kamenstein, a former federal prosecutor whose titles included his role as deputy chief in the criminal division of the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, now focuses on high-profile investigations and trials, including those relating to Los Angeles City Hall, the Department of Water & Power and the Los Angeles World Airports as well as the Fleishman Hillard trial.

One of his major recent engagements involved leading the investigation of the San Diego Workforce Partnership on behalf of the city of San Diego. The SDWP, responsible for managing a substantial annual budget and tasked with increasing economic mobility for underserved populations, faced various allegations, from financial issues to discrimination.

Kamenstein emphasizes the symbiotic relationship between litigation and internal investigation experiences in his practice. He notes how litigation experience can lead to more directed investigations, while investigation experience provides litigators with a broader perspective, enabling them to identify issues and foresee potential challenges.

Kamenstein said there is often a large asymmetry of information in the government's favor about the conduct under investigation and, in many cases, how the government views our particular client's role in relation to other potential targets or the broader investigation, or what the legal theory of criminal liability is.

"Often, this asymmetry is not balanced until well into a case, when the government produces discovery and, even then, sometimes not until a critical inflection point draws near, like trial," Kamenstein said. "This makes it extremely challenging for all lawyers to advise the client on the risk-to-reward ratios of life-altering decisions and, even more challenging for the client to make those decisions. We have successfully overcome this challenge in cases where we opened an early, meaningful dialogue with the government built on our credibility and experience."

Addressing trends in his field, Kamenstein said the prevalence and ubiquity of social media and unrestrained access to publishing information on digital platforms mean that white-collar clients often face public relations pressures that did not exist when tightly controlled media access and the cost of ink-limited publicity.

"Today, and in the future, understanding how to address clients' concerns about responding to, or correcting, negative publicity that often accompanies a white-collar case, balanced against the impact of doing so on the legal defense, which can be both positive and negative, is an emerging and unavoidable aspect of representing white-collar clients with any public profile," he said.