Caitlin J. Halligan, a former New York Solicitor General, heads the firm’s Appellate practice. She focuses primarily on appellate litigation in the federal and state courts, and complex and novel legal issues arising in trial court litigation. Her clients include a wide range of businesses and industries.
Ms. Halligan has served as counsel of record for a party or amicus curiae in more than 40 matters in the U.S. Supreme Court. She has argued four cases before the Supreme Court, including a recent international trade dispute and several constitutional law cases, as well as numerous cases before the federal appellate courts, the New York Court of Appeals, and New York State’s intermediate appellate courts. Ms. Halligan was a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and to Judge Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Ms. Halligan currently teaches a constitutional law seminar as an adjunct faculty member at Columbia Law School, and also served on the adjunct faculty at Georgetown. She is a member of two of the Governor’s Judicial Screening Committees and serves as Counsel to the Board of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. She is a Board Member of the Fund for Modern Courts, a member of the New York Law Journal’s Board of Editors, and a member of the New York State Bar Association and the New York City Bar Association, where she served on the State Bar’s Special Committee on Civil Rights. She has spoken at numerous public events and continuing legal education programs regarding appellate advocacy, U.S. Supreme Court matters, and legal issues arising in cyberspace.
From October 2001 until January 2007, Ms. Halligan served as the Solicitor General of New York State, where she supervised 45 appellate attorneys and the filing of hundreds of submissions each year in the federal and state appellate courts. As Solicitor General, she also provided strategic legal advice in major trial-level matters and coordinated positions on significant legal issues for the Office of the New York Attorney General. Prior to serving as Solicitor General, Ms. Halligan was First Deputy Solicitor General in the New York Attorney General’s Office; from 1999 to 2000, she was the first Chief of the New York Attorney General’s Internet Bureau, where she developed and coordinated statewide law enforcement and policy initiatives regarding online consumer fraud, privacy, online securities trading, and other Internet-related issues. She has also worked in private practice in New York City and Washington, DC, and prior to attending law school, served as a legislative aide on Capitol Hill.
Ms. Halligan is a cum laude graduate of Princeton University and a magna cum laude graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, where she was Managing Editor of the Georgetown Law Review.