Legal News

Eliot?s New Lawyer is Old Colleague: Paul Weiss?s Michele Hirshman

By Ashby Jones

Law Blog colleague Laurie Cohen just filed this dispatch on the woman who will lead the charge to defend Eliot Spitzer, Paul Weiss’s Michele Hirshman.

Soon after federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed their complaint last Friday against four individuals charged with running a prostitution ring, Michele Hirshman got a phone call seeking legal advice from her old boss, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.

Hirshman, a partner in the litigation department of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, has known Spitzer for nearly two decades. A former assistant US Attorney for the Southern District in New York City, Spitzer tapped Hirshman, 48, soon after his election as New York State’s attorney general in 1998 to fill the office of first deputy Attorney General.

Now, Hirshman is representing Spitzer in a very different capacity. She will help a team of Paul Weiss partners defend Spitzer against a potential array of criminal charges that could include “structuring,” or making payments to avoid currency reporting requirements.

Spitzer, referred to as “client 9″ in Friday’s complaint, allegedly paid more than $4,000 to have sex with a prostitute in a fancy Washington DC hotel on February 13. Spitzer admitted to wrongdoing in a brief press conference yesterday. He has not been charged.

As first deputy, Hirshman helped lead the charge to curb mutual fund trading abuses, as well as taking on such titans of finance as former AIG chief Maurice “Hank” Greenberg and former New York Stock Exchange chairman Dick Grasso.

But Hirshman has had plenty of experience with money laundering, too, which will come in handy in defending Spitzer. As an assistant U.S. Attorney, she led the prosecution of a former head of the Transit Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, on charges of money laundering.

Hirshman will be helped by Paul Weiss partner Mark Pomerantz, a star litigator whose clients have included Apple chairman and CEO Steven Jobs and former ImClone chairman Sam Waksal.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 11, 2008 (boomark / email).