The Deep End

In Edward Heath’s fourth year as a lawyer, he tried a murder case in federal court—an experience the Robinson & Cole litigator calls “significant and foundational.” So in 2018, when a bank client received a grand jury subpoena from the Department of Justice in connection with the Michael Cohen probe, Heath decided to pay it forward. He turned to Dan Brody, a second-year associate he recruited to join the firm’s government enforcement team.

Brody had interned at the DOJ and realized internal investigations and government enforcement was where he wanted to be. Now he was there, and the pressure was on.

“We would take the train into New York or D.C., and we were always reading the front page of The New York Times like, ‘What’s going on in this today?,’ because it would be relevant,” recalls Brody. “This was one of the first investigations I handled. I was in my mid-20s, and there’s Ed and the client, then two or three government attorneys and two or three agents handpicked from across the country.”

“[Robert] Mueller assembled kind of a best-of-the-best team, and it was something to be sitting around a table with those folks,” says Heath.

Over the 18 months to resolve the case, which ended in Cohen’s prison sentence for tax and campaign finance violations, Brody took on greater responsibilities. “We did witness prep together, and the first maybe started with [Heath] doing 90 and me doing 10. Towards the end, it was closer to half and half,” Brody says. “It was key for my development. And a lot of the things that I learned and developed I use every day now.”

Handling something high profile makes everything else seem simpler, Brody says, because it gave him confidence. In particular, the experience helped with issue-spotting.

Typically, when a corporate client hires lawyers after a subpoena, warrant or civil investigative demand, they don’t know the particulars. “You get on the phone and start talking with prosecutors to find out their priorities, what they’re looking into, and you have to piece together what their case is from that,” Brody says. “It’s a very highly educated guessing game. … So having one of these cases evolve in real time, doing this on almost a daily basis, knowing how to react becomes a skill.”

Thanks to this opportunity, Brody has it.

“Once you’re thrown in the deep end, when you start taking anything else on, I wouldn’t say it’s easier or no pressure, but you have the confidence and that experience. You’ve handled something where you’ve seen all the things that pop up, and now you’re able to draw on those experiences.”