By Bruce Love
Former Nashvillian Robert Boone, a notable federal prosecutor and nine-year veteran of the Southern District of New York, has returned to Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, a rm he left in 2012.
Boone had actually only spent seven months at Wilmer after completing the interview process for the U.S. Department of Justice while working as an associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. The day after his nal DOJ interview, the government announced a hiring freeze that put his prosecutorial dreams on hold.
“Cravath is a great place, and I really enjoyed my time there and the fantastic people,” said Boone, adding that at the time Wilmer had a lot of former DOJ attorneys. “As I waited out the DOJ hiring freeze, I felt it would be good experience to work with as many ex-DOJ lawyers as possible, so I moved to WilmerHale.”
Boone eventually landed at SDNY in April 2012 as an assistant U.S. attorney, and went on to try some of the most famous cases of the last 10 years.
Boone prosecuted a corruption scheme involving a close adviser of then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo accepting bribes. Another case involved the bid-rigging by the president of a state university. The two cases resulted in multiple guilty pleas and eight convictions.
Boone was the lead prosecutor in the NCAA corruption scandal that netted 10 convictions, including a former Adidas executive and several college basketball coaches.
He also was heavily involved in the case against disgraced celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti, bringing charges against Avenatti for his $20 million extortion attempt of Nike.
This time around, Boone will join the rm’s white-collar defense and investigations practice in New York, arriving in October.
When this year he decided to return to private practice, he saw a homecoming to Wilmer as a natural.“I learned more about the rm in my decade at SDNY than I ever did in my seven months as an associate,” said Boone, explaining that in many of the biggest cases he tried at SDNY, Wilmer often appeared for one party or another. “I got to see their lawyers up close and see how they handled themselves. I was attracted to the way they carried themselves before our oce. felt there was a level of sophistication and accuracy that was dierent from some of the other rms we deal with.”Susan Murley, WilmerHale’s co-managing partner, said in a statement that the rm was “so pleased” to have Boone return.“His years as an SDNY trial lawyer handling such high-pressure cases will prove invaluable to our clients. With Robert, we further bolster our considerable trial strength,” said Murley.Boone is looking to build his practice across a number of litigation areas. “I love doing trials,” he said. “And that’s what I’d like to continue to do.”
Boone will provide white-collar criminal defense as well as civil litigation and other areas of law. His last posting at SDNY was in the securities fraud group, and he tried a number of nancial crime cases, including an accounting fraud at a publicly listed company.
Atty. Boone was a student in the Tennessee Tribune’s First Journalism Classes, sponsored by professors from TSU and Fisk University.
