The global law firm Jones Day announces the following office and practice leadership changes for the Firm, effective January 1, 2021:
- Kevyn Orr – Partner-in-Charge, United States
- Noel Francisco – Partner-in-Charge, Washington
- Traci L. Lovitt – Practice Leader, Issues & Appeals
- Alexis Gilroy, Heather O'Shea, Cristiana Spontoni – Practice Leaders, Health Care & Life Sciences
Kevyn Orr – Partner-in-Charge, United States
Known for his historic work as the Emergency Manager for the City of Detroit, Mr. Orr joined Jones Day as an of counsel in May 2001 from the Department of Justice, where he was the Director of the Executive Office for the United States Trustees, and became a partner in 2004. He went on to serve as the Administrative Partner of the Washington Office, the Chair of the Firm's Diversity Task Force, and the Firmwide Recruiting and Diversity Partner. After successfully leading the largest municipal restructuring in history in Detroit from 2013-2014, Mr. Orr returned to Jones Day as Partner-in Charge of the Firm's Washington Office.
In his new role, Mr. Orr will lead the seamless collaboration among lawyers in Jones Day's offices around the world as they address the most important legal issues the Firm's clients are facing in the United States. The Firm is heavily involved in the communities in which it practices, and Mr. Orr's experience in Detroit will facilitate further outreach to local, state, and national governments, as well as other affected stakeholders in the world in which we operate.
Noel Francisco – Partner-in-Charge, Washington
Mr. Francisco recently returned to the Firm after serving as the 47th Solicitor General of the United States. Mr. Francisco's service as Solicitor General built upon his prior tenure at the Firm from 2005-2017. During that time, he served as Practice Leader for the Government Regulation Practice, where he helped build out the Firm's government litigation capacity and grow practice areas of increasing importance to Firm clients, such as national security, import-export, communications, and election law regulations. During his prior tenure at the Firm, he also argued several times before the United States Supreme Court, including: McDonnell v. United States, where the Firm obtained a unanimous reversal of the federal bribery conviction of the governor of Virginia; NLRB v. Noel Canning, in which the Supreme Court, by a 9-0 vote, invalidated the president's recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board; and Zubik v. Burwell, where the Firm challenged federal insurance coverage regulations that violated Catholic organizations' religious beliefs.
As Solicitor General, Mr. Francisco argued some of the most important cases that the Supreme Court has heard in recent years on a wide array of issues, including Trump v. Hawaii, where he successfully defended the President's orders restricting travel from countries deemed to present security risks; Janus v. AFSCME, which upheld the First Amendment rights of public employees who decline to join a labor union; Kisor v. Wilkie, which adopted his argument that the so-called Auer deference doctrine should be significantly curtailed but retained in its core applications; Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania, which rejected an Administrative Procedure Act challenge to a federal regulation exempting religious employers from federal insurance coverage regulations; and Seila Law v. CFPB, which upheld the President's authority to remove the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He also spearheaded the government's general strategy, implemented in numerous cases, to seek emergency relief in the appellate courts and the Supreme Court when lower courts issued nationwide injunctions against important government programs.
Traci L. Lovitt – Practice Leader, Issues & Appeals
Based in New York, Ms. Lovitt has long been a key member of the Firm's Issues & Appeals Practice, one of the top appellate practices in the United States. She began her Jones Day career as the Firm's first Issues & Appeals lawyer in New York. She has led the motions and strategy teams in major client representations and is recognized by BTI Consulting as a "Client Service All Star." In 2004, Ms. Lovitt left Jones Day to join the Solicitor General's Office at the U.S. Department of Justice, where she argued before the Supreme Court. She has been appointed twice by Chief Justice Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court to, and currently serves on, the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Evidence, which recommends changes to the evidentiary rules used in federal courts. She also clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court.
In January 2011, Ms. Lovitt led the opening of a successful new Jones Day office in Boston and was its first Partner-in-Charge until July 2019, growing the office to approximately 40 lawyers.
Alexis Gilroy, Heather O'Shea, Cristiana Spontoni – Practice Leaders, Health Care & Life Sciences
Mses. Gilroy, O'Shea, and Spontoni join Ken Fields as Practice Leaders of Jones Day's Health Care & Life Sciences Practice, which advises clients across the entire health care and life sciences spectrum, from hospital systems and academic medical centers to provider organizations, health care investors, and emerging companies, as well as from leading and start-up pharma, biotech, medical device, and food and cosmetics companies to research institutions and venture and private equity funds.
Ms. Gilroy is a recognized leader in digital health, and her regulatory counseling and transactional work supports various innovative and transformational health care and life sciences offerings around the globe. Based in Washington, her client projects have ranged from providing U.S. federal and state telemedicine advice and coordinating cross-border telehealth projects for premier health system clients to structuring novel "all-virtual" clinical programs for emerging companies, life science enterprises, tech powerhouses, and global retail and pharmacy organizations.
She serves on the policy council of the American Telemedicine Association; assisted in drafting the Federation of State Medical Boards' policy on telemedicine; and supported U.S. federal regulators at the White House, HHS, and CMS early in the COVID emergency on policies supporting telehealth methods while Americans quarantined and health providers pivoted to alternative delivery methods. This year, she was named a Law360 MVP in Health Care and was on The National Law Journal's inaugural list of Healthcare Trailblazers.
Ms. O'Shea has been representing clients across the health care sector—from academic medical centers to pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers—in government investigations, False Claims Act litigation, and compliance matters since joining Jones Day in 1998. She has achieved successful outcomes on behalf of numerous Firm clients in False Claims Act investigations and litigation in federal and state courts throughout the country, as well as agency proceedings and investigations. For the last several years, Ms. O'Shea has been a part of the team defending a global life sciences company in a series of False Claims Act cases brought in federal and state courts.
Based in Chicago, she is a frequent speaker and author on government enforcement in health care, the False Claims Act, and various additional health care regulatory and fraud and abuse topics. Ms. O'Shea is a former Vice Chair for the American Health Lawyers' Fraud and Abuse Practice Group and has been regularly ranked and recognized by Chambers and Best Lawyers.
Based in Brussels, Ms. Spontoni has been an EU law practitioner focused on regulated industries, with particular emphasis on the health sector, for more than two decades. She has coordinated the EMEA life sciences regulatory work at Jones Day and also has been an active member of the Firm's European Tech initiative, spearheading the growth of its European Digital Health offering. Ms. Spontoni regularly advises a wide spectrum of players in the health sector, ranging from pharma and medical device companies, to major hospitals and Nobel Prize-winning research institutions, to cosmetic firms. She also assists many service providers, such as leading contract research organizations and investors active in the health space.
Her practice is global and she often acts as the one-stop shop coordinator for large multi-country assignments for our clients in the EMEA region and beyond. Ms. Spontoni splits her work between advisory and litigation, both before national courts and the Court of Justice of the European Union. A leader in her field, Ms. Spontoni has been recognized on a pan-European basis by Chambers, Legal 500, Best Lawyers, and International Who's Who. She has received several important awards, including "Life Sciences Lawyer of the Year" (Corporate LiveWire 2018 Global Awards) and the ILO Client Choice Award for EU-wide Healthcare & Life Sciences. She has been named a "Star" by LMG Life Sciences and Acritas.
