Omar Jafri, a Partner in the Firm’s Chicago office, recently spoke to the Monitor about his securities practice and his pro bono work in criminal justice.
The Monitor: What led you to a career in law?
Omar Jafri: In college, I double majored in Government and Asian History at the University of Texas at Austin, while taking overlapping pre-law courses on the origin and development of the United States Constitution and the structure and powers of the federal government. Studying the Constitution as an undergraduate sparked my interest in the law. I was keenly interested in business and finance, but against corporate malfeasance and the abuse of corporate power. The Enron and WorldCom scandals were in full swing at the time. That’s when I knew I wanted to be a securities lawyer.
M: Why the plaintiffs’ bar instead of defense?
OJ: Principally because it allows me to pursue cases that align with my values and beliefs, but there are other reasons. As master of the complaint, the plaintiff sets the stage for the litigation and can control the narrative. Having worked at a corporate defense firm before joining Pomerantz, I have seen a world of difference between the two sides in terms of day-to-day litigating. As a junior associate in Big Law, I rarely had client contact. As an associate at Pomerantz, I was sometimes the Firm’s main point of contact with the client. The actual litigation experiences on the plaintiffs’-side are also unparalleled. For example, some of my peers and colleagues in Big Law have never argued a federal appeal and never will, because their firm’s Appellate and Supreme Court practice is responsible for handling that aspect. I am on track to have argued, by the end of 2023, nearly half a dozen federal appeals in different Circuits in the last few years alone, and I do not consider myself to be an appellate specialist. This would not be possible without the support of the Firm’s Partners, who allowed me to gain so much litigation experience even as an associate.
M: What about securities fraud litigation continues to motivate you?
OJ: Our practice is unique in that when a case is filed, we barely have more than a theory of what went wrong yet are required to comply with the heightened pleading standards of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (“PSLRA”). The PSLRA requires plaintiffs to plead an inference of fraud that is as compelling as an inference of innocence yet simultaneously kneecaps plaintiffs by preventing them from engaging in any discovery until a court concludes that the applicable pleading standard has been met. No other litigant in any other area of law is required to comply with a similarly onerous scheme. With the asymmetry of information that was created by a statute intended to kill securities lawsuits, it requires persistence, creativity and doggedly running down every possible lead to uncover indicia of falsity and scienter. That is true in every case regardless of whether it involves the same subject matter or the same industry or even the same defendants. Every win is a victory against the PSLRA and its corporate apologists.
M: What is your proudest achievement as a securities litigator so far?
OJ: The most satisfying results come in extremely hard cases where, despite the onerous standards of the PSLRA and its built-in disadvantage for investors in securities lawsuits, courts allow the litigation to proceed to discovery, or the litigation results in a significant recovery. For example, in one of our recent cases, defendants’ knowledge of contemporaneous falsity did not initially appear to be strong. Then, days before an amended complaint was due, the defendants unexpectedly filed a new document with the SEC, in which they made a series of admissions that contradicted whatever they had told investors for the last two years. The case literally changed overnight. The district court denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss in large part based on the same post-class period admissions and concurred that the later-emerging admissions demonstrated the falsity of defendants’ prior representations.
M: Please tell us about your pro bono work in criminal justice.
OJ: I have represented criminal defendants pro bono from the time I started practicing law. My first pro bono client was an innocent person wrongfully convicted because his trial attorney failed to put ten unimpeachable alibi witnesses on the stand for reasons that I still cannot fathom. He served ten years in prison before his conviction was reversed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit for ineffective assistance of counsel. I have continued to represent clients charged with serious crimes in the State of Illinois, pro bono, while at Pomerantz. In one of my recent cases, the client was charged with extremely serious offenses. My co-counsel and I thoroughly investigated the case, shared our findings with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, and convinced the prosecutors both that a mistake had been made and that our client was erroneously overcharged. The client is now expected to plead to a much lesser offense that allows him to remain free, whereas the original charges could potentially have led to decades behind bars. I remain committed to devoting time to pro bono criminal defense. Effective representation is crucial, and there are so many defendants that either cannot afford or do not receive it.
