Ryan McConnell
Ryan D. McConnell is a partner in Morgan Lewis's Litigation Practice. Mr. McConnell is a former federal prosecutor who focuses his practice on corporate compliance issues, internal investigations, and white collar criminal defense. He has represented clients in lengthy regulatory investigations and has assisted companies around the globe with compliance matters, including program design, tracking, assessment, and due diligence. Mr. McConnell advises clients on how to use empirical data to leverage internal resources and create risk-based compliance programs.
Outside of his practice, Mr. McConnell teaches international corporate compliance and criminal procedure at the University of Houston Law Center. In 2011, he was named faculty member of the year by the UH Advocates, and his corporate compliance course was recently featured on The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog. Mr. McConnell is also a columnist for Corporate Counsel magazine, writing on compliance and risk issues.
Mr. McConnell is a frequent speaker on criminal charging and compliance developments. Over the last five years, he has written numerous articles discussing empirical data gathered from Department of Justice (DOJ) criminal prosecutions and addressing the DOJ's corporate charging trends, charging principles, and corporate monitors. In 2011, he led an empirical study that analyzed the codes of conduct of Fortune 500 companies, and in 2012 he partnered with the Ethisphere Institute to create a searchable database of publicly available provisions from those codes. Mr. McConnell also assisted Ethisphere in creating a database of deferred and nonprosecution agreements. His research in this area has been cited by Congress in examining the need for legislation on deferred and nonprosecution agreements, as well as corporate monitors, and his research on corporate charging and compliance has been featured in news publications including USA Today and Corporate Counsel.
Before entering private practice, Mr. McConnell served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Louisiana and Houston. As part of the U.S. Attorney's office Organized Crime Strike Force in Houston, Mr. McConnell tried numerous criminal cases and conducted significant grand jury investigations of international scope on matters ranging from violations of the U.S. trade laws to complex fraud. He also regularly briefed and argued criminal appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. In addition to his trial work, Mr. McConnell participated in the planning and execution of undercover operations to enforce U.S. trade controls and was involved in some of the most significant worksite enforcement investigations in the United States. Mr. McConnell was also involved in training DOJ federal prosecutors, including preparing DOJ training materials on criminal procedure, corporate compliance, and charging. He taught a number of classes to federal prosecutors and investigators at the DOJ National Advocacy Center in Columbia, South Carolina, including trial advocacy. Mr. McConnell began his career as a law clerk for Judge John C. Godbold of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Mr. McConnell earned his J.D. from Washington University School of Law, St. Louis in 2003, where he was named to the Order of the Coif. He earned his B.A. in English literature from Louisiana State University in 2000.