Partner Reflection: John McKnight
By John McKnight, Washington, DC Partner | November 2024
When people ask me what I like about my job with Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight, I say that I appreciate the space the firm has provided for me to grow and find my own way and I appreciate the openness the firm has had toward new practices and new ideas about the practice of law. Since I have been at the firm, I have worked on dozens of different types of fraud cases, and the firm has always been open to trying new cases with legal theories, different statutory schemes, and in different industries than we have previously worked.
That openness has helped my father Vince and I build a qui tam practice that now looks very different than the one we joined when we joined the firm in 2014. At that time, our practice was focused on False Claims Act litigation. In 2014, we were settling one multi-year False Claims Act litigation with several more to come within the year. While we were litigating these cases, I was also researching weaknesses in tech business models and the IPO process, particularly the pattern of tech companies achieving sky-high valuations without even having a plan to become profitable. The only program under which we could bring cases against these companies was the relatively new and untested Dodd-Frank Whistleblower program with the SEC. Despite the program’s lack of a proven track record, the firm supported us as we filed several TCR submissions with the SEC by 2015. This gave us the experience we would need to have a fulsome discussion about Dodd-Frank with the former Chief Security Officer of Wells Fargo, and ultimately submit a TCR to the SEC on his behalf in late 2016. The firm’s trust in our vision and research paid off, as barely a month after filing the TCR, our three-person team accompanied our client to the first of many in-person meetings with about two dozen federal law enforcement attorneys and special agents from the SEC, DOJ, OCC, and FBI. Our clients information helped recover over $5 billion dollars in fines against Wells Fargo and tens of millions charged to the responsible executives.
Today, our practice is weighted heavily toward securities fraud cases targeting a range of industries far wider than we could have hoped in 2014. Our team has expanded well beyond the three-person squad that kicked off our case against Wells Fargo. At the top, we are now recognized leaders within the fraud fighting community. We have full-time associates and legal assistants working on fraud investigations and driving new business to the firm, and with the firm’s support, we maintain that same forward-looking mindset that brought us so much success in the Wells Fargo case. Many other firms would have insisted we spend all of our time and resources on the more expensive, less efficient, but shorter-term gains we could realize through traditional False Claims Act litigation. At Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight, we have been able to build a nimble practice group that capitalizes on our collective business acumen as much as our legal experience. We can effectively maximize more of our talents and target a far larger group of companies than we ever could have at a firm that doesn’t have the same foresight and growth mindset as Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight. We could not have built this without this firm believing in our vision and supporting us every step of the way.
