North Carolina Firm Opens DC Office With Whistleblower Focus

A North Carolina law firm is opening a Washington, DC office focused on whistleblowers as legal operations see a growing workload from such cases.

Cranfill Sumner is staffing the new office with white collar partners Patrick Mincey and Stephen Bell and former US Securities and Exchange Commission assistant secretary Christina Zaroulis Milnor.

The firm has been “reinventing white collar work by defending corporations and representing whistleblowers,” despite other firms choosing one lane or the other, Mincey said in an interview. Representing both will let the new office, dubbed Mincey Bell Milnor, grow new types of business, he said.

Lawyers are taking advantage of new rules put forth in recent months at the SEC, the Justice Department, and other agencies to encourage whistleblowing as a way to bring forth misdeeds.

In March, a 10-lawyer team left Constantine Cannon to start its own whistleblower-focused firm called Whistleblower Partners, with clients that included informants from Meta Platforms Inc.'s Facebook and Boeing Co.

The new office will focus on white collar and regulatory enforcement, while representing whistleblowers before federal agencies. Two Cranfill associates will also work at the new office, which will serve as the Washington outpost for Cranfill Sumner, which has 81 lawyers firmwide, according to its website.

Mincey and Bell represent a whistleblower in investigations by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the SEC concerning allegations that Trump Media & Technology Group committed securities violations.