He has represented plaintiffs who were afraid to come forward. He has evaluated the same type of case from inside DOJ. He has built the defenses that employers use to defeat claims like yours. That is not background — it is the method.
Most plaintiff's attorneys have spent their careers exclusively on one side of employment and whistleblower cases. They understand what plaintiffs go through. They know how to build a compelling narrative. But they have never been in the room when DOJ decides whether to intervene in a qui tam case, and they have never built the defense strategies that employers use to dismantle discrimination claims at summary judgment.
Rob has done all of it. That is not a marketing claim about breadth of experience — it is a structural advantage that changes how cases are evaluated, prepared, and litigated from the first conversation. When he assesses whether your matter is worth pursuing, he is running it through three distinct analytical lenses simultaneously: how a plaintiff's lawyer builds it, how the government decides whether to support it, and how the defense will try to dismantle it.
That kind of stress-testing, applied honestly before a case is filed rather than discovered through costly litigation, is the core of what this practice offers.
These are not complementary skills that can be learned from a seminar. Each is built from years of doing the actual work — and each reveals failures and vulnerabilities in the others that are invisible from a single vantage point.
Employees who come forward face a specific kind of fear: they risk their income, their professional relationships, their standing with colleagues, and in some cases their careers — against an institutional opponent with more resources, more credibility in court, and no financial reason to settle quickly. Rob represented approximately 1,200 clients in employment, discrimination, and civil rights matters before this practice focused on its current scope. He has sat across from people who are terrified of what coming forward will cost them.
That experience does two things. First, it shapes how he listens. He knows the difference between a case where the employer's stated reason is clearly pretextual and one where the client's instinct is genuine but the legal theory isn't strong enough — and he delivers that assessment honestly rather than telling people what they want to hear. Second, it gives him a realistic picture of what workplace power dynamics look like to a jury, what credibility means in a discrimination case, and how to build the documentary foundation that corroborates what employees often only know intuitively.
Understanding what employees go through — the isolation, the gaslighting, the fear of not being believed — doesn't make a lawyer more aggressive. It makes them a better counselor about when fighting is the right answer and when it isn't.
As an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Oregon, Rob did not just encounter False Claims Act cases — he evaluated them from inside the institution that decides whether to intervene. He reviewed relators' disclosure statements, assessed the evidence they presented, and recommended whether DOJ should commit investigative resources to specific matters. That evaluation was not abstract legal analysis. It was a practical judgment about what federal investigators could verify, what fraud patterns were significant enough to justify prosecution resources, and what presentation would persuade DOJ decision-makers to move.
Knowing how that evaluation works — from inside the institution making it — changes how a qui tam case is built. The disclosure statement is not just a formal filing. It is a pitch to DOJ, and it needs to be written for the audience that will read it. Rob knows what language signals credibility, what evidence gaps make investigators cautious, and what case structure makes a matter look worth pursuing versus worth passing on. That knowledge cannot be acquired from the relator's side of the table, no matter how many qui tam cases an attorney has filed.
Rob also served as a mediator through the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys program — giving him additional exposure to how DOJ resolves the cases it does intervene in, and what the government considers an acceptable outcome.
When a discrimination or whistleblower case is filed, defense counsel begins with a systematic effort to dismantle it. They attack the plaintiff's credibility — surfacing timeline inconsistencies, prior disciplinary history, or performance issues that predate the protected activity. They challenge scienter, arguing the defendant lacked the knowledge or intent the claim requires. They contest materiality in FCA cases, arguing the misrepresentation wouldn't have affected the government's payment decision. They construct causation alternatives, generating legitimate-sounding explanations for every adverse action. And they use discovery — particularly depositions — to build the record they need for summary judgment.
Rob has built those defenses. He knows which attacks succeed and which fail, how defense discovery is used to surface the inconsistencies plaintiffs don't anticipate, and how defendants frame nondiscriminatory rationales that courts find credible. He has seen which causation arguments get cases dismissed at summary judgment and which ones juries see through. He has watched how 30(b)(6) depositions establish institutional policy records that cut against liability in ways plaintiffs don't see coming.
That knowledge does not make him a less committed advocate. It makes him a more prepared one. Cases that come into this practice are evaluated and built from the beginning against the strongest arguments the defense will raise — not as an afterthought, but as part of the original theory.
This is not a theory about the benefits of broad experience. These are the concrete differences in how a case is assessed, prepared, and litigated when the attorney has actually done the work on all three sides.
Your account is evaluated the way a jury and opposing counsel will evaluate it — before you're in a deposition chair, not after.
The stated reason for termination or adverse action is tested against every nondiscriminatory justification the defense will construct — not just the one given at the time.
Settlement timing and value recommendations are grounded in how similar cases actually resolve — not projected from jury verdict databases alone.
The qui tam disclosure statement is drafted to attract intervention — structured, evidenced, and framed for the federal investigators who will read it, not just to satisfy filing requirements.
The evidence weaknesses that would give DOJ pause are identified and addressed — or accepted as disqualifying — before the complaint is filed, not discovered during the seal period.
DOJ's likely response is projected based on how that evaluation actually works — not as an optimistic assumption used to justify accepting the engagement.
Every scienter, materiality, causation, and credibility challenge the defense is likely to raise is addressed in the original filing — not countered reactively after the motion to dismiss is filed.
Defense discovery tactics — the deposition approaches, document requests, and 30(b)(6) strategies used to build a summary judgment record — are anticipated and prepared for from the start.
Cases that cannot survive the defense arguments most likely to be raised are identified and declined before they cost the client years of litigation and exposure to fee-shifting.
Most litigators can tell you what a case is worth from jury verdict research and comparable settlements. What they cannot tell you — because they have not seen it — is how similar disputes actually behave in a mediation room. Which defendants move early and which stonewall. Which arguments shift an adjuster's reserve. Which plaintiff narratives produce genuine defendant concern and which produce calculated indifference.
Rob has participated in approximately 200 mediations across employment, civil rights, and government employee matters — roughly 50 of those as the neutral mediator. As the neutral, he sat in caucus with both sides, hearing the private case assessments that parties never share in open session. As counsel, he watched how skilled mediators move cases toward resolution and what derails the ones that should settle. As the party neutral in DOJ mediations, he developed an understanding of how the government evaluates the settlement value of cases it is defending.
That accumulated experience — not theory, but pattern recognition built across hundreds of actual disputes — shapes every recommendation about when to fight, when to negotiate, what to demand, and what to accept. It is not a separate service. It is embedded in how every case here is managed.
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