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500Lawdragon Q & A with:Brian PastuszenskibY John rYanCompanies facing complex securities litigationand SEC enforcement actions would be hardpressed to find better legal counsel than BrianPastuszenski, one of the most trusted and undisputedleaders in his field as identified by our reporting forthe Lawdragon 500. The Boston-based Goodwin Procterpartner was drawn to his practice area by the intellectualdemands and high stakes of the cases; it’s safe tosay he has built a satisfying practice.In recent years, Pastuszenski has defended a largenumber of securities litigation matters for CountrywideFinancial (now part of Bank of America) for claimsarising from the financial crisis. He has won dismissalsof putative class actions and other investor suits injurisdictions around the country, limiting the extent towhich investors of mortgage-back securities canrecoup losses through litigation. (Pastuszenski said hecould not comment on pending cases.)LAWDRAGon: How did you come to focus on your particulartype of practice? What about it has kept youpassionate over the course of your career?BRIAN PASTUSZENSKI: I was attracted to securitiesand shareholder litigation defense by the complexity ofthe legal concepts and the high stakes these matterstypically involve. In my experience, securities litigationis among the most intellectually demanding areasof the law. These cases challenge a lawyer to use hisor her full set of intellectual skills and use them in creativeways as financial instruments (such as CDOsquared securities and other asset-backed securities)become more complex.As for the high stakes, it is not so much the verylarge dollar amounts these cases involve that keep meenergized, but the importance of these matters forsenior management, senior in-house legal counsel, andboards of directors (or, in the investment-fund space,boards of trustees). These matters are often headlinegrabbing,and the events that spawn these matters cancause a public company’s market cap to drop precipitouslywhen announced. It is a significant – and personallysatisfying – responsibility to advise senior officialsabout how to defend and resolve these cases.That advice requires me not simply to identify legalissues and formulate the most effective litigationdefenses, but also suggest thoughtful, sound, andpractical recommendations that will enable the clientto assess the risks and benefits of different possiblepaths and help the client achieve its business goals.The same need for sound judgment exists when advisinga client about how best to prepare for potentialfuture litigation or appropriately sizing an internalinvestigation that may need to be conducted into possiblemisconduct. Although it is always possible toread every internal email and interview every potentialwitness no matter how peripheral when undertaking aninternal investigation, sound judgment may suggestthat a reasonable and appropriate inquiry will involve amore focused approach.LD: Can you share a key lesson you try to instill inyounger litigators who look to you for guidance?BP: I have a handful of suggestions for younger litigators.First, all lawyers – not just securities litigators –are in the service business. Our clients are entitled toutmost responsiveness from us, which often may interferewith our personal lives. Clients, however, cannotcontrol when problems will occur or when the need forour legal advice and our sound recommendations willarise. Younger lawyers especially must hardwire thisresponsiveness – no workday should end without eachclient phone call being returned and each e-mail beingresponded to, and those calls should be returned andemails responded to as promptly as possible consistentwith delivering thoughtful, helpful advice. Clientswant to read today’s news today, not tomorrow. This isa simple truth, but a very important one.A second suggestion is not to forget that we ultimatelyare advisors, not just lawyers. What separatesa good lawyer from a good litigator is sound judgment.Identifying a long list of legal issues (or worse a longlist of reasons why the client may not be able toaccomplish what it wants to accomplish) does a clientno good. We lawyers must remember that our clientslive in the business world - not in the ivory tower of thelaw school class room. Too many lawyers forget that.Our job is not only to identify problems but also to recommendpaths around those problems that our clientscan then assess as a business matter, taking intoaccount the legal risks and potential costs of eachpath that we have identified.At the end of the day, the choice of which path totake is our clients to make, not ours, but they canintelligently make that choice only if we have done ourjob of identifying the practical risks and costs andhave made our best recommendation given the mix ofconsiderations.See the full Q&A at www.lawdragon.com/lawyer-limelights/brian-pastuszenski.L A W D R A G O N 148 I s s u e 13Photo by: Ken Richardson