Lance Harrington

Lance Harrington chairs the firm's Litigation group and serves as Deputy Managing Partner. He tries commercial cases. His practice centers on bet-the-company commercial disputes, securities litigation, and crisis response — the matters that arrive on a Friday afternoon with a regulatory subpoena or a board resolution attached. He has tried cases to verdict in the Connecticut Superior Court, the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, and the Southern District of New York, and has argued appeals in the Connecticut Appellate Court and the Second Circuit. Harrington graduated from Amherst College in 1999 and earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2002, where he served as an editor of the *Harvard Law Review*. He clerked for the Hon. Guido Calabresi on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 2002 to 2003. Before joining Oak, Elm & Birch in 2008, he spent five years as a litigation associate at a New York firm, where he worked on securities class-action defense and internal investigations for financial-services clients. The pivot back to Hartford was deliberate: he wanted first-chair trial work in his thirties, not appellate-brief work in his forties, and he was candid with the New York partnership about why he was leaving. At the firm, Harrington has built out a Litigation group of twelve attorneys and a dedicated litigation-support staff. He takes the first chair at trial himself in most of his group's bet-the-company matters and has a reputation among opposing counsel for pre-trial motion practice that either ends the case early or sets up trial on narrow, winnable ground. He has been named to Chambers USA's Connecticut Litigation list every year since 2016 and was recognized by *Connecticut Super Lawyers* as a "Top 50 Connecticut Lawyer" in 2023 and 2024. He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. As Deputy Managing Partner, Harrington works closely with Managing Partner Steven Stone on firm operations and chairs the firm's Compensation Committee. Within the Litigation group he runs a Monday-morning case review with the full group that has acquired a reputation among the firm's associates as both rigorous and, in the words of one former associate, "the best substantive training Hartford offers." ## Representative Matters - Lead trial counsel for a Hartford-based specialty insurer in a $42M breach-of-fiduciary-duty action in the Superior Court for the Judicial District of Hartford; obtained directed verdict after plaintiff's case-in-chief, September 2023. - Defended the former CFO of a publicly-traded Connecticut manufacturer in an SEC enforcement inquiry and parallel securities class action in the D. Conn. before the Hon. Michael P. Shea; resolved with no individual liability, 2021–2022. - Crisis counsel to the board of a Connecticut-chartered bank during a 2022 federal regulatory examination, coordinating with outside compliance counsel and forensic accountants. - Successfully argued appeal before the Second Circuit reversing denial of summary judgment in a $28M commercial-contract dispute, 2020. - Represented a Connecticut-based reinsurer in a contested arbitration before the American Arbitration Association International Centre concerning loss-portfolio-transfer disputes, 2019. ## Publications - "The First Forty-Eight Hours: Preserving Privilege When Crisis Counsel Arrives," *Connecticut Bar Journal*, Vol. 94 (2020). - Contributing author, *Federal Civil Trial Practice in the Second Circuit* (CBA-CLE Publications, 2019) — chapter on cross-examination of expert witnesses. - "After the Subpoena: Managing Parallel Proceedings in Securities Matters," *Litigation* (ABA Section of Litigation journal), Summer 2022. ## Board Service Harrington serves on the board of Hartford Youth Scholars and is a past chair of the Connecticut Chapter of the Federal Bar Association's Young Lawyers Committee. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the American College of Trial Lawyers, Connecticut Chapter, and serves on the board of advisors of the Oliver Ellsworth Inn of Court. ## Speaking & CLE - Faculty, annual Harvard Law School trial advocacy program, visiting lecturer 2019–present. - Panelist, "Bet-the-Company Litigation: What the First Meeting Should Cover," American College of Trial Lawyers annual meeting, 2023. - Recurring presenter, CBA Litigation Section annual meeting, 2017–present. Harrington is admitted in Connecticut, New York, and the District of Columbia. Within the firm he oversees the Litigation group's summer associate recruitment and has been, since 2014, the principal on-site interviewer for every associate candidate the firm has made a litigation offer to — a stretch that includes the current L&E and Corporate group's lateral hires, because for a stretch in the 2010s he was the only partner willing to do back-to-back day-long interview schedules without complaint. He lives in Avon with his wife and three children.