People

Julia Wilson Associate

London

Julia often works on cases with a multijurisdictional focus and has represented clients from the UK, Italy, Canada and Mexico in disputes seated around the world. She has worked on arbitrations overseen by most of the major arbitral forums including ICC, LCIA and UNCITRAL and governed by the laws of numerous countries, including England and Wales, US (New York) and Mozambique. She also acts for sovereign states in actions brought against them by private investors. Her practice represents clients in all stages of disputes – from pleadings to trial including advising in relation to alternative dispute resolution methods.

Julia has published articles on arbitration matters, including the upcoming reform to the English Arbitration Act 1996.

Ariel Winawer Senior Associate

San Francisco

Ariel represents companies and individuals in a broad range of civil and criminal matters, including government enforcement and regulatory investigations, internal investigations, securities class actions, and shareholder derivative actions.

Ariel also maintains an active pro bono practice focused on immigration and civil rights matters.

Blake Winburne Partner

Houston

Blake is recognized both nationally and globally by Chambers (Chambers USA and Chambers Global 2008-2024), including in Band 1 for Projects: Power & Renewables: Transactional, Projects. Chambers sources report that he has "strong commercial acumen, executive presence and excellent, long-standing stature." Blake is also recognized in the "Hall of Fame" for Energy Transactions: Electric Power by Legal 500 and has been named one of the "world’s leading energy and natural resources lawyers" by Euromoney (2009-2020).

Blake advises clients on energy sector mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, and joint ventures, and on the development, structuring, and financing of large-scale energy projects in the United States and internationally. He regularly represents multinational energy companies, large private equity funds, project developers and sponsors, borrowers and debt issuers, investment banks, and other capital providers and investors in the energy industry.

Blake has significant experience in the electric power sector, including fossil fuel-fired, simple and combined-cycle and co-generation facilities, as well as wind, solar (central station and distributed), landfill gas, biomass and other renewable energy projects. He also represents clients in transactions involving oil, natural-gas and refined-products pipelines, gathering and processing systems and storage facilities (tank farms and underground), exploration and production investment platforms and operations, electric power and natural gas transmission and local distribution systems and alternative fuels production and marketing arrangements. 

Kasey Winshall Managing Associate

New York

Kasey represents tech startups throughout all stages of their lifecycle. She advises on formation, general corporate and governance matters, and a broad range of transactions, such as venture capital financings, mergers and acquisitions. Kasey also advises venture capital investors on investment in their portfolio companies. 

Prior to joining Orrick, Kasey was an associate in the Emerging Companies and Venture Capital Group at Fox Rothschild LLP in New York.

Jill Winter Senior Associate

Washington, D.C.

Jill maintains an active pro bono practice that includes assisting inmates with post-conviction relief. She has also co-authored U.S. Supreme Court amicus briefs in support of a criminal defendant at both the certiorari and merits stages.

Prior to joining Orrick, Jill was an associate at Buckley LLP. She previously clerked for the Honorable Harvey Bartle, III in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Christopher Witeck Partner

Washington, D.C.

Chris has an active practice representing financial services entities in negotiating a wide variety of corporate transactions, including company M&A, asset purchases and critical vendor and other third-party relationships. His clients include banks, mortgage companies and servicers, marketplace and other lenders, fintech and emerging payments providers and other business entities in the financial services industry.

Chris’ M&A work emphasizes transactions that involve regulatory risks and concerns or novel structures at the forefront of industry trends. He also represents buyers and sellers of mortgage loans and other consumer lending assets, including interests such as mortgage servicing rights. He regularly negotiates many varieties of servicing and subservicing contracts.

He also advises clients on outsourcing, joint venture and bank partner agreements, particularly in the fintech and e-commerce arena, providing years of experience addressing “true lender” issues. He also advises clients on loan repurchase and indemnity matters as well as corporate governance and compliance matters.

His regulatory practice focuses on advising lenders and servicers on matters involving the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA), including affiliated business arrangements, portfolio retention transactions and vendor management issues.

Chris is recognized by Chambers USA for Fintech: Payments & Lending, which cited his capabilities “advising on regulatory compliance, commercial contracts matters and transactional work, with notable expertise handling M&A in the financial services sector.”

He was previously Co-Managing Partner and a member of the partner board at Buckley LLP. Before attending law school, he worked at the U.S. Department of State.

Alexander Witt Senior Associate

London

Alexander has particular experience in investment claims arising out of regulatory changes to renewable energy incentive regimes and the enactment of environmental protection laws. He has represented investors, Latin American and Eastern European States in a variety of claims under domestic and international law, including high-profile and politically sensitive investment treaty cases (often involving issues of corruption).

In addition to his international arbitration experience, Alexander frequently advises clients on financial sanctions and export control issues across a range of sectors including oil & gas, infrastructure, and defence.

He is fluent in Spanish and has a good command of German. Alexander also speaks and writes on international arbitration related subjects.

George Wolf Senior Counsel

San Francisco

George is also a long-time member of the Public Finance Tax Group, specializing in public power and health care, and is the leading national authority on municipal derivative products. He is principal tax advisor to several major municipal electric utilities and nonprofit healthcare organizations. He also has extensive experience in working with leading banks in creating new financial products, including secondary market synthetic instruments, contingent payment debt instruments, financing strategies for energy, as well as defending the taxation of financial transactions before taxing authorities.

George also has substantial experience defending the tax integrity of financing arrangements in particular as well as tax litigation in general.

John Wolfe Partner

Seattle

John is consistently recognized in The Best Lawyers in America and recommended by The Legal 500 United States as a white collar criminal defense lawyer. John relies upon a multi-disciplinary crisis management strategy to assist clients and address both legal and reputational risks.

John has extensive experience representing clients in federal and state criminal and civil investigations, including state attorney general investigations, related to alleged health care fraud and standards of care violations resulting in death, consumer protection violations, public corruption and campaign finance violations, environmental violations (both land-based and maritime), including catastrophic industrial accident response and investigations, cybersecurity investigations and securities and tax fraud, including money laundering. John is an accomplished and seasoned trial lawyer who has represented public and private clients in more than 100 jury trials, and appeared in state and federal proceedings throughout the Pacific Northwest, as well as California, Florida, Montana, New York, and Wyoming.

Honors:

In 2004, John chaired the Magistrate Selection Committee for the Federal District Court in the Western District of Washington. He has also served on several Merit Selection panels identifying candidates for appointment to the federal bench in the Western District of Washington. He is currently co-chair of the Federal Appointments Committee for the Federal Bar Association and has served as a Ninth Circuit Representative. He was once appointed to serve as a Special Master in a matter pending before the Federal District Court in the Western District of Washington to investigate issues related to a multi-party joint defense agreement.

Alyssa Wolfington Managing Associate

New York

Alyssa navigates clients through privacy programs and policy creation, and provides guidance on compliance with federal, state and international laws and regulations, including the U.S. state privacy laws in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Virginia and other states, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC Act), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and state data breach notification laws. She advises clients on security incident response and federal and state investigations related to privacy and data security. She also provides assessments of privacy and security practices for companies carrying out due diligence in the context of corporate transactions.

Neil Wolk Senior Counsel

New York

Neil has spent the bulk of his career working on both tax-exempt and taxable financings for public power clients including joint action agencies, municipal utilities and rural electric cooperatives. He has had many roles in these financings including bond counsel, counsel to the underwriters and counsel to credit enhancers.

Over his career, Neil has worked on financings for joint action agencies and municipal utilities such as Gainesville (Florida) Regional Utilities, Intermountain Power Agency, JEA, Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company, Missouri Joint Municipal Electric Utility Commission, Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia (MEAG Power), Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems and WPPI Energy. The transactions in which Neil has participated have included public offerings, private placements, system and project financings, tax-exempt and taxable financings, secured and unsecured debt, senior and subordinated debt, fixed rate and variable rate debt and derivatives and he has had extensive experience in drafting documents for all of these types of financings. In addition, he has considerable experience with all types of disclosure issues encountered by electric utilities.

Neil also has been involved in a number of transactions involving the acquisition of utility companies and/or utility properties.

Recently, Neil represented MEAG Power in the financing of its undivided ownership interest in the first new nuclear generating facilities constructed on U.S. soil in over 30 years, which involved both taxable and tax-exempt capital markets debt, along with U.S. Department of Energy-guaranteed debt, and which was selected by The Financial Times as one of the most Innovative Deals of 2011.

Before joining Orrick, Neil was a partner at Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon in New York.

Kristopher R. Wood Senior Associate

Orange County

Mr. Wood's experience spans multiple industries, practice areas, and jurisdictions. Through his work, Mr. Wood has developed a strong sense of the importance of each client's unique industry and circumstances to the matters he undertakes, and he thoroughly enjoys each chance to learn about his clients and their work. Although Mr. Wood's focus is on trade secret misappropriation and business torts, he prizes variety in his practice and relishes the chance to take on new challenges in different areas of law.

Mr. Wood is known for developing a deep understanding of the facts and law in each case. In most of his cases, he serves as the point person for fact discovery, and through this experience he has created highly efficient and effective methods of identifying, tracking, organizing and synthesizing key facts in even the most complex matters. He excels at identifying patters and drawing meaning from large data sets, and his methods have led to breakthroughs in his cases on more than on occasion.

Mr. Wood's interest in efficiency extends beyond the specific matters he works on. Mr. Wood enjoys identifying tasks in his practice that can be automated and developing tools to do so. This redounds to his clients' benefit--in one case Mr. Wood's automation tool led to nearly a 50% reduction in the total time required for a given matter.

Beyond his paid work, Mr. Wood is also an active participant in pro bono activities and organizations. Mr. Wood serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Public Law Center of Orange County, and previously served two terms as Co-Chair of the PLC Advocates. He also regularly takes on pro bono clients, primarily representing clients in removal proceedings before the immigration courts and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.