Denise Tsai is a litigator with an emphasis on securities and financial services litigation, complex commercial disputes, and internal corporate and government investigations. Ms. Tsai has defended numerous corporations and their officers and directors against claims of breaches of fiduciary duty, fraud, and accounting issues, in matters before the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), the Department of Justice (“DOJ”), and other regulators, as well as in civil and criminal litigation. She has experience handling all phases of civil litigation including dispositive motion practice and preparing witnesses for depositions and trial, and has worked on winning trial and appellate teams. Ms. Tsai has also advised companies and secured successful resolutions in government investigations by the SEC, DOJ, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, and other federal and state regulators. Ms. Tsai also maintains a robust pro bono practice, particularly in assisting immigrants through the US naturalization process and in civil rights litigation.

In 2020, Ms. Tsai served as a Special Assistant Attorney General in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office’s Trial Division, where she engaged in all aspects of civil litigation, including successful arguments before the Supreme Judicial Court and the Massachusetts Appeals Court.

Ms. Tsai co-teaches the seminar, “Asian Americans and the Law,” at Harvard Law School. 

Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Tsai clerked for the Honorable Kiyo A. Matsumoto of the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York. During law school, she was a student lawyer in the Immigrants' Rights Clinic at Stanford Law School, and a research assistant for Stanford Law School Professor David F. Engstrom in the area of qui tam litigation. She also served as a consultant to the Royal Government of Bhutan through Stanford Law School’s Bhutan Law and Policy Project. 

Prior to law school, Ms. Tsai was an honors paralegal at the Antitrust Division of the US Department of Justice in Washington DC, where she worked on a variety of merger investigations.