Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis has turned to one of its newest partners to replace the firm's recently departed white-collar and corporate investigations chairman.
Laurel Brandstetter, a partner in the firm's Pittsburgh office, will chair the newly-redubbed criminal defense and internal investigations group, the firm announced Wednesday.
"We do a lot more than just white-collar, so I thought [criminal defense and internal investigations] was a more authentic explanation or description of what we do," Brandstetter said of the name change.
Brandstetter, a former state prosecutor, joined Schnader Harrison in March. She came from Leech Tishman Fuscaldo & Lampl, where she built a white-collar and investigations practice from the ground up.
Brandstetter replaces Mark Lee, who left Schnader Harrison to join Blank Rome less than a month ago.
Firm leadership approached Brandstetter about taking the role soon after Lee announced his plans, she said. It was a natural move, she said, as she had already assumed some leadership of the group, and had become a "counterpart in the west" to Lee.
Brandstetter said one of her immediate goals is to add lawyers to the practice group. It's been busy, she said, particularly with grand jury matters, on which she focuses much of her own practice. She also wants to better integrate with other practices at Schnader Harrison, she said. For instance, some of the employment lawyers have valuable investigative experience and could be a resource for the criminal defense and internal investigations group, she said.
Before entering private practice at Leech Tishman in 2014, Brandstetter spent more than six years at the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General as a senior deputy attorney general, and seven years before that as an assistant district attorney for Allegheny County. She currently chairs the Allegheny County chapter of the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and she helped establish the Pittsburgh office of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project.
"She has been on the front line on many of the most important investigations and prosecutions both regionally and nationally," said Schnader Harrison managing partner Nicholas LePore. "She is well-known and highly respected by clients, judges and government officials, and her peers at the federal and the state level."
Brandstetter said she will stay based at the firm's Pittsburgh office, but she plans to spend more time in Philadelphia and in other Schnader Harrison locations including New York and San Francisco.