Clerkship, The Honorable Aubrey Robinson Jr., Chief Judge, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, 1989

Practice
Patrick D. Robbins is the Deputy Practice Group Leader of Shearman & Sterling’s Litigation Group. He is based in our San Francisco Office. Mr. Robbins’ practice focuses on corporate criminal and enforcement matters, as well as civil securities and antitrust litigation. He represents companies as well as individual officers, directors and employees, involved in internal and regulatory investigations, and criminal and civil litigation, relating to foreign corrupt practices, antitrust, accounting and securities fraud, insider trading, trade secret, and health care violations, and obstruction of justice. The publication Legal 500 lists Mr. Robbins as “Recommended” in White Collar Criminal Defense for his “intelligence, common sense, integrity, diligence and wisdom.”

Before becoming a partner at the firm, Mr. Robbins was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of California (San Francisco) for ten years, prosecuting a variety of corporate fraud cases (involving securities, commodities, mail and wire fraud, insider trading, money laundering, theft of trade secrets and obstruction), as well as organized crime, narcotics, firearms, and bank robbery cases. He represented the United States in numerous federal jury trials and appellate arguments before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. From 2000 to 2001, Mr. Robbins served as Pacific Regional Coordinator for DOJ’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, and as Deputy Chief of the Narcotics Section. From 2002 to 2004, he was Chief of the Office’s Securities Fraud Section and led the Department of Justice’s investigation into criminal manipulation of the California electricity markets by Enron and others during the State’s energy crisis.

Mr. Robbins first joined Shearman & Sterling in 1988 as a summer associate, and again as an associate in 1990 after a federal clerkship. Throughout his tenure with the firm, Mr. Robbins has defended companies and individuals in civil securities class actions, antitrust and tender offer litigation in state and federal courts. He has also successfully litigated and tried commercial disputes in international and domestic arbitrations.

Mr. Robbins is a member of the firm’s Global Pro Bono Committee.

• Executives of multinational technology corporations in Department of Justice Antitrust Division grand jury investigations and prosecutions relating to alleged price-fixing cartels, including
  • The Vice-President of Sales at the Korean multinational company Hynix Semiconductor, in the DOJ’s prosecution of price fixing in the market for DRAM memory chips
  • The President of AU Optronics, the Taiwanese LCD manufacturer, as co-counsel in his trial for allegedly participating in a price fixing conspiracy. The client was acquitted after an eight week trial in San Francisco federal court
• United Airlines and Continental Airlines, in a federal antitrust class action alleging price fixing in the Transpacific air cargo market, and in a successful defense against an effort to enjoin the merger of the two airlines under the Clayton Act in 2010, in federal district court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
• Toyota Motor Corporation and its subsidiaries, in federal securities class and derivative actions. Successfully obtained dismissal with prejudice of bondholder class action in U.S. District Court, and state court derivative action pending in Los Angeles Superior Court
• Several multinational corporations and officers, particularly in the technology industry, in internal investigations, compliance reviews, and before the DOJ and SEC, regarding alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
• Companies, officers and directors and Special Committees in over a dozen stock option backdating matters, in internal investigations, civil derivative and class actions, and before the SEC and DOJ
• Officers and employees of publicly traded companies accused of insider trading, revenue recognition and other accounting improprieties, before the SEC and DOJ, and in related civil actions
• Officers of publicly-held biotechnology companies in U.S. Attorney’s Office investigations into alleged improper drug marketing practices

• Member, State Bar of California; American Bar Association Criminal Justice Section; International Bar Association, Business Crimes Section
• Member of Northern District of California Criminal Justice Act Panel, representing indigent federal criminal defendants
• Federal court-appointed civil case mediator and Early Neutral Evaluator, Northern District of California
• Executive Committee Member, Federal Bar Association, Northern District of California
• Leadership Council Member, Volunteer Legal Services Program, San Francisco Bar Association

• Faculty member, US Department of Justice/Department of State-sponsored trial advocacy program for Kenyan prosecutors; Nairobi, Kenya (August 2011)
• Moderator/Panelist, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyer, The Ethics of Witness Preparation, Lake Tahoe, California (June 2011)
• Ethics and Compliance Officers Organization Conference, First 72 Hours of an Investigation, Seattle, Washington, (September 2011)
• Trial Advocacy Instructor, United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, along with a team of federal judges and U.S., French and UK practitioners; Arusha, Tanzania (November 2005 and March 2010)
• International Bar Association, 13th Transnational Crime Conference: Cross-Border Bribery and Corruption Issues and the Role of Compliance: Paris, France (June 2010)
• ABA White Collar Crime Conference: Developments in Criminal Securities Fraud; San Francisco, California (March 2009)
• C5 Anti-Corruption Bootcamp, Multi-Jurisdictional Investigations: Strategies to Avoid Double Jeopardy; Paris, France (September 2008)
• Cal Law Roundtable, Criminalization Of Noncompliance: How Do GC’s Protect Their Companies and Themselves?; San Francisco, California (October 2007)
• Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, Compliance and Legal Division Conference, Document Destruction; Scottsdale, Arizona (March 2004) and Palm Desert, California (March 2005)
• Securities and Exchange Commission, National Enforcement Conference, DOJ/SEC Coordination Strategies; Washington, D.C. (April 2004)
• Department of Justice National Advocacy Center, Assistant Attorney General’s Panel on Prosecution of Corporations; Columbia, South Carolina (February 2004)
• Federal Bureau of Investigation Academy, Investigative Tactics in Criminal Securities Fraud Cases, Quantico, Virginia (April 2001) 

• Criminalization Of Noncompliance: How Do GC’s Protect Their Companies and Themselves?,
  GC Magazine, October 25, 2007
• Document Destruction and Obstruction of Justice: Why Arthur Andersen Doesn’t Matter, Journal of Investment Compliance, Vol. 6, No. 3 (January 2006)
• “S.F. Fraud Chief Flies DOJ Coop for Shearman,” The Recorder, July 8, 2004
• “Lessons of the Scandals,” Corporate Board Member Magazine, July/August 2004
• “High Voltage Team:  Investigators Will Seek Inside Wire on Who Rigged the Energy Crisis,”
  San Francisco Chronicle, December 15, 2002
• “Finding Wrongs, Through the Prism of Silicon Valley,” The New York Times/International Herald Tribune, December 31, 2002