PRINCIPALS
John P. ("Sean") Coffey
Managing Director
BlackRobe Capital Partners
Mr. Coffey is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, former litigation partner at the international law firm Latham & Watkins LLP, and former co-managing partner at the boutique plaintiffs litigation firm Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP.
An experienced trial lawyer, Mr. Coffey tried cases as a federal prosecutor, plaintiff’s attorney and defense attorney. While at Bernstein Litowitz, Mr. Coffey led teams that recovered over $10 billion for defrauded securities investors and served as lead lawyer in two of the largest civil cases ever to go to trial: the WorldCom Securities Litigation and the Baptist Foundation of Arizona audit malpractice case. Mr. Coffey’s role in the WorldCom litigation was featured in two American Lawyer articles ("Taking Citi To School" (December 2004) and "Breaking The Banks" (November 2005)), and a profile in Bloomberg Markets (“Wall Street’s New Nemesis” (September 2005)). Mr. Coffey was named one of the country’s “top ten” winning trial attorneys by the National Law Journal in 2005, and was repeatedly selected as one of Lawdragon’s top 500 American lawyers and Chambers USA leading lawyers prior to his retirement from Bernstein Litowitz to run, unsuccessfully, for the Democratic nomination for New York Attorney General in 2010.
A retired Navy Captain, Mr. Coffey’s naval career included assignments as personal military assistant to Vice President George H.W. Bush and commanding officer of a reserve P-3C Orion squadron and the reserve component of the Enterprise carrier battle group staff. Mr. Coffey is a member of the American Bar Association’s Committee on Corporate Laws, the Federal Bar Council, and the Georgetown Law Board of Visitors.
Mr. Coffey graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1978 with a B.S. in Ocean Engineering, with merit, and received his J.D., magna cum laude, from Georgetown University Law Center in 1987.