The attorney is Keila Ravelo, who worked at the big white shoe law firm Wilkie Farr in New York. She represented MasterCard in the massive litigation over credit card interchange fees. Ravelo is friends with Gary Friedman, one of the attorneys who represented retailers suing MasterCard (and Visa and Amex). Friedman leaked confidential information about his retailer clients to Ravelo, which might jeopardize a proposed $5.7 billion settlement.
http://blogs.reuters.com/alison-frankel/2015/06/12/new-filings-reveal-outline-of-improper-disclosures-in-amex-mastercard-cases/
It’s a terrible breach of ethics, which contrary to what you hear about lawyers, doesn’t usually happen with the lawyers who are involved in high profile cases like this. I wouldn’t expect that to be interesting to you. Trust me, it gets better.
The leak was discovered because in December 2014 Ravelo was arrested and charged with defrauding clients out of $5 million by creating a fictitious legal services company that actually provided no services.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-24/ex-willkie-partner-accused-of-fleecing-2-firms-business-of-law
Ravelo’s co-defendant in that case is her husband, Melvin Feliz, who is reputed to be a drug dealer in New Jersey. Ravelo met him when she represented him pro bono in a civil rights lawsuit against New York City Police, the DEA, etc. back in the early 1990s when she was fresh out of law school. Apparently, Ravelo and Feliz fell in love while she worked on his case, and they’ve been married ever since.
https://casetext.com/case/felix-v-new-york-city-police-dept
The average compensation for a Wilkie Farr partner is something like $2 million annually, and who knows how much a New Jersey drug dealer makes. Still, Ravelo and Feliz needed more to fund their lavish lifestyle:
http://abovethelaw.com/2014/12/partner-allegedly-steals-millions-from-biglaw-firms-to-lead-luxurious-lifestyle/
You’re probably saying ok this is mildly interesting but I’m still not seeing why I should care. Trust me, it gets better.
Keila Ravelo is African-American, and she’s been playing the diversity racket. She worked at Wilkie Farr from 2010 until November 2014 because she was about to be arrested. She worked at Hunton & Williams, another prominent firm, from 2005 to 2010. She worked Clifford Chance before that. And she started off at Sidley & Austin. (There might have been other firms in there, but this was all I can find in some quick searches.)
Now, you’ll have to take this on faith … but trust me that truly smart, capable female African-American attorneys don’t move around this much. Attorneys like that are so rare and valuable because every firm knows it has to play the diversity racket. If any law firm is fortunate enough to identify one, the law firm never lets them go. But there are not enough truly smart, capable female African-American attorneys to go around. So, law firms are constantly reaching for them, hiring new female African-American attorneys, hoping that they will work out, then watching them leave after a few years when the firm realizes they are not worth the price, and some new law firm hopes it will work out for them. It’s sort of like how baseball teams constantly give chances to left-handed relievers who have been mediocre over and over for different teams. That is exactly what has happened with Ravelo over the years. The pattern is unmistakable.
So what though? Another product of affirmative action – the now-defunct Upsala College to Columbia University Law School to Wilkie Farr, Hunton & Williams, Clifford Chance, etc. Still, it gets better.
Remember how I mentioned that Ravelo started off at Sidley & Austin? You’ll recall that is the same firm where Michelle Obama worked out of law school. To be fair, she worked in the firm’s Chicago office, and Ravelo worked in the New York office. And they were a few years apart in seniority- – Michelle Obama graduated law school in 1988 and Ravello graduated in 1991. But it’s not inconceivable that they knew each other. Ravelo almost certainly did an internship at Sidley & Austin in the Summer of 1990 when Michelle Obama still worked for the firm. (That’s the practice with big law firms like Sidley & Austin. You intern for them in the summer before your third and final year of law school and then join the firm as an associate after graduation.) And big firms like Sidley & Austin often fly interns around to other offices to meet people. But even if they didn’t meet back then, they’ve met since. Check out the picture here:
http://www.womenworthwatching.com/keila-ravelo/
Small world.
