Board: Board Alumni

Brad S. Karp

Brad S. Karp is chair of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. He has represented numerous clients in significant securities, commercial, and regulatory matters. In 2013, Karp was appointed to the ACS board of directors.

Karp’s clients include Citigroup, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, HSBC, UBS, Blackstone Group, KKR, SoftBank, Deutsche Bank, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Deloitte, The National Football League, FIFA, Xerox, Bloomberg, Citco, Ericsson, Mutual of Omaha, Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, BB&T, and Zurich Capital.

Karp has given lectures on business litigation, securities litigation and corporate governance at Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School, New York University Law School and The Federal Judicial Center. He writes a column for the New York Law Journal, and is a frequent writer for The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation.

Karp is chair of the Legal Action Center and also serves as a director or trustee at Mount Sinai Hospital, The Partnership for New York City, the Harvard Law School Leadership Council, the Executive Committee of the New York City Bar Association, Practicing Attorneys for Law Students Program, Inc., the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity, American Friends of Hebrew University, the New York Bar Foundation, the Program Advisory Board of the Brennan Center for Justice, the Best Lawyers Advisory Board, the Economic Club of New York, the Union College President’s Council, and the U.S. Supreme Court Historical Society.

Karp has been named “Litigator of the Year” by The American Lawyer, a “Litigation   Trailblazer” by The National Law Journal, and one of the top 10 practitioners by Benchmark Litigation. He has received more than a dozen recognitions for his pro bono accomplishments and charitable services.

Karp received his J.D. from Harvard cum laude, and his B.A. from Union College summa cum laude. He clerked for the Hon. Irving R. Kaufman on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Christopher Kang

Chris is Chief Counsel of Demand Justice, a new advocacy organization empowering citizens to organize around our nation’s courts and fighting for progressive change because the rights described in our Constitution are only made real through the power of citizen activism. He has been an ACS Board member since 2016.

Chris served in the Obama White House for nearly seven years—as Deputy Counsel and Deputy Assistant to the President; Senior Counsel to the President; and Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs.

He oversaw the selection, vetting, and confirmation of more than 220 of the president’s judicial nominees—who set records for the most people of color, women, and openly gay and lesbian judges appointed by a president.

From 2014 to 2015, Chris also was in charge of advising President Obama on commutations and pardons, working with the Department of Justice to establish a new initiative that would lead to commutations for more than 1,700 federal prisoners serving unjust and disproportionate sentences for non-violent crimes (compared to fewer than 200 commutations in the preceding 40 years).

In the Office of Legislative Affairs, as an advocate for the administration before Congress, Chris helped spearhead the confirmations of Supreme Court Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and passage of the Fair Sentencing Act, which reduced the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses.

Chris also served as National Director of the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans and worked for U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Richard Durbin, of Illinois, as Director of Floor Operations, Judiciary Committee Counsel, and Counsel for labor issues.

The National Law Journal named Chris one of the top 40 minority lawyers in the nation under the age of 40 in 2011, and the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association gave him its President’s Award in 2012.

Reuben A. Guttman

Reuben Guttman is a founding member of Guttman, Buschner & Brooks, PLLC where his practice involves complex litigation and class actions. The International Business Times has referred to him as “one of the world’s most prominent whistleblower attorneys,” citing “wins recouping billions of dollars for the federal and state governments.” The Boston Globe’s STAT News referred to him as the “The Lawyer Pharma Loves to Hate.” In July 2017, on the eve of trial, Guttman settled a case against Celgene for $280 million.

In 2013, Guttman was appointed to the ACS board of directors.

Among other clients, Guttman has represented workers, unions, and pension funds in complex litigation and for over a decade served as the chief outside counsel to the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers in a series of labor and environmental cases that enhanced safety and environmental conditions at Manhattan Project nuclear weapons sites while driving dread disease compensation legislation for nuclear weapons workers across the nation.

Guttman is an adjunct professor at Emory Law School and a senior fellow at Emory Law’s Center for Advocacy and Dispute Resolution and he is a founder and Senior Advisor to the Emory Corporate Governance and Accountability Review (ECGAR). He has taught trial advocacy and complex case investigations in the United States, China and Mexico, and he has co-authored three case files — two published by Emory and one published by the National Institute of Trial Advocacy — where he has been a faculty member.

Guttman has written or co-authored more than 100 articles or opinion pieces and multiple book chapters; his article, Pharmaceutical Regulation in the United States; a Confluence of Influences, was translated and published in Mandarin in the “Peking University Public Interest Law Journal.”

Guttman received his J.D. from Emory University and his B.A. in American history from University of Rochester. He is the founder of www.whistleblowerlaws.com. He began his legal career as a Washington, DC counsel for the Service Employees International Union, AFL-CIO where he served for five years.

Hon. Nancy Gertner

Judge Gertner is a senior lecturer on Law at Harvard University. For 17 years, she served as a federal judge for the District of Massachusetts. In 2012, Gertner was appointed to the ACS board of directors.

At Harvard, Gertner teaches courses on criminal law, criminal procedure, forensic science, and sentencing. She continues to write and lecture about women’s issues around the world. She has also worked as a professor at Yale Law School, and is a Leadership Council Member of the International Center for Research on Women.

Gertner is the author of an autobiography “In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate,” and co-author of “The Law of Juries with attorney Judith Mizner.” She has also published articles and book chapters on sentencing, discrimination, forensic evidence, women's rights, and the jury system.

Gertner received the Thurgood Marshall Award from the American Bar Association’s Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, and the Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement from the ABA’s Commission on the Status of Women in the Profession. She has also received the Morton A. Brody Distinguished Judicial Service Award from the Colby College Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs, the Massachusetts Bar Association's Hennessey Award for judicial excellence, the Arabella Babb Mansfield Award from the National Association of Women Lawyers, and the Leila J. Robinson Award of the Women's Bar Association of Massachusetts. She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Brandeis University in 2011.

Gertner received her J.D. and M.A. in political science from Yale University. She received her B.A. from Barnard College (Columbia University). She clerked for the Hon. Luther Swygert of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

David C. Frederick

David C. Frederick is a partner at Kellogg Hansen Todd Figel & Frederick, where he has focused primarily in appellate litigation. He has argued over 100 appeals – including 40 that rose to the U.S. Supreme Court, in every U.S. Court of Appeals, and in five state supreme courts. In 2014, Frederick was appointed to the ACS board of directors.

Noteworthy cases Frederick has either won or settled in the Supreme Court include Tyson Foods v. Bouaphakeo, Tibble v. Edison Int’l, Jesinoski v. Countrywide Home Loans, Amgen Inc. v. Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds, Pacific Operators v. Valladolid, CSX v. McBride, Matrixx v. Siracusano, Jones v. Harris Associates, Merck v. Reynolds, Wyeth v. Levine, and Altria v. Good. He also worked for the U.S. Department of Justice, first as Counselor to the Inspector General, then as Assistant to the Solicitor General.

Frederick’s published books include “Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy,” “The Art of Oral Advocacy,” and “Rugged Justice: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the American West, 1891-1941.”

During Frederick’s work as Assistant to the Solicitor General at the Department of Justice, he received the Guard Medal for Distinguished Public Service in 2000, the Inspector General’s Award for Exceptional Service in 1997, and the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award in 1998.

Frederick received his J.D. with honors from the University of Texas in Austin, his D.Phil from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and his B.A. summa cum laude from University of Pittsburgh. He also clerked for Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White, and the Hon. Joseph T. Sneed on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Steve Fineman

Steven E. Fineman is the managing partner of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP, resident in the firm’s New York office. The American Lawyer Magazine has called Lieff Cabraser one of the “nation’s premiere plaintiffs’ firms,” and the National Law Journal, U.S. News and World Report, Law360, and Benchmark Litigation have repeatedly recognized Lieff Cabraser as one of the top plaintiff-side litigation law firms in the United States. In 2016, Fineman was appointed to the ACS board of directors.

Fineman represents plaintiffs in class, group and individual civil litigation in the areas of securities and financial fraud, mass torts, and consumer fraud. He has been recognized as a top lawyer in his fields by Best Lawyers in America, Super Lawyers, Benchmark Plaintiff, and the National Law Journal.  Lawdragon has identified Fineman as one of the nation’s “100 Managing Partners You Need to Know.”

Fineman is also a member of the Advisory Forum for Stanford Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession, and is a frequent guest lecturer at Stanford Law School. He is a past president of the Public Justice Foundation, which oversees and funds the national public interest law firm, Public Justice, P.C., and is a past co-chair of the American Association for Justice’s Securities Litigation Group. Fineman is also vice-chair of the New York regional board of directors of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and is a member of the executive committee of ADL’s national commission.

Fineman received his J.D. from University of California Hastings College of the Law, and his B.A. from University of California San Diego.