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 where DOJ decides whether to intervene in a 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's not a marketing claim about breadth of experience, it's a structural advantage that changes how cases are evaluated, prepared, and litigated from the first conversation. When assessing the strengths and weakness of your case, 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, is at 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 has represented more than 1,200 individuals in employment, discrimination, and civil rights matters. He has sat across from people who are terrified of what coming forward could cost them, and understands the stress, worry, and frustration they may be feeling.
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 to maintain a cause of action, 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 the outside observer, judge, or jury, 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 good lawyer more aggressive. It makes them a better counselor about when fighting is the right answer and when letting go is.
As an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Oregon, Rob represented the United States in complex civil litigation, on the violent crimes team, and as an EEO mediator for the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys. Knowing what the DOJ and federal investigators need to pursue a cause of action for fraudulent activity based on patterns that are significant enough to justify federal prosecution and affirmative resources changes how a qui tam case is built.
The disclosure statement is not just a formal filing. It is a vital presentation to DOJ, and it needs to be written for the audience that will read it — with an emphasis on the language that signals credibility, what evidence gaps make investigators cautious, and what case structure might make one matter worth pursuing versus one where the DOJ says no.
And while serving as a mediator for the DOJ, he's seen what the federal government might consider 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 fraudulent 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.
Rob has built those defenses himself. He knows which attacks succeed and which fail, and how defendants can frame nondiscriminatory rationales to try and confuse judges and juries.
That knowledge makes him a better prepared advocate for employees and whistleblowers. Cases that come into this practice are evaluated and developed from the beginning against the strongest arguments the defense will raise. It's not an afterthought — it's 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.
What happened to you is evaluated the way the DOJ and ultimately a jury will evaluate it — long before that day arrives.
The stated reason for termination or adverse action is tested against the possible nondiscriminatory justifications the defense will construct — not just the one given at the time.
Strategic counsel and value estimations are grounded in the facts of your specific case and potential jury pool — not simply projected from verdict databases.
The qui tam disclosure statement is drafted cleanly and persuasively — 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 response can never be predicted. It is never guaranteed. And any whistleblower's attorney who tries to sell you that "it's a sure thing" or "we can't lose" is not being honest with you. But understanding how the DOJ assigns its cases and approaches the valuation of your claims — as learned from inside the U.S. Attorney's Office — positions you for the best potential outcome given the information at hand.
Every scienter, materiality, causation, and credibility challenge the defense is likely to raise is addressed in the original filing — not countered reactively.
Defense discovery tactics — the deposition approaches, document requests, and strategies used to build a defensive case — are anticipated and prepared for from the start.
Cases that cannot survive the defense arguments most likely to be raised are identified and communicated before they cost employees and litigants years of time and anxiety.
Most litigators can tell you what a case may be worth from jury verdict research and comparable settlements. What they cannot tell you — because they have not seen it — is dispute behavior patterns from inside a mediation room.
Rob has participated as an advocate or neutral in approximately 300 mediations across employment, civil rights, and government employee matters. As the neutral, he has sat in caucus with both sides, watching how private case assessments evolve over time and in a way that can't be shared in an open session.
With advanced conflict resolution training from the U.S. National Advocacy Center as well as the Harvard Law School Program on Negotiations, that accumulated experience and training built across hundreds of actual disputes shapes every recommendation about when to fight, when to negotiate, what to demand, and what to compromise. Those are not disconnected considerations, but strategy embedded in how every case here is managed.
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