GUPTA WESSLER - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Assistant
- Legal Assistant
- Manager
- Office Manager
- Officer
Abbe Murphy is a legal assistant and officer manager at Gupta Wessler. Before joining the firm, she worked in public affairs and communications at a top ten government relations and communications firm in D.C. As an intern for the personal office of Barack and Michelle Obama, she worked alongside top communications staff in the execution of major speaking events such as the former president's endorsement of Joe Biden, his eulogy for late Representative John Lewis, and his address at the 2020 Democratic National Convention. Abbe graduated magna cum laude from American University with an interdisciplinary degree in Communications, Legal Institutions, Economics, and Government.
Abigail Roston is a legal assistant and office manager at the firm. Before joining Gupta Wessler, Abigail spent a year at the University of Oxford in England, where she received her MSc in Criminal Justice with merit. Abigail is a Truman Scholar and was awarded the Findlay Fellowship, Northwestern University's largest fellowship for graduate study abroad. She graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Northwestern with degrees in legal studies and history as well as a minor in data science. She received both individual and interdisciplinary honors for her senior thesis on Supreme Court law clerk tributes. At Northwestern, Abigail served as the President of Planned Parenthood Generation Action and as a Board Member for Northwestern's Prison Education Program. She also worked as a research partner to Professor Leslie Harris, investigating the history of crime in New Orleans. Abigail is from a small town in Montana outside of Glacier National Park.
Alisa Tiwari is an associate at Gupta Wessler LLP. She joined the firm as a Fellow in Appellate and Constitutional Litigation following her clerkships with Judge Michelle Friedland on the Ninth Circuit and Judge Vince Chhabria on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. At Yale Law School, she worked on affirmative litigation with the San Francisco City Attorney's Office, where she designed an APA lawsuit against the Trump Administration's rescission of civil-rights guidance documents; on pro bono Supreme Court and appellate litigation with Neal Katyal of Hogan Lovells; and on criminal law reform litigation at the ACLU's National Office. In addition, she published a Note in the Yale Law Journal detailing a way to hold police departments accountable for disproportionate racial effects. Before law school, she prepared policy analyses for Vanita Gupta, then-head of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, and served on the Division's team investigating the Baltimore Police Department. She also worked in Civil Rights Unit of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York to investigate civil rights violations in a large state prison.
Job Titles:
- Counsel
- Legal Assistant
- Counsel to
- Professor of Law
Chris Peterson, Of Counsel to Gupta Wessler, is the John J. Flynn Endowed Professor of Law at the University of Utah. A recognized national authority on consumer finance law, Chris works with the firm to develop ground-up cases and other special projects. From 2012 to 2016, he served as Special Advisor to Director Rich Cordray at the CFPB; as Senior Counsel for Enforcement Policy and Strategy at the CFPB; and at the Pentagon, where he focused on protecting military servicemembers from predatory lending. From 2018 to 2020 he was the Director of Financial Services for the Consumer Federation of America. And, in 2020 he was the Democratic Party's nominee for Governor of Utah, winning more votes than any Democratic candidate in Utah history. From 2009 to 2012, Chris served as his law school's Academic Dean. Chris has been an expert witness in consumer-protection litigation on behalf of the states of Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and the U.S. Department of Justice.
Chris Peterson, Of Counsel to Gupta Wessler LLP, is the John J. Flynn Endowed Professor of Law at the University of Utah's S.J. Quinney College of Law. Chris is a recognized national authority on the law of consumer finance and has been actively engaged in public service and consumer protection in a wide range of roles. He works with the firm to develop ground-up cases and lends his expertise on a variety of litigation projects. He has previously served as an expert witness in consumer-protection litigation on behalf of the states of Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and the U.S. Department of Justice.
Chris is a recognized national authority on the law of consumer finance and has been actively engaged in public service and consumer protection in a wide range of roles. He works with the firm to develop ground-up cases and lends his expertise on a variety of litigation projects. He has previously served as an expert witness in consumer-protection litigation on behalf of the states of Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and the U.S. Department of Justice.
From 2012 to 2016, Chris served as Special Advisor to Director Richard Cordray at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; as Senior Counsel for Enforcement Policy and Strategy at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; and as Special Advisor at the Pentagon, where he focused on protecting military servicemembers from predatory lending. From 2018 to 2020 he was the Director of Financial Services for the Consumer Federation of America. And, in 2020 he was the Democratic Party's nominee for Governor of Utah. Supported by a broad coalition of organized labor, civil rights, and public interest organizations, he won more votes than any Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate in Utah history. From 2009 to 2012, Chris served as his law school's Academic Dean.
Chris has frequently testified in congressional hearings and has presented his research to the FDIC, the Fed, and the White House in both Democratic and Republican administrations. His books include the casebook Consumer Law: Cases and Materials and Taming the Sharks: Towards a Cure for the High Cost Credit Market, which won the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers' outstanding book of the year prize. He is a consumer fellow of the American Bar Association's Consumer Financial Services Committee and a Regent of the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. Chris is a recipient of the National Association of Consumer Agency Administrators' Consumer Advocate of the Year award and the Pentagon's Secretary of Defense Award for Excellence-both bestowed in recognition of his efforts to protect military servicemembers from predatory lending.
Before joining the Utah law faculty in 2008, Chris taught for five years at the University of Florida's College of Law. He also worked as a consumer rights attorney for U.S. Public Interest Research Group in Washington, D.C., and clerked for Judge Wade Brorby on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Job Titles:
- Fellow at Public Citizen
- Founding Principal
- Lead Counsel
- Member of the American Law Institute and the Administrative Conference of the United States
- Principal of Gupta Wessler and a Lecturer at Harvard Law School
Deepak Gupta is the founding principal of Gupta Wessler LLP, where his practice focuses on Supreme Court, appellate, and complex litigation on behalf of plaintiffs and public-interest clients. He is also a Lecturer at Harvard Law School, where he teaches the Harvard Supreme Court Litigation Clinic and seminars on forced arbitration, the civil justice system, and public interest entrepreneurship.
Deepak is a member of the American Law Institute and the Administrative Conference of the United States. He sits on the boards of the National Consumer Law Center, the Alliance for Justice, the Open Markets Institute, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the People's Parity Project, the Civil Justice Research Initiative at UC Berkeley, the Biden Institute, and the Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies. He is a judge of the American Constitution Society's Annual Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Regulatory and Administrative Law.
Deepak Gupta is the founding principal of Gupta Wessler and a lecturer at Harvard Law School, where he teaches the Harvard Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. He regularly appears before the U.S. Supreme Court and has briefed and argued a wide range of cutting-edge issues in state and federal courts nationwide, many of them focused on ensuring access to justice for people seeking corporate and governmental accountability. In 2021, Deepak argued and prevailed in Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District, in which the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that people injured by mass-market products can get access to justice where their injury occurred. In 2019, Deepak was invited by the U.S. Supreme Court to argue in support of a judgment left undefended by the Solicitor General-the first Asian-American ever to receive such an appointment. Before founding the firm, Deepak was the first appellate lawyer hired at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the leadership of Elizabeth Warren, and he previously worked for seven years as an attorney at Public Citizen Litigation Group, where he founded and directed the Consumer Justice Project.
Eric Citron is an accomplished appellate litigator, having briefed and argued high-stakes cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and throughout the federal and state courts of appeals. His practice focuses on representing plaintiffs in complex antitrust, competition, and consumer protection matters, as well as a broad range of other issues, including intellectual property and constitutional law.
Eric clerked for Justices Elena Kagan and Sandra Day O'Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge David Tatel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and Judge James Robertson on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He joined Gupta Wessler as Of Counsel in 2023 after a decade as a partner at the former Goldstein & Russell, the nation's first Supreme Court litigation boutique. Eric has also taught for many years in Harvard Law School's Supreme Court Litigation Clinic.
Eric also previously served as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and was a senior associate in the Supreme Court & Appellate Practice at WilmerHale. He received his B.A., summa cum laude, in Social Studies from Harvard College and his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he served as Projects Editor of the Yale Law Review.
Greg Beck - Chief Legal Officer
Greg Beck is a senior counsel at Gupta Wessler, where he focuses on representing plaintiffs and public-interest clients in Supreme Court, appellate, and constitutional litigation. He also teaches appellate advocacy as an adjunct law professor. Greg is a seasoned advocate who has briefed and argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court; the Second, Third, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and D.C. Circuits; and district courts around the country. Greg has been quoted widely in media, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, U.S. News and World Report, the National Law Journal, Wired Magazine, and National Public Radio's All Things Considered and On the Media. He has spoken at events hosted by the American Bar Association; the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers; the District of Columbia, Florida, Louisiana, and New York City bars; the National Association of Attorneys General; and others.
Greg Beck is Senior Counsel at Gupta Wessler, where he focuses on representing plaintiffs and public-interest clients in Supreme Court, appellate, and constitutional litigation. He has also taught appellate advocacy as an adjunct law professor.
Greg is a seasoned advocate who has briefed and argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court; the Second, Third, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and D.C. Circuits; and district courts around the country. Greg has been quoted widely in media, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, U.S. News and World Repor t, the National Law Journal, Wired Magazine, and National Public Radio's All Things Considered and On the Medi a. He has spoken at events hosted by the American Bar Association; the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers; the District of Columbia, Florida, Louisiana, and New York City bars; the National Association of Attorneys General; and others.
He has experience with litigation involving the First and Fourth Amendments, copyright and trademark, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Truth in Lending Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, administrative law, federal jurisdiction, attorneys' fees, and wide a range of other legal issues. He has particular expertise on the commercial speech doctrine, intellectual property, and issues at the intersection of law and technology. Greg's understanding of technology issues is enhanced by his experience in the field. He previously worked as a computer programmer at Microsoft, paid his way through law school doing contract programming work, and still enjoys coding in his spare time.
Greg was previously a partner with the firm, which was initially known as Gupta Beck PLLC. Before entering private practice, Greg spent seven years as a litigator at Public Citizen Litigation Group. He served as a law clerk to Judge Michael R. Murphy of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and interned for U.S. District Judge Michael McCuskey. He graduated summa cum laude from Northwestern University and was first in his law school class at the University of Illinois, where he was Articles Editor of the Law Review and received the Outstanding Clinical Student Award. During law school, he worked at a legal aid clinic, defending consumers in debt collection and landlord-tenant disputes, and for a health care advocacy group, where he brought attention to the practice of jailing consumers for failing to pay hospital bills-a practice that contributed to the loss of tax-exempt status for some Illinois hospitals.
Jennifer Bennett is a principal of Gupta Wessler, where she heads the San Francisco office. She has argued two U.S. Supreme Court cases on the Federal Arbitration Act's exemption for transportation workers (New Prime v. Oliveira and Southwest v. Saxon), both of which she won unanimously, and recently argued a third (Bissonnette v. LePage Bakeries). Her practice covers a wide range of issues including civil rights, consumer protection, constitutional law, workers' rights, and government transparency. Jennifer's Supreme Court and appellate advocacy has been recognized with several national awards, including the Pound Civil Justice Institute's Appellate Advocacy Award (twice), the American Association for Justice's F. Scott Baldwin Award, Public Justice's Change Maker Award, and the National Consumer Law Center's Rising Star Award. A graduate of Yale Law School, she clerked for Judge Marsha Berzon of the Ninth Circuit, Judge Jesse Furman of the Southern District of New York, and Judge Vince Chhabria of the Northern District of California.
Jennifer Bennett is a principal at Gupta Wessler LLP, where she heads the firm's San Francisco office and focuses on cutting-edge public interest and plaintiffs'-side appellate litigation. Her practice covers a wide range of issues including civil rights, consumer protection, constitutional law, workers' rights, and government transparency.
Jennifer regularly litigates before the U.S. Supreme Court, including recently arguing and winning two landmark victories on behalf of workers challenging forced arbitration in Saxon v. Southwest (2022) and New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira (2019). Her victory in New Prime was the first case in over a decade in which the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the party challenging arbitration.
In addition to her U.S. Supreme Court litigation, Jennifer regularly handles appeals in both state and federal court on behalf of workers or consumers fighting forced arbitration and other barriers to access to justice. She frequently represents journalists, media organizations, and nonprofits challenging government secrecy, including winning a groundbreaking case in the Ninth Circuit vindicating the public's right to access court records. And she regularly represents plaintiffs in civil rights cases involving difficult or novel legal issues.
Jennifer's Supreme Court and appellate advocacy has been recognized with several national awards, including the Pound Civil Justice Institute's Appellate Advocacy Award (two years in row), the American Association for Justice's F. Scott Baldwin Award, Public Justice's Change Maker Award, and the National Consumer Law Center's Rising Star Award.
Jennifer clerked for the Honorable Marsha Berzon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the Honorable Jesse Furman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and the Honorable Vince Chhabria of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, and earned her J.D. from Yale Law School and her B.A. from Yale University. Before joining Gupta Wessler, she was an attorney at Public Justice in Oakland, California, where she also focused on cutting-edge public interest appellate litigation.
Jennifer routinely speaks to audiences across the country, as well as the media, on forced arbitration, government transparency, qualified immunity, and other issues related to public interest law or class actions. Her cases have been featured in national media outlets, including the Washington Post and the New York Times.
Jessie Garland is an associate at Gupta Wessler. She joined the firm as a litigation fellow in the San Francisco office following judicial clerkships with Judge David Barron of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and Judge Paul Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. She has also accepted a clerkship with Justice Elena Kagan on the U.S. Supreme Court. Jessie graduated from Yale Law School and was a Henry Fellow at Cambridge University, where she received an MPhil in Criminology. As a law student, Jessie worked on ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims with the Ethics Bureau, litigated prisoner and immigrant cases in the Second Circuit with the Appellate Litigation Project, and interned for the Office of the Appellate Defender in New York.
Jon Taylor is a principal of Gupta Wessler, where he focuses on representing plaintiffs in Supreme Court, appellate, and complex litigation. A cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, Jon joined the firm in September 2012 following his clerkship with the Judge Ronald Lee Gilman of the Sixth Circuit. Jon has presented oral argument before the First, Eighth, Ninth, Eleventh, and D.C. Circuits, as well as the Supreme Court of Alaska and the District Court for the District of Columbia, and has been a principal author of dozens of briefs filed at all levels of the state and federal judiciaries. His work has spanned a wide range of topics, including the First Amendment, Second Amendment, Article III standing, class certification, civil rights, administrative law, and a broad array of issues involving consumers' and workers' rights.
Jonathan E. Taylor is a principal at Gupta Wessler, where he represents plaintiffs and public-interest clients in Supreme Court, appellate, and constitutional litigation.
Jon has been the lead author of briefs filed in a number of important appeals concerning workers' and consumers' rights, including Alaska Trustee v. Ambridge (Supreme Court of Alaska), in which he successfully obtained a ruling that the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act covers foreclosures, and Mais v. Gulf Coast Collection Bureau (Eleventh Circuit), concerning the meaning of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act's "prior express consent" requirement. He presented oral argument in both cases. He also presented argument before the Ninth Circuit in Koby v. ARS National Services, in which he argued a novel question of class-action jurisdiction, successfully objecting to a nationwide class-action settlement that sought to extinguish millions of claims in exchange for nothing. Ambridge Brief | Alaska Supreme Court Opinion in Ambridge | Oral Argument Video in Ambridge | Mais Brief | Mais Answer to Interlocutory Appeal Petition | Objector's Brief in Koby | Objector's Reply Brief in Koby | Ninth Circuit Opinion in Koby | Oral Argument Video in Koby
Linnet Davis-Stermitz is an associate at Gupta Wessler. She joined Gupta Wessler as the firm's 2020-2021 Fellow in Appellate and Constitutional Litigation, following judicial clerkships with Judge Michelle Friedland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Judge Alison Nathan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. While at the firm, Linnet has represented clients before the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous federal and state appellate courts on a wide range of legal issues including consumer class actions, forced arbitration, fair housing, administrative law, environmental law, personal jurisdiction, preemption, Section 230 immunity, employee-benefits law, and standing. Linnet recently argued and won a forced-arbitration appeal before the California Court of Appeal, persuading the court that a credit union could not form an arbitration agreement with its customers simply by posting a clause on its online banking portal.
Mahek Ahmad is a legal assistant and office manager at the firm. Before joining Gupta Wessler, Mahek graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Georgetown University, with degrees in Government, Arabic, and Women & Gender Studies, and received the International Relations Award for most outstanding student in the Department of Government's international relations program. For her undergraduate senior thesis, Mahek wrote about a Title VII case pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit en banc, Chambers v. District of Columbia, and participated in a seminar on Supreme Court litigation with Lisa Blatt and Paul Clement. Among other things, Mahek has served as the Executive Director for the National Collegiate Security Conference and as the Head of Delegates for Georgetown's Model UN. She has assisted with antitrust technology litigation as an intern at Freedman Consulting and interned in the Office of Global Womens' Issues at the U.S. Department of State. Mahek is a first-generation college-graduate and grew up in Los Angeles, CA.
Matt Wessler is a principal at Gupta Wessler LLP, where he focuses on public interest and plaintiffs'-side appellate and complex litigation.
Matt handles high-profile cases at all levels of both state and federal court and regularly appears before the U.S. Supreme Court. Recently, in Intel Corp. v. Sulyma, 140 S. Ct. 768 (2020), he argued and won a rare 9-0 victory for a class of workers seeking to hold companies accountable under ERISA for taking imprudent risks with retirement savings. The Wall Street Journal called the decision a "pretty significant" victory for "people's ability to bring lawsuits over fiduciary breaches" under ERISA.
In the federal appellate courts, Matt's success in representing plaintiffs is virtually without peer nationally. In recent years, he has argued and won significant class-action, workers-rights, and consumer-protection appeals in multiple federal courts of appeal on issues including arbitration, payday lending, antitrust, civil procedure, class-action practice, and preemption. See, e.g., Gibbs v. Haynes Inv. LLC, 967 F.3d 332 (4th Cir. 2020); Gibbs v. Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC, 966 F.3d 286 (4th Cir. 2020); Williams v. Medley Opportunity Fund II, LP, 965 F.3d 229 (3d Cir. 2020); In re MDL Genentech Herceptin Marketing & Sale Practice Litig., 960 F.3d 1210 (10th Cir. 2020); Molock v. Whole Foods Group, Inc., 952 F.3d 293 (D.C. Cir. 2020); In re Lantus Direct Purchaser Antitrust Litig., 950 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2020). Matt is frequently sought out by plaintiffs' firms facing make-or-break appeals and is currently lead appellate counsel in a number of closely watched cases around the country. For his "excellence in appellate advocacy in America," Matt was awarded the 2020 Pound Civil Justice Institute Appellate Advocacy Award.
In addition to his appellate work, Matt frequently co-counsels with trial firms in complex, ground-up litigation and has been appointed co-lead counsel in class actions that have successfully delivered tens of millions of dollars to consumers.
Matt also actively represents and counsels non-profit organizations. He is outside counsel to the American Association for Justice and has filed briefs on their behalf in the Supreme Court and federal circuits across a range of issues, most recently in Henry Schein, Inc. v. Archer and White Sales, Inc. (arbitration), Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. v. Albrecht (preemption), Retirement Plan Comm. of IBM v. Jander (ERISA), and Hardeman v. Monsanto (preemption). He also represents labor unions, and recently argued and won a landmark victory on behalf of SEIU and AFT in a challenge to Wisconsin's brazen lame-duck legislation, meant to hamstring the incoming Governor and Attorney General.
Before joining the firm, Matt spent six years as a staff attorney at Public Justice, P.C. in Washington, DC, where he spearheaded the firm's focus on Supreme Court litigation and earned national attention for taking the lead in cases involving ERISA, preemption, arbitration, and health care. Matt previously practiced at the Washington law firm of Williams & Connolly LLP and was a member of Obama for America's sensitive litigation team, where he handled important election litigation on behalf of the presidential campaign. He clerked for the Honorable Richard L. Nygaard of the U.S Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and the Honorable William E. Smith of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island. Matt is a graduate of Cornell Law School and Williams College.
Matt routinely speaks in front of audiences across the country, and to the media, on issues affecting plaintiffs' litigation and public interest law. His cases have been profiled in major media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Reuters, Bloomberg News, and Mother Jones. He splits his time between Cambridge, Massachusetts and Washington, DC and, when he can, the mountains.
Matt Wessler is a principal of Gupta Wessler. He handles high-profile cases at all levels of both state and federal court and has argued multiple cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including three ERISA cases. Outside of the Supreme Court, Matt's practice involves a wide range of areas including class actions, health care, employee benefits, consumer protection, preemption, arbitration, and banking. He has been named a Super Lawyer in appellate litigation and has been profiled by the National Law Journal for his appellate work on behalf of plaintiffs. In addition to his appellate work, Matt frequently co-counsels with trial firms in complex, ground-up litigation.
Mez Belo-Osagie joined the firm as a fellow in the summer of 2023. Among other things, Mez has previously worked on criminal-justice impact litigation at Civil Rights Corps, the MacArthur Justice Center's Supreme Court and Appellate Program, and the Committee for Public Counsel Services in Massachusetts. Mez earned her J.D. from Harvard Law School and her bachelor's degree cum laude in political science and African studies from Yale and is currently pursuing a Ph.D in political science at Stanford as a Knight-Hennessy Scholar. In law school, Mez was the Supreme Court Co-Chair of the Harvard Law Review, represented indigent defendants as a student-attorney, and won the Ames Moot Court Competition.
Robert D. Friedman is an associate at Gupta Wessler. He focuses on litigating under federal and state anti-discrimination and consumer protection statutes in cases across the country and also has extensive experience representing plaintiffs in cases against government actors. Before joining the firm, Rob was a Senior Counsel at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, a public interest litigation organization housed at Georgetown University Law Center, and the Relman Civil Rights Fellow at Relman Colfax PLLC.
Rob has worked on a range of groundbreaking lawsuits across numerous issue areas. He has served as counsel in multiple class actions aimed at reforming the criminal legal system and ending the criminalization of poverty; represented non-citizens and their families in cases to obtain benefits, citizenship, and legal status; and served as counsel to community activists seeking to enhance government transparency and to vindicate their rights after being threatened with retaliatory prosecutions. In addition to his work on behalf of plaintiffs, Rob has successfully represented criminal defendants charged under a first-of-its-kind statute criminalizing First Amendment activity in courthouses. Rob's work has involved representing clients at all levels of litigation, from administrative proceedings to the United States Supreme Court. He has presented oral argument in the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, the Utah Supreme Court, and various trial courts.
Rob served as a law clerk to Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. He received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he served as a Comments Editor on the Law Review and finished first in his class.
Robert Friedman is an associate at Gupta Wessler. He focuses on litigating under federal and state anti-discrimination and consumer protection statutes in cases across the country. He also has extensive experience representing plaintiffs in cases against government actors. Before joining the firm, Rob was a Senior Counsel at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, a public interest litigation organization housed at Georgetown University Law Center, and the Relman Civil Rights Fellow at Relman Colfax PLLC. He served as a law clerk to Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Steffi Ostrowski rejoined the firm in fall of 2023 as a fellow after completing clerkships with Judge Michelle Friedland on the Ninth Circuit and Judge Vince Chhabria on the Northern District of California. Steffi previously worked with Gupta Wessler as a summer associate in 2020 and spent her previous summer working on consumer-protection cases at the New Economy Project in New York and the Consumer Financial Protection Unit of the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office. In law school, she was a student in the Mortgage Foreclosure Clinic, an editor of the Yale Law Journal, and co-president of the Law and Political Economy Student Group. Before law school, Steffi worked at the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center. She was previously a software engineer at Facebook, where she worked on projects to promote women's safety and built software to detect impersonation.
Thomas Scott-Railton is an associate at Gupta Wessler LLP, where he focuses on complex public interest and plaintiffs'-side appellate litigation. He joined the firm following clerkships with Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the U.S. Supreme Court, then-Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and Judge Alison Nathan, then on the Southern District of New York. Thomas was previously a fellow with the Impact Litigation Practice of The Bronx Defenders, where he litigated cases involving the rights of detained persons, police misconduct, and access to courts, as well as several successful appeals in individual immigration cases. Thomas has a longstanding dedication to public interest and civil rights litigation. As a student at Yale Law School, Thomas was a member of the Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic, where he worked on cases that successfully challenged racial profiling during ICE raids, protected humanitarian aid workers from criminal prosecution, and helped noncitizens who were victims of crimes to obtain work permits. As an intern with the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, he was involved in a range of cases including litigation challenging policy changes by the Trump administration. And as an intern with The Door, Thomas represented young people in immigration proceedings and family court.