New York Brief Q&A: Cooley’s
Ian Shapiro

Ian Shapiro, partner and global chair of Cooley’s Litigation department, answered a Q&A with Mike Vilensky. The following column appeared in Bloomberg Law.

Shapiro told me why he believes fellow law firms should resist the Trump administration’s executive orders and—on a different note—where he gets soup dumplings.

Q: How much do you consider the specific judge or panel you’re in front of when prepping?
A: I tend not to pay as much attention to the specific judge or panel I’m in front of when prepping an argument or motion, at least not as much as I think many of my peers do. While I understand that judges bring their own sensibilities to every case, and those predispositions will affect the result, even in cases that are non-ideological, I think there is a limit to how much you can do to discern those predispositions or the impact of those predispositions in advance. I tend to focus far more on developing my arguments about the facts and the law.

Q: Is it better to be a bulldog in the courtroom or underestimated?
A: I think it’s far better to be underestimated than overbearing, but it is also important to be persistent and fearless.

Q: What was the last thing you believed beyond a reasonable doubt?
A: The last thing I believed beyond a reasonable doubt was the importance of the legal industry resisting the executive orders against law firms, to protect the independence of law firms and their willingness to continue to use the legal system to represent any client against the federal government.

Q: It’s the court lunch break at the Second Circuit and you’re famished. Where are you going for food?
A: I still love the soup dumplings at the original Joe’s Shanghai, 46 Bowery Street.

Q: What’s a case you lost but should have won?
A: I lost a case that was brought against the principals of an upscale, national family-owned restaurant group by their family members and minority shareholders. I thought the claims against them brought decades after the arrangements in dispute had been established should have been dismissed on statute of limitations and other equitable grounds. But, given the passage of time, the evidence of the origins of those arrangements was extremely limited, and ultimately, we were unable to persuade the factfinder to draw the inferences from that evidence that we were advocating, inferences that I was convinced reflected the understanding among the restaurant group’s founding generations, and were far more convincing than the alternatives.

Reproduced with permission. Copyright June 9, 2025 by Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc. (800-372-1033) http://www.bloombergindustry.com

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