Q&A With Pillsbury's Maria Galeno

“One of the most challenging matters that I have handled was the representation of a chief financial officer of a small company who was facing securities fraud charges (and life imprisonment) in parallel proceedings by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission,” says Galeno about her most challenging case.

“What made the matter challenging was navigating the need to provide the U.S. Attorney's Office with sufficient information to persuade them to accept my client's cooperation while avoiding any waiver of the attorney-client privilege under the SEC's rules,” she says. “The severity of the charges and potential penalties faced by my client added to the pressure and are, of course, what keeps defense attorneys up at night. Fortunately, the government accepted my client's cooperation, and he ultimately received only a 30-day sentence.”

Galeno says that she has a few simple principles to prepare for a trial. “First, I believe in the trial lawyers' adage that ‘you try your case for summation,’ so all of my preparation is with a view toward what I want to say in summation. Second, I believe that, however complicated the case, there are a handful of key facts or pieces of evidence that will be dispositive. Those principal facts have to figure prominently in as much of the testimony and presentation at trial as possible. Last but not least, a professor at Harvard once said that ‘good ethics are good tactics,’ and I have held that with me for my entire career. It is how I want to practice, and judges and juries do distinguish good guys from bad guys early on in every case. These principles guide the testimony to be elicited, the exhibits that must be emphasized and the order of proof.”