Cooley has added a veteran Democratic staffer, Heather Sawyer, to its team as special counsel. With 13 years of experience on Capitol Hill, Sawyer’s considerable knowledge and expertise will be instrumental in building the law firm’s emerging congressional investigations practice.
During her tenure within Senate and House committees, Sawyer held crucial roles including staff director, chief counsel, and a staff member of the House Judiciary Committee. She notably served as the chief counsel for the Select Committee on Benghazi. Before her move to Cooley, her most recent role was the executive director of American Oversight, a non-profit organization founded in 2017. The non-profit aims to investigate issues such as attacks on voting rights and the mistreatment of immigrants.
Sawyer is joining Cooley at a time when the focus on investigations practices is increasing, not just among Washington-founded firms like WilmerHale and Covington & Burling, but also among firms outside of the nation’s capital.
The appointment follows the recent hiring of Susanne Sachsman Grooms from Kaplan Hecker & Fink to launch Cooley’s congressional investigations practice, as reported on Bloomberg Law.
Large law firms are beginning to understand the significance of having specialized congressional investigations departments, as these probes often occur in conjunction with other work the law firms are involved in, such as civil litigation, according to Grooms.
Grooms and Sawyer, who previously worked together on Capitol Hill, will reunite in their roles at Cooley. During their time in Capitol Hill, they were part of the investigative staff that conducted investigations on the Benghazi committee, which assessed the Obama administration’s handling of the 2012 terrorist attack.
Prior to Cooley, Grooms led the House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s investigative staff from 2011 to 2021, supervising teams that conducted investigations during both impeachments of President Donald J. Trump. Sawyer’s notable work in the House includes her role as lead counsel in efforts to pass the Respect for Marriage Act, the bill to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act that banned federal recognition of same sex marriage. In the Senate, she worked on plans to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election.
With Cooley’s strong base in technology, social media, and artificial intelligence, Sawyer believes that “Cooley provides a really great platform to launch a congressional investigations practice”; fields that are gaining more attention from Congress and other government entities.
Besides legal expertise, complex politics and media interests often play significant roles in the work of congressional investigations practices, according to Sawyer. Highlighting the importance and high stakes of these tasks, she shared, “A lot of the matters that Congress is interested in are going to be pretty high-profile and potentially high stakes.”