State Attorneys General Investigations & Enforcement

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.

    • 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.

Insights

Actualités