Andrew St. Laurent

Practice Areas

Criminal and Regulatory, Commercial Litigation, Securities Litigation, Employment Litigation

Career

Andrew St. Laurent is a first-chair trial lawyer, with a depth and breadth of experience in civil, criminal, and regulatory matters. He has tried more than 20 cases to verdict, from federal jury trials, to FINRA, AAA and JAMS arbitrations, to New York State court bench and jury trials, winning civil verdicts for plaintiffs in investment and employment matters and acquittals for defendants in criminal cases, including those charged with fraud, drug, and gun crimes. Mr. St. Laurent has a diverse practice, which includes regulatory and internal investigations, employment litigation, securities litigation, cryptocurrency litigation, and representations of individuals in criminal matters. After beginning his career at leading white-collar criminal defense firm Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason & Anello., P.C., he worked for 5 years as a public defender in Manhattan before joining Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler in 2009. Mr. St. Laurent has been recognized as a Super Lawyer for the past ten years, 2013-2023 and has been Chambers-ranked in Litigation: White Collar Crime and Government Investigations for the last 3 years. He graduated from Brown University in 1994 and received his law degree from Columbia Law School in 1998. He is admitted to the bar of New York, the bars of the United States District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Publications

Mr. St. Laurent has written extensively on criminal and regulatory subjects. Some of his most recent publications include (i) When the Paper Tiger Bites: The Myriad Dangers of Ineffective Compliance Programs — New York Law Journal, March 26, 2021; (ii) The Broad Impact of the Supreme Court’s ‘Lorenzo’ Decision — New York Law Journal, August 26, 2020; (iii) FINRA Enforcement Interview — Wall Street Lawyer, July 2020; (iv) An Introduction to FINRA Enforcement Proceedings — New York Law Journal, June 29, 2020; (v) The Doctrine of Constitutional Immunity — Where Did It Come From and What Does It Do? — Medium, October 29, 2019; (vi) Anatomy of a Guilty Plea — The Champion Magazine, June 2019; and (vii) Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing — A book by Andrew St. Laurent, Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc., August 2004

Work Highlights

In the last year, Mr. St. Laurent has defended individuals in a cutting-edge cryptocurrency fraud investigation, represented the election committee of a prominent New York State politician in a federal corruption probe, and guided a central figure in a multi-billion dollar bank fraud case through a global regulatory inquiry. More recent representative matters include i) the complete dismissals of successive federal and state gender- and race-based discrimination claims against a supervisor at one of New York’s largest employers; ii) the successful resolution of parallel AAA arbitration and U.S. Department of Labor proceedings brought by a whistleblowing employee; and iii) a successful appeal in the United States District Court against a contempt finding entered against the Chief Financial Officer of a petroleum trading entity by the United States Bankruptcy Court following the officer’s invocation of his rights under the Fifth Amendment and the successful defense of the District Court opinion in the United States Court of Appeals.

Education