J. Lizette Richards

Biography:

Lizette Richards is an associate in the firm's Litigation/ADR Department and works in its Springfield and Boston offices. Her practice focuses on representing individual and corporate clients in civil and criminal proceedings in both the state and federal courts, as well as in conducting corporate internal investigations and in responding to government investigations. Lizette has significant experience in federal white collar defense, including mail and wire fraud, tax fraud, and healthcare fraud matters. She has also worked extensively on internal investigations arising out of allegations of violations of the federal securities laws and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

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Related Professional Experience:

Lizette served as an editor of the Duke Law Journal. Prior to joining the firm, Lizette practiced as an associate at Fierst, Pucci & Kane in Northampton. Before that, she represented indigent defendants in a wide variety of criminal matters as a staff attorney in the Nashua office of The New Hampshire Public Defender and worked as a litigation associate with a Boston-based civil rights firm. Lizette has served as a speaker at a continuing legal education seminar on the challenges of electronic discovery.

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Representative Experience:

Represented numerous individual defendants who were targets of federal investigations, successfully convincing the government not to seek indictment in certain instances or to pursue lesser charges or penalties in others;

Represented many clients in various state court criminal proceedings at all stages of the proceedings up through and including jury trials;

Represented numerous employees of large pharmaceuticals companies under government investigation in joint defense situations;

Represented a NYSE-listed client in conducting internal investigations of alleged violations of state and federal law asserted by shareholders;

Successfully argued for dismissal of claims for breach of contract and various intellectual property theories advanced against a NYSE-listed client;

Successfully settled a breach of contract and fraud case on behalf of a Fortune 100 company against one of its third party contractors; and

Successfully argued a prescriptive easement case before the Massachusetts Court of Appeals.