As a kid growing up in Houston, FBFK’s Solomon Wisenberg thought he would probably go into the family business, working for Otto Office Supply Co.
After graduating from Bellaire High School, he attended Washington University in St. Louis, earning a bachelor’s degree in history. The opportunity to join the family business was waiting for him. But so was the lingering draw of a career in the law he had often considered.
“I had thought about going to history grad school,” Wisenberg said in a recent interview with The Texas Lawbook. “So, I took that year off to clear my head.”
After the year of reflection, he enrolled at the University of Texas School of Law. After graduating in 1980, he left to begin his legal career, making a pit stop in Chicago before landing in Washington, D.C.
He recently returned home to Texas, joining FBFK in December as a shareholder, where he his practice focuses on government investigations and white collar defense work.
“It’s interesting seeing what’s different and what’s the same,” he said of getting reacquainted with his home state. “Not very much is the same.”
Wisenberg recently sat down with The Lawbook to discuss trends in white collar criminal defense and his most memorable case. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Lawbook: What trends are you seeing in your practice area?
Wisenberg: So the big trend since President Trump came into office the second time around is, first of all, tumult in the Department of Justice, reduction in the amount of attorneys and a lot of, how shall I say, demoralized workforce. But there’s also been a deemphasis of a lot of areas of white collar investigation — for example, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act — but an incredibly aggressive focus on health care fraud. That’s really the big trend, dealing with very, very aggressive nationwide healthcare fraud and alleged healthcare fraud investigations and prosecutions.
Lawbook: What has been a memorable case or moment in your career?
Wisenberg: I was deputy independent counsel for Ken Starr in the Whitewater and then the Whitewater-Lewinsky investigations. So that would have to be a high point, working for him and being part of the team that questioned then-President Clinton at the grand jury.
Working for Ken was the kind of thing that was my last work as a federal prosecutor. I was originally detailed from the Department of Justice to the Office of Independent Counsel. After a while, I decided to go on staff full time, and I knew then that there was no going back to being an assistant U.S. attorney. When I was an assistant U.S. attorney, I got a bunch of trial work, and I did white collar, I did financial institution fraud, which, oddly enough, it’s a hot thing now. But back then, trying to find people in the U.S. attorney’s office who wanted to do that was hard. Everyone wanted to do guns and drugs, and I wanted to do bank fraud. So it worked out well.
Lawbook: How do you split your time between Houston and Washington, D.C.?
Wisenberg: I spend a lot more time in Houston since I’ve moved here than in D.C. And before I was in Houston, for six years I lived in Chapel Hill. I worked out of Nelson Mullins Riley’s office. But my practice has really always been nationwide, so it doesn’t really matter that much where I’m operating from right now. I’ve got more cases in the general D.C. area. And when you say D.C. area, you’re talking about the District of Maryland, which is one federal district for the whole state. And you’re talking about the Eastern District of Virginia, which is, in reality, Northern Virginia, D.C. suburbs, Alexandria. And also, I’ve got a matter right now in the Western District of Virginia. D.C., Maryland and Virginia, federally, are the most active areas of my practice. But you never know what’s going to walk in the door.
Lawbook: Tell me more about your experience as deputy independent counsel in the Whitewater-Lewinsky investigation. What did you learn?
Wisenberg: Well, Washington’s like no other place. I mean, it was a very high publicity atmosphere, but really, my time there was a culmination. I went to work for Judge Starr in 1997 when I was detailed to the Office of Independent Counsel. So I had already been a federal prosecutor for eight years, and I had cut my teeth doing the savings and loan prosecutions, which was in the early ‘90s, as a result of the savings and loan debacle of the late ‘80s. And one of the reasons they wanted me, and one of the reasons I felt it was a good fit, was the original investigation was the Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association.
And I had vast experience prosecuting those savings and loan cases, and so that’s what drew me toward it. That’s why they were interested in me. I think also that I had worked with some of the people in the office who are from the public integrity section of the Department of Justice, and they had tried cases all over the country. And they had tried a big case in San Antonio, and the attorney named Jackie Bennett [who later served as senior advisor to Starr on the Clinton impeachment referral] had prosecuted and convicted one of our congressmen in San Antonio. I had been working for the Department of Justice in San Antonio, and that’s how I got to meet him. I was in that office, and he was prosecuting the congressman, and I helped out. I didn’t participate in the trial. But when he couldn’t make it down to San Antonio, I would do things administratively for him. That’s how I met him and got to be friends with him. And so I did not seek in any way to work for Judge Starr. The offer came to me.
Lawbook: Why did you join FBFK?
Wisenberg: A law school friend of mine is there, Mark Zeidman, who heads up the Houston office. And we started chatting, and had a series of discussions. And I really had not been thinking along the lines of moving. I was at Taylor Duma at the time, which recently closed its doors, but this is well before that happened. Taylor Duma was one of those what they call virtual firms, or quasi-virtual firms. And so I didn’t have a Houston office and initially started talking to Mark about maybe subleasing space. And the more we chatted, the more I saw what kind of a setup FBFK had and the more comfortable I became. That’s really how it happened. It was completely organic, which is probably how I’ve landed at most places I’ve been — and it’s a good way to land.
Lawbook: Is there anything else you would like to add?
Wisenberg: I’ve just been very, very impressed with FBFK. It’s been a great experience. It’s a commercial litigation firm, and I’m coming in and helping people when their clients may have potential regulatory exposure. So that’s something that’s rewarding to me, that I’m able to help out.
If you or someone you know would like to be profiled in a future edition of Asked & Answered, please let us know at tlblitigation@texaslawbook.net. Check out our other Asked & Answered interviews below:
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