Boutique firm Constantine Cannon announced this week the launching of its whistleblower practice with partners in Washington and New York.
In an interview, Gordon Schnell, one of the four partners in the practice, said that the firm took on a whistleblower case a few years ago and realized the untapped potential.
“In doing this work, I saw that this was a natural extension of my antitrust practice,” Schnell said. “It’s to take on these industries or large companies that are screwing with the market by not playing by the rules.”
The firm has four attorneys in the practice, split equally between New York and Washington. Schnell said that whistleblower cases are traditionally brought through the False Claims Act, but the newly enacted Dodd-Frank legislation provides another avenue to bring attention to wrongdoing. Schnell said that the recent financial scandals have changed the culture surrounding whistleblowers.
“With all this corporate fraud, there is a new mindset encouraging people to come forward,” Schnell said. “It happened to coincidentally develop at a time when there was new whistleblower legislation.”
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