Larry builds on a wide range of experiences – including as an accomplished attorney, a former President of the Ohio Senate, and a legal academic – to help solve his clients’ most challenging legal problems. He focuses on complex litigation, including high-stakes appeals.
A Partner in the firm’s Litigation and Disputes Service Line, Larry focuses his practice on litigation at both the trial and appellate levels and has experience in a variety of matters involving antitrust, fiduciary duties, torts, contracts, securities, elections law, and employment law. These range from standard contract disputes, to constitutional challenges against federal statutes, to defending against complex class actions. Larry has represented large employers and statewide associations and officeholders, and he even served as a special prosecutor to defend a common pleas court and retired judge against a mandamus action.
Larry has represented parties or amicus curiae before the Ohio Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. He has an active amicus practice helping clients raise issues that are important to them but which might not have been raised or fully developed by the parties in the case. These have included statutory issues, such as tort reform and limitations on damages, statutes of limitations, and the proper application of environmental laws. Larry’s experience also includes high-profile matters involving a range of constitutional questions. These include, among others, questions related to property rights, the Commerce Clause, the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause, the Second Amendment, tax issues arising under Article I and the Sixteenth Amendment, and the requirements for Article III standing.
In addition to his litigation practice, Larry served as a member of the Ohio Senate for nearly a decade. His colleagues unanimously elected him to serve as Senate President, the presiding officer of the 33-member chamber, from 2017-2020. During his time in the Senate, Larry successfully sponsored legislation on a wide range of topics, including education, tax law, elections administration, criminal law, and corporate law. These included a comprehensive update to Ohio’s corporate code and limited liability company law, including the sections setting out fiduciary duties for officers and shareholders. Larry also sponsored significant updates to Ohio’s Control Share Acquisition Act, which governs corporate takeovers. In 2018, he received the Ohio State Bar Association’s Lawyer-Legislator Distinguished Service Award.
Larry has also taught courses on Civil Procedure and Legislation as an adjunct law professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. He has published legal scholarship on a range of issues, including constitutional law, education, law and economics, and securities. He has been cited in more than 75 law journals throughout the country and by a member of the United States Supreme Court.
Larry began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He has worked at some of the nation’s largest law firms and began his private practice by spending more than five years with Chicago-based Kirkland & Ellis LLP.
From 2018-2020, Larry was a Rodel Fellow at the Aspen Institute, a program designed to bring greater civility to public discourse. He is active in the Federalist Society and is a former board member of the Ohio Legal Assistance Foundation (now known as the Ohio Access to Justice Foundation), the statewide umbrella organization for legal aid. He is also a former member of the Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission, the Ohio Criminal Sentencing Commission, and the Ohio Criminal Justice Recodification Committee.
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