State & Federal Government Solutions

Mobile and land-based gaming operators, media, financial and technology companies and professional sports leagues attempting to navigate the fast-developing US gaming market turn to Orrick for guidance managing the complex world of state legislative bodies and regulatory authorities. As former regulators, our attorneys understand the importance of a strategy that speaks to regulators' specific concerns and have built the substantive relationships necessary to get their clients in front of decision makers.

Orrick’s Gaming Law Innovation Regulatory group has been instrumental in shaping state legislation to legalize expanded forms of gaming, including new legislation permitting mobile and online sports betting, casino gaming and online poker.

When the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door for states to decide whether to legalize sports wagering, Major League Baseball, the NBA, and the PGA TOUR turned to Orrick. The objective was simple: encourage the passage of legal, safe sports betting legislation to stamp out the illegal gaming market, while ensuring states build in protections that safeguard the consumer and the integrity of sports that are at the center of nation’s cultural identity. Orrick is overseeing campaigns for the leagues in more than a dozen states – including California, New York, Massachusetts, and Florida – and today, sports betting is legal and safe in Illinois, Tennessee, and other states due to Orrick’s work.

Law360 named us a Sports & Betting Practice Group of the Year in 2019, for the second time, and the Financial Times has highlighted the group’s unique service offerings by naming Orrick—three years in a row—the Most Innovative Law Firm in North America.

There is virtually no aspect of state government and state regulation that state AGs do not influence.

As their states’ chief law enforcement officers AGs are enforcing state laws in wide-ranging areas including consumer protection, data privacy, antitrust, and environmental law, and they influence important state policies and laws affecting the high-technology, energy, and healthcare sectors. As their states’ chief legal advisors, AGs also challenge federal laws, regulations, and policies in order to defend their states’ right to govern themselves against federal overreach.

In an arena where many state AG practices have lawyers with little or no actual AG office experience, the core of Orrick’s team is former Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna, former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington Brian Moran former Wisconsin Chief Deputy Attorney General Andrew Cook, and former Illinois Executive Attorney General Adam Braun.

Given that many of an AG office’s legal and policy decisions are first initiated, prioritized, and executed at the staff level, deep experience at all levels of AG office operations should matter greatly to any company seeking to engage a law firm for representation before AG offices. Our deep understanding of how an AG office works, our personal credibility with those offices, and our substantive legal and policy experience affords our clients advantages that other firms simply cannot match.

Wide-Ranging Consumer Protection Experience

Our AG office experience with enforcing consumer protection laws ranges from cybersecurity to tort liability, unfair competition to Medicaid fraudulent billing matters. Our legal and policy experience includes working with state legislators and state agencies to draft, implement or amend state law; approving indictments and negotiating settlements; and overseeing state appellate strategy, including arguing on behalf of states in significant cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Engagements:

• Representing a leading telecommunications company in a national AG multistate investigation into industry billing practices. We secured the cooperation of the investigating AG offices, forestalled the issuance of civil subpoenas, and negotiated a favorable settlement for our client.
• Representing several online companies in AG consumer protection investigations involving allegations of unfair and deceptive business practices.
• Representing a Fortune 40 technology company in several AG matters relating to legal, policy, and competition issues.
• Representing a technology client in reaching out to a large number of AGs on a significant matter involving their states’ consumer protection and criminal laws and successfully moving the AGs to multi-state action. We were engaged after over a year of effort by other AG practices and lobbyists when they failed to advance the matter.
• Representing a major multinational corporation in a products liability matter being evaluated by numerous state AGs on behalf of their state transportation agency clients.

With Congress mired in endless gridlock and litigation costs spiraling out of control, companies increasingly view state governments as having the largest impacts on their business and legal strategies. States, not Congress, are enacting and enforcing the policies that affect if and how companies can legally operate their businesses in a particular state.

State-level issues are especially challenging for businesses. Instead of one set of laws and regulations to consider at the federal level, there are potentially 50 different sets of regulations and legislation at the state level—passed by regulatory bodies and legislatures with their own unique procedures and timelines. The stakes could not be higher: as one New York Times commenter noted, “a tweet-length change to a law could spell the difference between success and failure of an entire new sector.”

From the fastest-growing startups to stalwarts of the Fortune 500, leading companies turn to Orrick’s team of lawyers and legislative experts who focus exclusively on state legislatures and regulators. We design and implement cutting edge strategies—whether it’s passing legislation that will provide our clients with a competitive advantage in their most important markets or convincing state and local regulators to bless their innovative business model.

Engagements:

We have built and executed successful multistate legislative and regulatory campaigns for companies in industries ranging from gaming (DraftKings and FanDuel), telecommunications (DISH and DIRECTV), energy (LS Power), carsharing (Getaround), telemedicine (Warby Parker and Simple Health), alcohol delivery (Drizly), and life insurance (Fortress Investment Group).

Saving Fantasy Sports & Opening New Markets.

Orrick was the key architect of a nationwide strategy that saved the $7 billion fantasy sports industry. In a matter of months, Orrick convinced New York lawmakers to pass a bill that neutralized the New York AG’s illegal gambling claims against our clients and allowed them to resume business in time for the NFL season. Over the past four years, Orrick has helped DraftKings and FanDuel become the leading sports entertainment platforms in the country—first, by passing similar fantasy sports legislation in 21 other states and Puerto Rico and, now, by legalizing online sports betting in 13 jurisdictions and counting.

Safeguarding Sports Integrity.

When the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door for states to decide whether to legalize sports wagering, Major League Baseball, the NBA, and PGA TOUR turned to Orrick. The objective was simple: encourage the passage of legal, safe sports betting legislation to stamp out the illegal sports betting market, while ensuring states build in protections that safeguard the integrity of sports contests. Today, sports betting is legal and safe in Illinois, Michigan, Tennessee, and other states because of Orrick’s work.

Paving the Way for Innovation.

Getaround is transforming mobility options by facilitating carsharing through technology. As carsharing grew in popularity, the traditional rental car industry responded with a nationwide effort to pass burdensome and protectionist legislation. In a matter of two years, we prevented more than 30 states from passing harmful regulatory and tax proposals and paved the way for new laws in multiple states that cleared risks for the emerging carsharing market.

Defeating Anti-Competitive Taxes.

Satellite TV was one of the first disruptive technologies to face a concerted regulatory and legislative pushback from an entrenched competitor—the cable TV industry. We orchestrated the response to cable’s effort to impose anti-competitive taxes on satellite. We have defeated more than 60 cable-led tax proposals in 27 states since 2009, saving DISH Network and DIRECTV millions of dollars in litigation costs and tens of millions in lost revenue.

Protecting Emerging Business Models.

In a tremendous win for HR software startup Zenefits, we reversed the ban that shutdown the company’s ability to operate in the state of Utah. We defended Zenefits before state regulators who challenged the legality of its business model, a challenge supported by incumbent market competitors. This successful regulatory and legislative strategy was called “a roadmap for startups facing regulatory challenges in the future” by Forbes.

Clearing Regulatory Risks.

Looking for innovative ways to protect a substantial investment, one of the world’s largest asset managers, Fortress Investment Group, turned to Orrick to develop a multistate legislative and regulatory strategy for its life settlement portfolio. Orrick advanced legislation in multiple states that provided much-needed certainty to the $30 billion tertiary life insurance market. In just two years, we passed groundbreaking legislation in Minnesota and advanced bills in Delaware and California, despite being outspent 10:1 by our opponents.