Executive Branch Updates: DOJ’s Civil Rights Fraud Initiative

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.  

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.   

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel. 

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world. 

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context. 

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996. 

Mike Vernick leads the firm’s government contracts group and focuses his practice on the higher education, defense and life sciences sectors. His FCA experience extends into all aspects of government contracting, higher education and research funding, including cost allowability, Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) compliance, General Services Administration (GSA) contracts, defective products and bid rigging.

Mike has represented multiple preeminent academic institutions on all aspects of research security and global engagement, including resolving the first reported FCA case focused on undisclosed researcher ties to a foreign government.  He also advises many of the nation’s leading research institutions and service organizations on conducting international sponsored projects, as well as capacity building and training initiatives.

Mike works with research institutions on Uniform Guidance enforcement and compliance matters and other sponsor regulations and policies addressing the financial, administrative and scientific management of grants and cooperative agreements, including financial conflicts of interest and research involving human subjects. His experience includes advising multiple institutions on scientific misconduct allegations involving high-profile researchers.  Mike has vetted the integrity of the scholarship of candidates for leadership positions at some of the Nation’s highest profile academic institutions.    

He has handled bid protests before the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, suspension and debarment proceedings before multiple U.S. government agencies, and contract claims and disputes. Mike has worked with numerous clients on complex government cost accounting matters, including Cost Accounting Standards (CAS) audits, disputes and claims.

Prior to joining Akin, Mike led the government contracts practice and education industry sector team at another international law firm. He has served on the conflicts of interest committee of a major children’s hospital and earlier in his career, he clerked for the Honorable Christine Miller at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.