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Trials Group Of The Year: Brown Rudnick

financial services giants, including Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc.,

alleging the companies profit from sexual abuse.

Brown Rudnick has nearly 80 lawyers in its litigation practice and is in

the midst of a "strategic expansion," which includes an effort to add

up to 100 lawyers across the firm within the next three years,

according to a firm spokesman.

The firm's ongoing work on the MindGeek case leverages the law to

target the pervasive global problem of human trafficking, while the Depp trial captured the cultural

"It was something out of a movie," said Camille Vasquez, a Brown Rudnick partner in Irvine, California,

who co-led Depp's litigation team with Washington, D.C.-based partner Benjamin Chew. "We would get

cheers when we arrived at court. ... But we also faced everything from security concerns to death

threats and stalkers."

"It was really overwhelming and shocking for everyone at the firm," Vasquez added. "It has bonded us

more."

Brown Rudnick's Depp trial team also included partners Wayne Dennison and Rebecca MacDowell

Lecaroz, and associates Stephanie Calnan, Andrew Crawford, Yarelyn Mena, Jessica Meyers and Samuel

and $5 million in punitive damages.

Heard prevailed on one of her three defamation claims against Depp and was awarded $2 million in

compensatory damages.

After both sides appealed parts of the verdict, Depp and Heard settled the case in December, with

Heard agreeing to pay Depp $1 million, which he pledged to donate to charity. The judgments in Depp's

favor on his defamation claims were not vacated as part of the settlement, according to Chew.

"That was the most important part of the settlement from Mr. Depp's perspective," he said. "It was

The Depp verdict was widely seen as part of a backlash to the #MeToo movement, but Chew described

it as "the #MeToo case with no other 'me toos.'"

"There was not a single woman, either before or after Ms. Heard, who ever alleged that Mr. Depp ever

engaged in any physical abuse," Chew said. "In fact, all other women with whom he had relationships

would affirm that he was never violent in any way, which gave us a lot of confidence."

Audio recordings of Depp and Heard arguing and insulting one another also proved to be "incredibly

powerful" evidence for the jury, according to Vasquez. In one of the recordings, Heard appears to mock

Depp, saying, "Tell them, 'I, Johnny Depp, I'm a victim of domestic abuse' ... and see how many people

team because he "saw this case, analyzed it and realized he needed a woman to co-lead with him,"

Vasquez said.

"Camille was the obvious choice," Chew added. "I simply have never worked with a better lawyer."

In preparing for her cross-examination of Heard, Vasquez said she and her co-counsel studied Heard's

deposition in her divorce case with Depp, "really dug into her" and got to know the "types of questions

that would elicit certain defensive or angry responses."

She added, "We formulated the cross-examination so it would be like a dance and have points where

Chew noted that Vasquez also made "brilliant use of the clock" by finishing her cross of Heard before

Heard was a disaster — so much so that when she finished, Ms. Heard left the courtroom rather than

sitting next to her counsel."

Brown Rudnick elevated Vasquez to partner in the wake of the Depp trial, which made Vasquez a

celebrity in her own right. She recently accepted a legal correspondent role with NBC, but stressed that

she has no plans to leave the practice of law.

"I'd like to use this as an augment to my practice," she said, "not to start a different career altogether."

Meanwhile, the firm's work on the MindGeek litigation — which is ongoing in California federal court —

the very fact that Visa continued to provide MindGeek the means to do so and knew MindGeek was

indeed doing so."

Brown Rudnick partners Michael Bowe and Lauren Tabaksblat are at the helm of the MindGeek case,

which the New York-based attorneys modeled, in part, after their work in earlier litigation against a

group of hedge funds accused of conspiring in a short-selling attack targeting Fairfax Financial Holdings

Ltd.

"This is an example of a systemic problem in our society — human trafficking, which is ubiquitous in our

life. BigLaw could be doing something about it. But there's a vacuum, and we saw that we could fill that

underutilized," Tabaksblat said.

"We were the first major case filed against these companies. But what really distinguishes our case from

the others that have been filed is that we recognized that the real way to effectuate change — a critical

objective of our clients and our efforts here — was to bring in the credit card companies that were

uniquely positioned to change this industry," Tabaksblat said.

She and Bowe started laying the groundwork for the litigation in early 2020, which involved copious

research and interviews with hundreds of potential victims, witnesses and confidential informants.

Brown Rudnick filed the initial complaint in June 2021 on behalf of 34 alleged victims. Since then, more

"This is the beginning of what will probably take five, six, seven, could be 10 years," Bowe said. "The

--Editing by Daniel King.