NEIL CONRAD represents individual and corporate clients in arbitrations and courts across the country and in all phases of litigation, from pre-litigation counseling and investigation through post-trial motions and appeals. He has experience in securities, shareholder, antitrust, RICO, and trade secret litigation, as well as other kinds of complex commercial litigation and business disputes. In recent years, Neil has been a core team member on several large, high-stakes, fast-moving litigation matters, several of which involved steering clients through parallel proceedings, and he has taken a lead role coordinating with experts, working with fact witnesses, and drafting briefs on major dispositive motions in these complex matters.
Neil also maintains an active pro bono practice, with significant experience working with the firm’s Capital Litigation Project and Political Asylum and Immigration Project. He has successfully represented two asylum applicants in removal defense proceedings, won relief for a client in federal habeas litigation, and successfully defended a court-appointed psychologist named as a defendant in a Section 1983 lawsuit. Two of these pro bono matters involved wins in published decisions by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. In 2018, the National Immigrant Justice Center honored Neil as a “Rising Star” for his outstanding pro bono service in protection of immigrant rights. In 2019, he received the firm’s Thomas H. Morsch Award for Pro Bono Achievement.
Neil’s experience includes pre-litigation research and strategic counseling; managing complex electronic discovery; drafting dispositive motions, appellate briefs, and pleadings; opposing class certification and requests for preliminary injunctive relief; working with experts to prepare reports on both liability and damages issues and to refine case strategy; taking and defending fact and expert depositions; preparing fact and expert witnesses to testify; and presenting oral argument in trial and appellate courts.
Neil joined Sidley after clerking for then-Chief Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas and Judge David F. Hamilton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He graduated with honors from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was a comment editor for the University of Chicago Legal Forum, earned the Joseph Henry Beale Prize for excellence in the first-year writing program, won the Edward W. Hinton Moot Court Competition, received the John M. Olin Fellowship in Law and Economics and the Thomas R. Mulroy Award for Excellence in Appellate Advocacy, and was a member of the Federal Criminal Justice Clinic. Neil graduated summa cum laude from Tulane University with a degree in Political Science, Economics, and International Development. A member of Phi Beta Kappa, he received the Senior Scholar Award as the top graduate in Political Science, Janus Society Honors, and the Tulane 34 Award.