Rebecca H Gordon Editor

Rebecca H. Gordon is a partner in the Political Law Group at Perkins Coie LLP.She counsels companies, trade associations, and other nonprofit organizations onhow to interact lawfully with public officials. She focuses her practice on compliancewith the federal Lobbying Disclosure Act, the Federal Election CampaignAct, state campaign finance laws, federal and state pay-to-play laws, and federaland state laws governing the conveyance of gifts to public officials. She works withher clients' legal and government relations teams to help them create and administerPACs, construct compliance programs, and handle the day-to-day legal questionsthat face government relations professionals. She also assists clients with theconstruction of political advertising programs, and helps vendors who serve thepolitical space lawfully develop candidate-facing products. Ms. Gordon's clients include Fortune 100 corporations, nationwide trade associationsand nonprofits, and prominent lobbying firms. She has represented clientsbefore the Federal Election Commission and federal courts on campaign financeissues, and before the U.S. House and Senate Ethics Committees on ethics issues. Ms. Gordon serves on the faculty of the Practising Law Institute's CorporatePolitical Activities course and was a member of the ABA Task Force on FederalLobbying Laws. Before focusing her practice on corporate clients, she served asDeputy General Counsel to Obama for America during the 2008 presidential campaignand as Deputy General Counsel to the Democratic National Committee duringthe 2010 election cycle. Thomas M. Susman is Director of the Governmental Affairs Office of the AmericanBar Association, which serves as the focal point for the Association's advocacyefforts before Congress, the Executive Branch, and other governmental entitieson diverse issues of importance to the legal profession. Before joining the ABAin 2008, he was a partner in the Washington Office of Ropes & Gray LLP for over27 years, where his work included counseling, litigation, and lobbying on a widerange of issues. Before joining Ropes & Gray, Mr. Susman spent 12 years in variouscapacities in the U.S. Senate, including Chief Counsel to the Antitrust Subcommittee,General Counsel to the Judiciary Committee, and Legislative Director forSenator Edward M. Kennedy. He has served as an advisor on lobbying regulationto the chairman of the Senate Ethics and Transparency Committee in Chile and hasadvised OECD and the Parliamentary leadership in the Czech Republic on lobbyingdisclosure regulation. He has also trained lobbyists with state and foreign barassociations. Mr. Susman was editor of the first edition of the ABA Lobbying Manual; taughtLobbying and the Legislative Process as an adjunct professor at The AmericanUniversity's Washington College of Law; and chaired the Ethics Committee ofthe American League of Lobbyists (now the Association of Government RelationsProfessionals) for over a decade. He was counsel to the ABA Task Force on FederalLobbying Laws; and is an Advisor to the American Law Institute's Project onGovernment Ethics. He received a B.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from theUniversity of Texas Law School, where he was Editor-in-chief of the Texas LawReview. After law school he was law clerk to Judge John Minor Wisdom on the U.S.Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, followed by service in the Office of Legal Counselof the U.S. Department of Justice.