Robert T. Smith’s practice includes white collar criminal matters, governmental enforcement actions, internal investigations, and complex civil and criminal appeals. He is as comfortable ascertaining and analyzing facts as he is developing creative legal arguments for his clients.
Mr. Smith has assisted corporate and individual clients in the financial services, health care and insurance industries in navigating the difficult and trying circumstances that often surround criminal and civil governmental enforcement actions and investigations. He has conducted internal investigations, advised clients on potential criminal exposure, assessed liability under the False Claims Act, managed responses to subpoenas, assisted in making presentations and disclosures to prosecutors about alleged client conduct, and negotiated with prosecutors and enforcement lawyers at various U.S. Attorney’s Offices and regulatory agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Mr. Smith also has substantial brief-writing and appellate experience. Drawing on his time as a federal appellate clerk, Mr. Smith has served as the principal author of dozens of appellate filings in federal and state courts throughout the country. Mr. Smith's appellate practice is not limited to criminal and enforcement matters. In fact, he is often enlisted at the appellate stage to draft and edit briefs covering a wide range of substantive areas, including criminal appeals, tax and bankruptcy matters, challenges to environmental regulations, patent disputes and even complex civil appeals. A generalist in some of these areas, Mr. Smith has a flair for drafting creative and concise arguments that resonate with appellate judges, who are likewise generalists. Just recently, for example, Mr. Smith served as the chief author of a success petition for a writ of certiorari, securing from the Supreme Court vacatur of an adverse judgment that had been entered against his clients in a tax case. As another example, his petition for a writ of certiorari in a bankruptcy case was identified by a leading Supreme Court website as its
Petition of the Day.
In addition, Mr. Smith has significant courtroom experience, and has appeared in federal and state courts throughout the country. Among his various cases, Mr. Smith successfully argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in obtaining authorization for his client to file a second challenge to a state court conviction through the actual innocence gateway of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. Mr. Smith also successfully argued before a New York state trial court in securing the dismissal of an antitrust action seeking more than $20 million in damages from his client. And he has likewise represented individual clients at federal bail hearings, civil forfeiture proceedings and criminal sentencing proceedings.
Prior to joining Katten, Mr. Smith was an associate at Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason, Anello & Bohrer, P.C., where he focused on white collar criminal matters, governmental investigations and complex civil cases. He also was an associate at Jones Day and a member of that firm’s appellate practice.
Mr. Smith clerked for Chief Judge John M. Walker Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and, prior to and during part of law school, worked as a legislative assistant and legislative correspondent for Representative Rush D. Holt of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Mr. Smith received his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center,
magna cum laude, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and was awarded the West Outstanding Scholastic Achievement Award for maintaining the highest grade point average in his section over the final year of law school. He received his B.A.,
cum laude, in political science from the University of Richmond.
Mr. Smith is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia, New York, the Supreme Court of the United States, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second, Fourth, Sixth, Ninth, District of Columbia and Federal Circuits, and the U.S. District Courts for the District of Columbia and the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.