Robert J. Lack
Robert J. Lack, the firm's Co-Managing Partner, has played a leading role in many of the major cases handled by Friedman Kaplan for more than two decades. These include the firm's representation of the trustees for noteholders in the multidistrict Tribune Company Fraudulent Conveyance Litigation in seeking to recover billions of dollars distributed to shareholders in Tribune's 2007 leveraged buyout; representation of entities sponsored by Bain Capital Partners, LLC and Thomas H. Lee Partners, L.P. in litigation over the funding of the $18 billion leveraged buyout of Clear Channel Communications, Inc.; representation of the Litigation Advisory Board of the Granite Funds in litigation against three major broker-dealers arising out of the sale and liquidation of complex derivative securities; and representation of a major institutional investor in a $200 million securities fraud and accountants' liability case arising from the bankruptcy of the Phar-Mor drugstore chain.
Mr. Lack, whose practice focuses on complex and multidistrict litigation, securities litigation, accountants' liability, and commercial litigation, has represented investors, funds, collateral managers, servicers, and counterparties in litigated and negotiated disputes involving collateralized mortgage obligations, commercial mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, and credit default swaps. He represented institutional investors in an action against a Big Four accounting firm arising out of its audits of a bankrupt company, obtained a jury verdict for a well-known manufacturer of footwear and apparel for losses arising out of an acquisition, and represented a leading Wall Street firm in lawsuits arising out of alleged insider trading by Ivan F. Boesky. He has examined and cross-examined numerous witnesses in jury and bench trials as well as in arbitrations.
Mr. Lack graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University in 1977 and received a master's degree from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1978. He received his law degree magna cum laude in 1981 from Harvard Law School, where he served as Note Editor of the Harvard Law Review. He is the author of Note, Venue for Judicial Review of Administrative Actions: A New Approach, 93 Harv. L. Rev. 1735 (1980). As a visiting student at Columbia Law School, Mr. Lack was awarded the Whitney North Seymour Medal for Trial Advocacy. After law school, he clerked for The Honorable Leonard I. Garth of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and was a litigator at Sullivan & Cromwell. He is admitted in both New York and New Jersey.
Mr. Lack is a member of the Securities Litigation Committee of the Commercial and Federal Litigation Section of the New York State Bar Association, as well as the American Bar Association, the Association of the Federal Bar of New Jersey, and the New Jersey State Bar Association. He previously served as a member of the New York City Bar's Committee on Antitrust and Trade Regulation and Committee on Federal Courts. Mr. Lack spoke on "Emerging Litigation Involving Accounting Firms" at the first annual conference of the American College of Business Court Judges at The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He is a trustee of the Harvard Law School Association of New Jersey.
Mr. Lack has been selected for inclusion by Thomson Reuters in Super Lawyers® 2011 New York Edition for having attained the highest degree of peer recognition and professional achievement in the multiphase Super Lawyers selection process which includes, among other factors, peer evaluation. He also was selected for inclusion in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010, and was selected for inclusion in the New Jersey edition of Super Lawyers in 2006, 2007, 2009, and 2010. Mr. Lack has also been included in the 2008, 2009, and 2010 Super Lawyers Corporate Counsel Edition, which lists lawyers who designate business litigation as their primary area of practice. (No aspect of this advertisement has been approved by the Supreme Court of New Jersey.)
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