Jeff focuses his practice on trial advocacy in the areas of white-collar criminal defense, insurance coverage, and complex civil litigation.
For nearly two decades, Jeff has served as appellate counsel at trial and on appeal. In that capacity, he has aided trial teams pre-trial, at trial, and post-verdict through appeal. As appellate counsel, Jeff has developed and implemented strategies to address a myriad of legal issues, from errors in jury selection to defending threatened discovery sanctions to exclusions of experts to evidentiary objections to post-verdict challenges to punitive damages awards. Along with his written advocacy, he has orally argued in state and federal trial and appellate courts throughout the country.
Jeff also represents businesses and individuals in civil matters, with an emphasis on insurance coverage disputes. Jeff routinely provides coverage opinions to insurers, prosecutes and defends coverage disputes, and serves as monitoring counsel. He has taught numerous continuing education courses on various issues surrounding coverage, including (i) navigating the tripartite relationship, (ii) developing coverage opinions, and (iii) defending declaratory judgment actions.
In addition to civil work, Jeff has defended individuals and business in criminal prosecutions, administrative proceedings, and enforcement actions. He has represented individuals and businesses accused of mail and wire fraud, honest services fraud, obstruction of justice, securities fraud, theft of government property, interstate transportation of stolen goods, money laundering, banking offenses, healthcare fraud and violations of the Anti-Kickback Statute. He has obtained judgments of acquittal from juries and from courts, both at the close of the prosecution’s case-in-chief, post-verdict, and on appeal.
Jeff performs large-scale investigations stemming from employee and whistleblower complaints, regulatory inquiries, and self-reporting requirements. His investigations have addressed diverse issues, including accounting procedures, trade secrets, securities laws, state law fiduciary duties and associated conflicts of interest, sexual harassment, and compliance concerns under the Federal Acquisition Regulation and the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement.
As assistant special counsel to the Alabama House Judiciary Committee for the impeachment investigation of Governor Robert Bentley, Jeff and other members of the Lightfoot team interviewed dozens of witnesses, reviewed thousands of pages of records and compiled an extensive report. Three days after the release of that report, Governor Bentley announced his resignation and his plea agreement with state prosecutors.
He also serves as Co-Chair of the firm’s Associate Training Committee.
