Ralph Dado is a partner in Kirkland’s white collar (Government, Regulatory & Internal Investigations) and litigation groups. His white collar practice focuses on investigations, academic and research integrity, risk enhancement after major safety incidents, and corporate criminal defense, and his litigation practice focuses on high stakes civil matters.
Ralph’s investigations work occurs at all levels of companies and other entities, including in the C-suite and at the board. Much of this work is non-public, but as a public example, Ralph’s team investigated Valeant on behalf of its board regarding pharmacy and accounting issues. As of 2024, Ralph is working as a member of the senior staff for the independent panel commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security at the president’s direction to conduct a security review of the attempted assassination of former President Trump in Butler, PA.
In the academic and research integrity area, in 2023 Ralph completed the investigation of Stanford University President Tessier-Lavigne on behalf of Stanford’s board regarding allegations of research misconduct, and he has assisted various top-25 universities on integrity and leadership selection matters. As an example of his risk work, from 2017–2022, Ralph was a principal member of the team that monitored Pacific Gas & Electric after its conviction for the San Bruno pipeline explosion, and he is actively working with Fortune 500 companies in response to major safety events.
In addition, a substantial part of Ralph’s practice focuses on white collar defense work. As two public examples, his team defended BP in the Department of Justice’s criminal investigation into the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) incident, and, as of 2024, Ralph is defending Boeing in DOJ’s criminal inquiry related to its 2021 737 MAX deferred prosecution agreement and other matters. Over his career, Ralph has defended companies in many sectors in investigations involving, among others, the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), numerous U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and various state agencies.
Ralph also has extensive civil litigation experience focused on high stakes matters. Examples include BP’s MDL trial for Deepwater, defense of AbbVie in consumer protection litigation in Louisiana, nationwide defense of General Motors related to ignition switch recalls, defense of the City of Chicago in lead pipe litigation in Illinois, and defense of BP in numerous cases regarding alleged DWH spill response injuries.
Before joining Kirkland, Ralph worked as a principal researcher and analyst for Judge Richard Posner and Professor William Landes. His contributions to their work are acknowledged in a number of published books, including The Behavior of Federal Judges: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Rational Choice (Posner, Landes & Epstein, 2012); The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy (Posner, 2010); A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent Into Depression (Posner, 2009) and articles, including "Why (And When) Judges Dissent: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis" 3 J. Legal Analysis 101 (Posner, Landes & Epstein, 2011); "Rational Judicial Behavior: A Statistical Study" 1 J. Legal Analysis 775 (Posner & Landes, 2009); and "Uncertainty Aversion and Economic Depressions" 52 Challenge 25 (Posner, 2009).
