From the boardroom
to the courtroom.
Strategic. Aggressive. Built for trial.
Iron Ark PLLC is a litigation boutique headquartered in Washington, D.C., with cases across the United States – built for high-stakes business disputes. Senior lawyers lead every matter, with a vetted network of outside counsel behind them. We don’t bill open-ended hours: every engagement is a flat fee, a contingency, or a hybrid.
We represent founders, companies, boards, funds, and executives in founder, post-closing M&A, securities, fiduciary-duty, and partnership disputes, on whichever side of the “v.” our client sits – and we put the firm’s time and capital behind plaintiffs, from moderate-size claims to $100 million-plus cases.
Iron Ark:
- ark (n.)
- – something that affords protection and safety.
- iron (adj.)
- – strong; unrelenting; holding fast.
There is a moment in every serious dispute when ordinary structures stop being enough – the deal unravels, the board turns, the payment never comes. An ark is built for that moment, and iron is what makes it endure. That is the firm we built: prepared for the crisis, strong under pressure, and designed to protect what matters all the way through.
Who we
litigate against.
Our lawyers have brought – and won – cases against some of the largest companies in the world and the law firms that defend them. We litigate business disputes across the United States – including cases in New York, California, Texas, and Delaware, where we do significant work. Some of our most significant results are settlements you will never read about. We know how the other side builds a case, because we have built cases from that side too.
We have been on both sides of these disputes. Our trial partner spent two decades prosecuting investor and shareholder claims – and helped win a unanimous jury verdict estimated at more than $9 billion – before spending nearly a decade inside a leading international firm defending bet-the-company cases. Our corporate partner has closed hundreds of deals worth billions, opposite many of the same firms we now meet in disputes. No side of the table is new to us.
We read deal documents – and the lawyers on the other side of them – fluently, in both the law and the business. Reps and warranties, indemnification baskets, earnouts, working-capital true-ups, management rollover, control rights: we have negotiated them, drafted them, and litigated them.
What we do.
We litigate disputes over ownership, transactions, capital, and control – and representing founders and sellers is a core part of that practice.
Founder Disputes & Founder Rights
A founder’s rights live in the charter, the stockholder or operating agreement, the investor documents, and the employment terms – and they are often the first thing a board or investor tries to take back. We represent founders in disputes with boards and investors over removal, control, voting and protective provisions, dilution, vesting and repurchase – investing our time, our focus, and, where the case supports it, the firm’s capital alongside the person who built the vision and the organization in the first place.
Founder Disputes & Rights →Earnout & Post-Closing Disputes
We represent founders and sellers pursuing earnouts the buyer won’t pay – and litigate the rest of what follows a closing: indemnification and escrow fights, working-capital and purchase-price adjustments, reps-and-warranties claims, and fraud in the inducement.
Earnout & Post-Closing Disputes →Securities & Investor Claims
Securities disputes turn on what was said, what the market knew, and what the numbers show. We prosecute and defend securities-fraud, offering-document, and fund disputes for institutional investors, funds, shareholders, and issuers – on either side of the “v.”
Securities & Investor Claims →Fiduciary Duty & Governance
Conflicted deals, controller squeeze-outs, disclosure failures, and books-and-records fights, in the Delaware Court of Chancery and beyond. We represent stockholders pressing claims and the boards and sponsors answering them.
Fiduciary Duty & Governance →Partnership & Shareholder Disputes
Partnerships rarely fail overnight – they erode, then collapse. Partners, LLC members, and shareholders hire us for deadlock, freeze-outs, fiduciary-duty claims, dissolutions, and books-and-records fights – and companies hire us when an internal fight threatens the business itself. Same firm, either side of the page.
Partnership & Shareholder Disputes →Art Litigation
We represent investors, entrepreneurs, collectors, dealers, and galleries in art-market disputes – and counsel clients on avoiding them. Our work spans title and provenance, contractual breaches, dealer and auction-house conduct, and challenges to a work’s authenticity or value. Brian C. Kerr litigated the Andy Warhol Foundation authentication board matter, chronicled in Richard Dorment’s Warhol After Warhol (2023). We take matters on contingency where the claim supports it.
Art Litigation →Sold your company? The earnout is part of the price.
When a buyer reports a shortfall, changes how the business is run or how the numbers are counted, or stops paying, we represent founders and sellers pursuing the earnout – on a fixed fee, on contingency, or a hybrid of the two.
Received an earnout statement you disagree with? The objection period may already be running.
Earnout disputesThe Iron Ark Method.
Everything that matters. Nothing that doesn’t. The Iron Ark Method is three things working together: excellent lawyers, judgment honed over decades of high-stakes disputes, and our proprietary AI process. Together they give a small, senior team the reach and speed of a much larger firm, with a fraction of the headcount and none of the wasted hours.
Senior lawyers who take the depositions, argue the motions, and try the case.
Seasoned across decades of high-stakes disputes – knowing what matters, and what doesn’t.
Our proprietary AI process, giving a small team the scale and speed of a much larger one.
Smaller cases – lean and fast.
When a claim is worth pursuing but not worth years of hourly billing, the Iron Ark Method compresses the work: the decisive facts early, a demand the other side has to take seriously, and resolution before suit where that serves you. When a case has to be filed, we litigate it lean.
Small & moderate cases →Larger cases – fast, and deep where it counts.
When the stakes run to eight or nine figures, the Iron Ark Method moves just as quickly to the documents and witnesses that decide the case – and shows us where to invest: the damages model, the experts, the record we’ll need at trial. Every hour goes into what moves the outcome.
Large cases →Client information is handled under our confidentiality obligations, and every AI-assisted work product is reviewed by a lawyer before it is used.
Contingency:
a core part of our practice.
We put the firm’s time and capital behind plaintiffs where the merits, the damages, and the defendant justify it – including class actions that are worth bringing. Our contingency docket runs the full range, and the other side is often the best-funded opponent in the room. We are good at it for reasons most firms can’t copy.
From moderate-size claims to $100 million-plus cases – against the largest, best-resourced firms in the country.
Pending or recently active contingency business litigation in state and federal court and in arbitration – in Delaware, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, Texas, and elsewhere.
We underwrite cases the way investors underwrite deals.
Each contingency matter goes through the same diligence: the liability theory tested against the documents, damages modeled with real economic rigor, the defendant’s ability to pay confirmed, and the litigation budget weighed against a realistic recovery. Our trial partner has valued claims from both sides for two decades; our corporate partner has priced risk into hundreds of deals. We turn down more contingency cases than we accept – that discipline is what makes the model work.
Senior lawyers carry the cases.
Leverage and contingency don’t mix. A bench of juniors logging hours on a case the firm won’t be paid for until the end is how plaintiffs’ firms quietly go broke and clients quietly lose. Our lead lawyers do the work, and network counsel are brought in for defined tasks under their supervision. That isn’t a marketing line – it is how the firm is built.
We build hybrid structures most firms can’t offer.
Pure contingency fits some matters; others need a blend. A fixed fee with a success kicker. A cap with a contingency tail. A contingency with a cushion for defense costs if the defendant counterclaims. We build the structure around the case and what the client can carry – and with overhead a fraction of BigLaw’s, we can offer terms bigger firms won’t.
Plaintiff instincts sharpen defense work, and the reverse.
Because we prosecute on contingency, we know how plaintiffs’ firms value cases, build damages, and decide when to settle – and our defense clients get the benefit. Because we defend the same claims on flat fees, our contingency cases are built from day one to survive the motions defense counsel will actually file. Few firms are at home on both sides. We are.
How we take cases on contingency → Iron Ark Funding: how we fund cases →
Where corporate disputes are decided.
Delaware is the center of gravity for corporate and M&A litigation, and many of our cases are litigated there. We have litigated cases in the Delaware Court of Chancery, the Delaware Superior Court, the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, and the Delaware Supreme Court – alongside Delaware counsel who share in the contingency fee.
Delaware litigationWhy
Iron Ark.
Iron Ark is built around a different question: not how to bill more hours, but how to win the cases we choose to take on. On contingency matters, when the client loses, so do we.
The lawyers you hire do the work.
Scale makes most firms more expensive and rewards them for billing hours and handing the work to junior lawyers. We reject that model. The lawyer you retain is the lawyer drafting your brief and trying your case – and when we add network counsel, that lawyer is still directing them.
Fees aligned with outcomes.
We don’t bill open-ended hours. Engagements are flat fees by phase, contingency, or hybrid arrangements, with scope and assumptions set before each stage begins.
We read the deal the way the deal team wrote it.
M&A fluency and two decades of securities and deal litigation are built into the firm. That shapes how we build every case.
AI-augmented from intake through appeal.
Our proprietary AI process – the engine of the Iron Ark Method – supports case assessment, document review, deposition preparation, research, briefing, and trials. It was built around the way we litigate and is refined across the matters we take on. AI gives our lawyers scale and speed – an extension of their work and judgment, never a replacement for it.
Diverse Backgrounds.
Unique Strategy.
A securities and M&A litigator with two decades of high-stakes work in state and federal courts and arbitrations across the United States, including Delaware’s Court of Chancery, Superior, District, and Supreme Courts. An M&A partner who advises on the corporate and Delaware-law dimensions of every dispute the firm litigates.
Brian C. Kerr
Securities
Brian represents companies, boards, senior executives, founders, entrepreneurs, investment funds, and institutional investors in high-stakes disputes that arise from M&A, corporate transactions, securities, partnerships, governance, and other business relationships. His practice covers Delaware fiduciary-duty claims, post-closing disputes, purchase and partnership agreements, reps and warranties, indemnification, valuation, and fraud – the cases where the deal documents, the financial analysis, and the corporate record decide who wins.
Roughly twenty years on the plaintiff side, plus nearly a decade at a leading international firm, shape how he works. Having pressed claims for institutional investors and shareholders and defended companies whose survival was on the line, he knows how sophisticated counterparties size up risk, put a number on a claim, and decide what to do when a deal or investment goes wrong. Billions of dollars in claimed damages and recoveries have turned on his work – among them a landmark securities-fraud trial that ended in a unanimous jury verdict estimated at more than $9 billion. On defense, he represented a corporation sued in two separate billion-dollar cases over alleged breaches of reps and warranties in mortgage-purchase agreements; both were thrown out on summary judgment, and both rulings held up on appeal.
He has litigated cases in the Delaware Court of Chancery, the Delaware Superior Court, the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, and the Delaware Supreme Court – as well as state and federal courts nationwide, including in New York, California, and Texas, and cross-border proceedings. At Iron Ark, he leads the firm’s litigation and its case selection.
Eli Albrecht
& Delaware Governance
Boards, buyers, sellers, and sponsors rely on Eli for the M&A and corporate side of the firm’s litigation – Delaware fiduciary-duty questions, deal-structure choices that drive post-closing exposure, and the corporate record that turns into the trial record when a deal goes wrong.
Before founding Albrecht Law, Eli practiced M&A at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and DLA Piper, and he has since closed hundreds of transactions representing billions in aggregate deal value, for private equity funds, independent sponsors, family offices, searchers, and buyers and sellers of businesses. That experience comes straight into the case: Eli has negotiated these exact provisions, on these kinds of deals, across the table from many of the sponsors and firms that later appear in post-closing disputes.
Eli is also Managing Partner of Albrecht Law, a separate firm that advises on complex transactions on a fixed-fee model with broken-deal forgiveness.
Eli’s earlier career included service in the IDF special forces. He holds a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and a B.S. in business, with high honors, from Johns Hopkins.
The team behind
the team.
The fair question for any boutique: are you big enough for my case? Our answer is structural. The lawyers you hire keep the case. A vetted network gives them reach.
The lead team owns the case.
We set the strategy, take the key depositions, argue the motions, and try the case. If we bring another lawyer onto your matter, we tell you who they are and what they will do before they start. Nothing is filed or sent to the other side until the lead team has reviewed it.
Local counsel where the case has to be fought.
We work with battle-tested litigators across the country – lawyers we know by their work – to take the fight to whatever state your matter must be pursued or defended in. We work with local counsel who know their role, and know how to work with us in the local jurisdiction to litigate your case – whether complex or straightforward.
Three lawyers or twenty.
Whether a case needs a small team or a large one, we have run that race before and have the people to run it again. The team is sized to the goal of the case, not the size of the firm – and when a contingency case needs scale, attorneys from our network join us on contingency too.
The fee keeps its shape.
Network work is priced inside the structure agreed at engagement – the phase fee, the contingency percentage, or the hybrid – not billed to you as a second set of hours. Any division of fees is disclosed to you and agreed in writing.
Common questions.
Is a boutique big enough to handle my case?
Yes – because Iron Ark is not limited to its own headcount. Senior lawyers lead every matter and keep control of strategy, depositions, motions, and trial. When a case needs lawyers in another state, a specialist, appellate counsel, or more hands, we add counsel from our network – three lawyers or twenty. Their cost sits inside the fee we agree at the start, so scaling up doesn’t mean a second set of hourly bills.
Who will actually work on my matter?
Senior lawyers at Iron Ark will handle your matter from the first call through resolution. They set the strategy, take the key depositions, argue the motions, and try the case. If we bring in counsel from our network, we tell you who they are and what they will do before they start. Nothing is filed or sent to the other side until the lead team has reviewed it.
Do you represent founders in disputes with their board or investors?
Yes. Representing founders is a core part of our practice. Our work includes removal and “for cause” disputes, fights over control, voting, and protective provisions, dilution and down rounds, vesting and repurchase rights, and claims tied to founding the business and selling it. Strong founder claims can be taken on contingency.
How does Iron Ark charge?
Flat fees by litigation phase, contingency, or a hybrid of the two. We don’t bill open-ended hours. Scope and assumptions for each phase are set in writing before the phase begins.
The buyer of my company won’t pay the earnout. Can you help?
Yes. We represent founders and sellers pursuing earnouts – when a buyer reports a shortfall, changes how the business is run or how the numbers are counted, or stops paying. Purchase agreements often set short deadlines to object to an earnout statement, so it is worth talking early. We take earnout claims on a fixed fee, on contingency, or a hybrid. Earnout disputes for founders & sellers.
Do you take business cases on contingency?
Yes – at both ends of the range: moderate-size claims that hourly billing would price out, and $100 million-plus cases where the other side has one of the country’s largest firms. Class actions too, when they are worth bringing. We take a case on contingency when the liability theory holds up against the documents, the damages can be proven, and the defendant can pay. We underwrite each case before accepting it and turn down more than we take.
On contingency matters, depending on how the case underwrites, we can also carry the costs of the case, as set out in the engagement letter. How we take cases on contingency.
Why don’t you list more of your results?
Many of our best results are confidential settlements. We don’t publish them, and the terms usually forbid it. The public record – including a unanimous jury verdict estimated at more than $9 billion and two billion-dollar cases dismissed on summary judgment and affirmed on appeal – is on our lawyers’ profiles. Ask us about the rest when we talk; we’ll share what we can.
Where do you handle contingency business litigation?
Across the United States. Our lawyers have pending or recently active cases in state and federal court and in arbitration – in Delaware, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, Texas, and elsewhere. Brian C. Kerr is admitted in Connecticut and New York and Eli Albrecht in the District of Columbia and Maryland. Wherever a case requires our work, we work with local counsel or seek admission for the case, subject to court approval.
What if my matter cannot wait?
Put the date in the inquiry form’s deadline field, or email matters@ironark.com directly. A TRO, an injunction, an earnout payment date, a board vote – we treat deadlines accordingly.
Tell us about
your matter.
We answer inquiries fast. If your matter is time-sensitive – a TRO, an injunction, an earnout payment date, a board vote – put the date in the form’s deadline field and we will move accordingly.
- New Matters matters@ironark.com