Aaron Van Oort, Faegre Drinker

Partner 

What are the biggest challenges you currently see in business litigation?

Rapidly developing technology presents simultaneous opportunities and risks. The opportunities are to perform better work, and to do it more efficiently. The risks are to make serious errors and to substitute technology for independent thought. Our litigation teams are going full speed on maximizing the upside and protecting against the downside.

What are the biggest misconceptions about the field of business litigation?

The biggest misconception I see is that business litigation is not a specialized field. It is. It combines recurring legal issues with the need for creativity, excellent execution, and pragmatic judgment to reach good results.

Without revealing the names of a client, what is the most interesting case you’ve worked on lately?

In one recent case, I helped a client win reversal on appeal of an order certifying multiple statewide class actions. This required convincing the U.S. Court of Appeals first to grant interlocutory review, and then to develop the law under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 governing how common and individual issues should be identified. This is one of the most important topics in class action law. I’ve long thought and written about it, and I was delighted to get a big win for a client that will have positive effects on the law more broadly.

How do you manage work/life balance?

At Faegre Drinker, our goal is for our lawyers to thrive both personally and professionally. This means working hard to serve clients but also deliberately creating and preserving space for family time. To do both, we create and work in teams, so we can rely on each other to maintain our quality of client service while giving each other time away.

What’s something most people don’t know about you?

Most people don’t know that my wife and four boys and I travel around the United States searching out great barbecue. When Michelin recently started awarding stars to barbecue restaurants, we felt vindicated!