On April 15, 2015, The National Law Journal presented its list of “75 of the most accomplished female attorneys working in the legal profession today.” The Journal said, “These women, selected from hundreds of nominations, represent excellence in private practice, corporate counsel work, public interest representation, legal education and the judiciary.”

Among the 75 is NAFUSA member Debra Wong Yang, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles. She is Co-Chair of the firm’s Crisis Management Practice Group, the White Collar Defense and Investigations Practice Group and the Privacy, Cybersecurity, and Consumer Protection Practice Group. She is a member of the Media and Entertainment and Intellectual Property Practice Groups.

Yang’s practice specializes in corporate crime and compliance. She served as a DOJ-appointed Monitor over an orthopedic manufacturing company with health care compliance and regulatory issues. She has also represented companies and boards in internal investigations, compliance matters, and criminal investigations. In addition, Yang has provided advice on matters relating to FCPA, trade secrets, and cyber/data intrusions. She has overseen teams of attorneys conducting internal investigations and has reviewed compliance programs in a variety of industries. She has also managed matters in the crisis arena relating to recalled products, health care and insurance.

Yang served as the United States Attorney for the Central District of California, 2003-2007. Prior to being appointed United States Attorney, Yang was a California state judge. She was appointed to the Los Angeles Municipal Court in 1997, serving for a time as a Supervising Judge, and became a member of the Los Angeles Superior Court bench in 2000.

Yang has been an adjunct professor at the USC School of Law and has instructed at the National Institute of Trial Advocacy and at California’s Judicial College.

Yang has remained active in the local and legal communities for an extensive time. The Daily Journal named her to the 2014 list of California’s Top 100 lawyers highlighting her role in defending USC in the media followed suit involving an off-campus shooting.  And the April 2015 Global Investigations Review selected her as one of the top 100 women leading investigations around the world. In 2010 she was named by the Los Angeles Chapter of the Federalist Society as Lawyer of the Year. In 2009, she was selected to serve as a Los Angeles Police Commissioner, part of the civilian oversight committee of the Los Angeles Police Department. She has been recognized as a champion of civil rights by both the Los Angeles City Council in 2002 and the Inglewood Superior Court. She was selected by the National Law Journal as one of the Top 100 Influential Minority Attorneys and by the Los Angeles Business Journal for their Who’s Who in Law.

Yang received her Juris Doctorate in 1985 from Boston College Law School and served as a law clerk to the Honorable Ronald S.W. Lew in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

The Fiske Fellowship was established in 2001 at the University of Michigan Law School by NAFUSA member Robert Fiske, ’55, a senior counsel at Davis Polk & Wardwell and a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Three-year fellowships are awarded annually to up to four Michigan Law graduates who serve as government lawyers. Fellows receive a $5,000 first-year cash stipend and debt repayment assistance to cover required annual payments for all educational loans, a combination that provides much-needed financial breathing room.

In establishing the fellowship, Fiske hoped to encourage more Michigan Law students and recent graduates to consider government service, despite the lure of larger paychecks in the private sector.

Bob Fiske is shown below in a photo from the Spring 2015 edition of Law Quadrangle, Notes from Michigan Law, with the 2014 Fellows (left to right): Samuel Hall, ’13, Elizabeth Grossman, ’12, Meridith Garry, ’13, and Austin Hakes, ’12.

NAFUSA Foundation President Mike McKay (WD of Washington 1989-1993), shown left, and William Hyslop (ED of Washington 1991-1993, and president-elect of the Washington State Bar Association), shown right, have joined the effort in Washington to try to convince the state senate to reconsider its announced budget cuts for the state courts.

In an OpEd in The Seattle Times on April 28, 2015, entitled Budget cuts threaten justice, McKay says,

Though Washington ranks dead last among the 50 states in the percentage of state funding for the courts — our judicial branch receives just two-fifths of 1 percent of the state budget — the state    Senate is now proposing even deeper cuts in the funding of our court system.

 

Hyslop’s OpEd was published in The Spokesman-Review on April 26,2105. In Further court cuts jeopardize system, Hyslop argues,

Lawmakers must balance the budget and provide for many, many services to Washingtonians. As part of that balance, a fair and functioning judicial system is not a luxury. It is a basic tenet of American governance, a right of the people. It protects us from the abuses of all kinds of power and helps the rest of government and society to function.

Continuing to cut court budgets in this manner harms everyone.

 

In a follow up interview, McKay stated:

These cuts are grossly disproportionate to those made for the rest of state government.  The state supreme court recently ordered the legislature to increase its appropriations to public schools, ruling that the decades-long practice of allocating fewer and fewer dollars for public schools has violated our state constitution.  It has been speculated by some that these draconian cuts are calculated to punish the state supreme court for enforcing the constitution.

NAFUSA board member and life member Bill Leone (Colorado 2004-2006) has been named Head of Disputes for the New York office of Norton Rose Fulbright. In addition, he is now the Chairman at the Colorado Independent Ethics Commission. Bill served as US Attorney in Colorado and led several high profile, complex white collar investigations including the prosecution of Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio. He is shown above moderating the ethics panel at the NAFUSA Boston conference in 2014.

Norton Rose Fulbright is the 3rd largest law firm in the world following the combination of Norton Rose LLP and Fulbright & Jaworski, with 55 offices around the globe, including North and South America, Asia, Europe, Africa and Australia. Bill continues to spend time in Denver where he maintains his practice and has led the litigation group for the past four years. Bill’s practice includes investigations in the energy, medical device, health care and technology sectors, as well as a portfolio of white collar cases and civil and criminal trials.

NAFUSA member Richard Stacy (Wyoming 1981-1994) emerged from a successful surgery early this month which removed a malignant nodule on his right lung. In an opinion published on April 21, 2015 in The Denver Post, Stacy credits a doctor’s decision to order a CT scan of his chest. Read his opinion here,  Colorado Voices: A challenge to managed health care, where he urges that CT scans and other imaging techniques be used as part of routine physicals.

Alabama Attorney General Strange announced today the appointment of NAFUSA board member Alice Martin as Chief Deputy Attorney General effective May 1, 2015.  Martin, shown above at the NAFUSA 2013 conference in Washington, a Mississippi native, brings 25 years of experience in civil affirmative and defensive litigation, as well as criminal prosecution and defense.

“I am pleased to welcome Alice Martin as my new Chief Deputy Attorney General,” said Attorney General Strange, who spoke on a panel on immigration at NAFUSA’s 2012 conference in Atlanta.  “She possesses an extensive legal background in federal and state courts as well as in private practice.  A former assistant U.S. Attorney in Memphis, Tennessee, Martin continued her impressive career in Alabama as a Circuit Judge for the 11^th Judicial Circuit in Lauderdale County before President George W. Bush appointed her U.S Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2001 to 2009.  She is also no stranger to the Alabama Attorney General’s office having recently served as Deputy Attorney General for the Department of Examiners of Public Accounts since 2013.”

The holder of an undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt University and a law degree from the University of Mississippi, Martin is married to Louis Martin.  They live in Florence and have three adult daughters.

“I look forward to working with Attorney General Strange given his priorities and our good working relationship,” Martin observed.  “I could not pass on the exciting opportunity to join an office I greatly respect and work with the high caliber of professionals that represent the legal interests of this State.”

NAFUSA member Don DeGabrielle has joined the Government Investigations & White Collar Criminal Defense section of Chaffe McCall, L.L.P in Houston.

As a 35-year veteran of legal services, DeGabrielle’s experience includes defending a wide range of white collar criminal matters including violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), healthcare fraud, immigration worksite enforcement matters, intellectual property and data intrusion statues. He has worked with clients on securities, compliance and corporate governance matters, criminal anti-trust statutes, bank and insurance fraud, and environmental regulations. He has also represented clients who have been victims of embezzlement and extortion.   His career in federal law enforcement includes service as a Special Agent with the FBI, an Assistant District Attorney, an Assistant U.S. Attorney, and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas. He has prosecuted matters involving public corruption, white-collar and environmental crimes, bank fraud, and general criminal and narcotics offenses.

DeGabrielle was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006 and sworn in as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Texas. Prior to this time he served as First Assistant U.S. Attorney, Chief of the the Criminal Division and held an assignment with the Public Integrity Unit. He spent a year as the Resident Legal Advisor to the South African National Directorate of Public Prosecutions, where he served as a consultant and advisor for rule of law and criminal justice development. In addition to his tenure as the U.S. Attorney, he served as an Assistant District Attorney in New Orleans, where he prosecuted more than 150 jury trials and also served as a former FBI Special Agent in New York and New Orleans.

Chaffe McCall is a full service law firm with a rich history of serving clients regionally, nationally, and internationally to address the challenges they face in numerous industry areas. Founded in 1826, Chaffe McCall LLP is Louisiana’s oldest law firm, with offices in Houston, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lake Charles.

NAFUSA lifetime member John McKay continues his residency in Ramallah, Palestine, where for the past two years he has headed the U.S. State Dept. (INL) rule of law program supporting Palestinian public prosecutors, police and security services. (See February 7, 2015 post)

Recently he was visited by NAFUSA members Debra Yang and Marc Jimenez as they toured the Masada Fortress near the Dead Sea. McKay will take them on to visit Bethlehem and Nazareth today, before ending up in Tel Aviv tomorrow. Deb Yang reported, “Learning so much about the region, the people, and the history from our dear friend John McKay. He is doing the ‘good work’ out here.”

Yang will be busy upon her return to the U.S. According to a filing in the Northern District of California on April 13, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher have replaced Uber’s prior legal team in its litigation over whether the company’s drivers are employees or independent contractors. Yang, of Gibson’s Los Angeles office, will be part of the new legal team.

Deb Yang, John McKay, Marc Jimenez