Michael McNamara

Michael McNamara is a co-chair of Jenner & Block LLP’s professional responsibility practice group, a member of the firm’s governing Policy Committee and a former managing partner of the Los Angeles office at Jenner & Block LLP.

He has been involved in the representation of lawyers and law firms for more than 30 years. He began his career working on challenging cases for law firms with John Sharer, one of the leading professional responsibility lawyers of the time.

“These early experiences showed me that these cases are extremely interesting. Every case arises from a different underlying area of law and involves compelling issues about standard of care, causation and damages,” McNamara said. “In addition, the relationships one develops with other lawyers in this practice are very rewarding and add to my experience as a lawyer in our legal community.”

As McNamara is licensed in California, New York and Washington, D.C., he maintains a national practice. While he has tried many different types of cases, these days, his docket is full of significant matters for many of the country’s largest law firms.

Major matters McNamara has been lead counsel on include Goldberg v. Halloran & Sage LLP et al., and Burton W. Wiand, as Receiver on behalf of EquiAlt Fund, LLC, et al. v. Paul Wassgren. These cases are examples of a growing trend of claims by Trustees or Receivers against law firms in alleged “Ponzi scheme” or fraud cases. These cases also involve “aiding and abetting” theories of liability, which are based on the assertion that the law firm allegedly knew (or should have known) that their client was engaged in a criminal enterprise or fraud.

“The biggest challenge we face in these types of cases is that they typically involve very significant amounts of potential damages,” McNamara said. “Oftentimes, there is not enough insurance to cover the alleged damages, so the cases are very dangerous. In many of these cases, where the lawyer’s role was in the course of representing the client in a court proceeding or before regulators, we are able to bring anti-SLAPP motions or other threshold dispositive motions.”

In terms of trends in the field, McNamara is seeing more cases being brought by third parties against lawyers despite the fact that the lawyer did not represent the third party. In some of these cases, the third party alleges that the lawyer had an implied attorney-client relationship.