Litigation Daily featured Ronald Machen, chair of WilmerHale’s Litigation and Controversy Department, in an in-depth Q&A as part of the publication’s “Litigation Leaders” series. Machen, a former US Attorney for the District of Columbia, discussed WilmerHale’s strategic approach to litigation, his toolkit to advance corporate diversity and more during the extensive interview.
Excerpt: When you hire WilmerHale litigators, you’re hiring lawyers who are hard workers, brilliant problem solvers, and impassioned advocates. Our litigators love to collaborate with each other, with our clients, and even with lawyers at other firms to get positive results. We thrive in building multidisciplinary teams with diverse experiences to be prepared for any challenge that might come up during litigation.
One difference we notice when our lawyers go up against other firms is that we are very strategic in our approach. We try to anticipate the next two or three or four moves on the chessboard. We’re always thinking of the long game, of creating the strongest record possible on appeal, whether to overturn or to defend the judgment. That means we typically embed at least one member of our appellate practice within our trial teams. They’re there to observe and advise. When procedural or legal issues arise during trial that give us a strong basis for appeal, our appellate lawyers have deep, firsthand knowledge of those issues from the trial and that gives our clients an edge.