Rising Star: Winston & Strawn's Thomas Kirsch

By Max Stendahl

Law360, New York (March 26, 2013, 3:02 PM ET) -- At age 39, Winston & Strawn LLP’s Tom Kirsch has already convinced jurors to toss criminal charges against a former medical device company's CEO accused of defrauding the government and against an Illinois power broker in the Gov. Rod Blagojevich scandal, again making him one of Law360’s top five young partners in the white collar bar.

Kirsch, 39, secured a spot on Law360’s Rising Stars, a list of notable attorneys younger than 40, for the third year in a row. He joined Winston & Strawn in 2008 after a seven-year stint as a federal prosecutor in the Northern District of Indiana, where he tried more than a dozen cases to a jury verdict, all of them resulting in convictions.

“It’s no secret that the [U.S.] Department of Justice is a fantastic training ground for young lawyers who want to be trial lawyers,” Kirsch said of his experience in the public sector.

As a partner in Winston & Strawn’s Chicago office, Kirsch has sat at the defense table during a host of headline-grabbing criminal cases.

In February and March 2012, Kirsch represented former Spectranetics Corp. CEO John Schulte on charges he took part in a scheme to illegally import unapproved medical devices and give them to physicians for use in patients. Although Schulte faced a maximum of 90 years in prison, Kirsch and other Winston & Strawn attorneys repeatedly turned down opportunities to plea bargain and instead took the case to trial.

The key government witnesses were doctors who had testified that they received the illegal devices. Kirsch set out to attack their credibility.

“In a criminal trial, you can’t call every government witness a liar,” he said. “But I always believed that if we could show the jury that the doctors were lying, then we would have a very good chance of winning the case.”

In the end, Kirsch did just that. A Colorado federal jury ruled that Schulte never intended to defraud the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Customs and acquitted him on 11 of the 12 counts. Schulte later received a sentence of just one year of unsupervised probation.

In 2011, Kirsch served as co-trial counsel for William Cellini, a prominent real estate investor and political insider charged with taking part in a conspiracy aimed at shaking down a Hollywood film producer to get a campaign contribution for Blagojevich. Cellini was the last defendant to stand trial as a result of Operation Board Games, the public corruption probe that led to Blagojevich's demise and sparked charges against members of his inner circle.

After a monthlong trial, Cellini was convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit extortion and one count of aiding and abetting the solicitation of a bribe. However, he was acquitted of the government’s two most serious charges: attempted extortion and conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. Cellini eventually received a one-year prison sentence.

Kirsch could find himself at another high-profile trial again soon. He represents Ohio businessman Michael Forlani, who was indicted along with former Cuyahoga County Commissioner James Dimora in the largest public corruption probe in the state’s history.

The Winston & Strawn star's other current clients include former BP CEO Anthony Hayward, who faces civil claims and investigations stemming from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and Magnetar Capital LLC, a hedge fund that played a key role in the collateralized debt obligation market before the housing collapse.

Kirsch says young attorneys looking to break into the ranks of white collar partners should gain experience wherever they can find it — in the government or at a law firm, no matter how large or small.

As a prosecutor who later entered private practice, Kirsch got the best of both worlds. Now, with three consecutive Rising Star awards and more than a dozen successful trials under his belt, he said he no longer has a problem getting respect from the elder statesmen of the white collar bar.

“That’s long since passed,” he said.

--Editing by Eydie Cubarrubia.