The following is an excerpt from Practice Perspectives: Vault's Guide to Legal Practice Areas.
Halley Josephs represents clients in complex litigation around the country. Named one of the Top Women Lawyers in California by The Daily Journal, a Next Generation Leading Lawyer by Lawdragon, and a Rising Star of the Plaintiffs’ Bar by The National Law Journal, Halley regularly secures major wins for her clients. These have included a $307.5 million settlement for a certified class of life insurance policyholders who challenged AXA Equitable’s increases to cost-of-insurance charges, a $16 million deal to resolve a whistleblower lawsuit against Walgreens, and a major win in a confidential arbitration for a well-known sports agency. Halley previously clerked for Judge Patty Shwartz (Third Circuit) and Judge Anita Brody (Eastern District of Pennsylvania). She earned her J.D. from Yale Law School and her B.A. with distinction from the University of Virginia, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Mark Musico is a trial and appellate lawyer whose clients include the country’s leading lights in finance, technology, and industry. Landmark wins include an award valued at over $2 billion for Flutter Entertainment after a widely followed arbitration against Fox Corporation, multiple high-value wins for the global alternative asset management firm Saba Capital Management, and a $307.5 million settlement for a class of life insurance policyholders in connection with AXA Equitable’s cost-of-insurance rate hike. After graduating first in his class from Columbia Law, Musico clerked at every level of the federal judiciary—for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Michael Boudin on the First Circuit, and Judge Douglas Woodlock in the District of Massachusetts.
Describe your practice area and what it entails.
Trials. Our firm does not have subject matter specialists. We focus on handling the highest-stakes business litigation happening in trial courts throughout the country across industries and practice areas.
What types of clients do you represent?
Like our practice, our client list is diverse. We’ve represented individual consumers, investors, inventors, whistleblowers, and entrepreneurs. We’ve represented leading companies such as Uber, Flutter Entertainment, and General Electric. We’ve brought class actions, and we’ve defended against class actions.
We represent anyone who needs best-in-the-business commercial trial lawyers.
What types of cases/deals do you work on?
Our cases run the gamut. We both have active class action practices. We were especially proud to work together to secure a $307.5 million settlement for a class of life insurance policyholders who challenged AXA’s 2016 rate hike on hundreds of elderly insureds.
Other recent highlights for Halley include an appointment as interim Co-lead Class Counsel in a nationwide antitrust class action on behalf of healthcare providers alleging that major health insurers colluded with a pricing intermediary to unlawfully suppress payments for out-of-network services. She also represents major corporations, including Penske Media Corporation and Chegg, in antitrust lawsuits against Google related to AI Overviews.
Mark frequently represents hedge funds and other investors in shareholder and securities litigation. He is also currently litigating several high-profile antitrust cases, including a nationwide consumer class action against Apple based on its anticompetitive practices with respect to the iPhone.
How did you choose this practice area?
Halley: I got hooked on SG early on. I spent part of my 2L summer interning in our New York office. That summer, I saw firsthand how much responsibility the firm gave even the most-junior associates and decided I wanted that experience for myself. When I rejoined the firm post-clerkship, my cases offered the quintessential SG experience right away. In my first few weeks, I jumped at the opportunity to take multiple depositions in a breach of contract case, going up against lawyers with decades of experience. The evidence I developed in those early depositions came full circle when I examined the same witnesses at trial (which we won!). Working the full life cycle of this case confirmed that I wanted to do that over and over as a trial lawyer.
Mark: I was lucky enough to have a trial run at trial work. I spent a gap year at SG before leaving to clerk for Justice Ginsburg. In that brief window, I went to trial with a group of impossibly talented SG lawyers from around the country. Even though I was the least-senior lawyer on the team, the senior partners went to bat for me to make sure I got stand-up opportunities and the chance to present a witness at trial. It was no special favor, just the SG way. I loved every minute of it, leaving no question in my mind that I wanted to be a trial lawyer.
What is a “typical” day like and/or what are some common tasks you perform?
Nothing is “typical.” On any given day, we might be arguing in court, examining witnesses at trial, writing or revising a brief, taking or defending depositions, conferring with opposing counsel, running internal team strategy meetings, or reviewing documents. As partners, we’re also vetting new potential cases on a regular basis.
We’re also actively involved in the management of our firm. Specifically, we run our firm’s Docket Committee, which means we’re keeping up on the status and needs of cases across the firm and the availability, skills development, and practice interests of associates across the firm.
What training, classes, experience, or skills development would you recommend to someone who wishes to enter your practice area?
Seize any opportunity to hone your writing skills. For example, enter a moot court competition with a brief-writing component, or clerk for one (or two, or three!) federal judges; you will read countless briefs and draft dozens of judicial opinions and memos. Although our firm is known for taking cases to trial, so much of our case development happens outside the courtroom and centers on writing, such as crafting a persuasive complaint that advances a novel legal theory or drafting winning briefs on dispositive legal issues at both the trial and appellate levels. Our practice depends on excellent written advocacy.
You should also look for opportunities to take initiative and ownership of your work. This might mean running for a journal position, participating in a law school clinic, or leading a law student organization. At SG, we entrust junior lawyers with an enormous amount of responsibility on their cases. We expect these lawyers to help develop case strategy, pursue discovery, handle important depositions and witnesses at trial, argue at hearings, and craft our clients’ stories for judges and juries. The most successful associates don’t wait around for more-senior lawyers to assign them tasks; they actively think about how to advance the ball in their cases and execute on their ideas.
What misconceptions exist about your practice area?
A misconception is that to be a litigator, you have to be overly aggressive or present yourself in a certain way. At SG, we know that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to litigating. We encourage every lawyer to develop their own authentic style and to be themselves in front of judges and juries. Our most successful lawyers have very different styles—from the Broadway star to the scholarly law professor and the quiet killer.
What is unique about your practice area at your firm?
We’re a trial firm at heart, so we litigate every case as if it’s going to trial. This colors every aspect of our case strategy. Even before we file a case, we’re thinking about how the choices we make in drafting the complaint or choosing a venue and the claims to assert will affect a client’s chances of success at trial. There’s rarely a time when an SG lawyer doesn’t have a trial on the horizon, so distilling a case to the essential elements and zeroing in on trial themes is always on our minds. Our weekly trial team meetings give our lawyers the opportunity to connect on day-to-day tasks and time to discuss big-picture strategy and themes that we need to develop to deliver a successful result for our clients.
What are some typical career paths for lawyers in this practice area?
We tend to attract associates who are interested in spending their careers at SG. We hire associates we can see as our future partners and invest in their development so that they have a real path to partnership. Those who leave rarely go to other firms. Some change careers entirely, a few go in-house, and two recently became federal judges!
How is practicing litigation in a boutique different from practicing in a large law firm?
For some litigation matters, clients need the Navy. Clients call SG when they need Navy Seals—the elite special operations force that knows how to execute the highest-stakes missions.
As an associate, this means early substantive experience. Our lean trial team structures and belief that trial lawyers learn by doing mean that associates get real responsibility from day one and participate in every aspect of a case. In their first year at the firm, associates can expect to take and defend depositions, argue in court, research and draft full briefs, interact with clients on a weekly basis, and much more.
Everyone at SG is encouraged to work smarter, not harder. Unlike larger firms that typically bill by the hour, SG has been a pioneer in alternative fee arrangements that align our interests with our clients’ interests and reward us for success instead of hours.