Enron Prosecutors Get Nice Payday

When the Department of Justice went after Houston-based Enron, three of the biggest players in the case were assistant attorney general Alice Fisher, Enron Task Force director Sean Berkowitz, and Kathryn Ruemmler, deputy director of the task force.

It was Georgetown law grad Ruemmler’s powerful four-hour closing argument that was credited with winning convictions of top executives Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling.

Now, a little more than two years after the verdicts, all three prosecutors are reaping their rewards—and at the same law firm, Latham & Watkins. Catholic U law graduate Fisher became the last of the three to join Latham, where she had worked earlier under her mentor, future Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff.

At Justice, Fisher, Berkowitz, and Ruemmler, who at the time were all under 40, were making a reasonably handsome $100,000 to $150,000 a year. But the average profit for a partner at Latham & Watkins is $2.2 million.

Fisher’s return to Latham may signal that Chertoff could follow her back there as the Bush administration goes out of business.

More Washington connections: Skilling was represented in the corporate case by Latham’s archrival, O’Melveny & Myers, the firm led by Washington power broker A.B. Culvahouse, who vetted vice presidential selection Sarah Palin for John McCain.

This article first appeared in the November 2008 issue of The Washingtonian. For more articles from that issue, click here.  

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Kim Eisler