Eric Havian

PARTNER | HE, HIM, HIS

in | Office: 415 707 6855 | Direct: 415 707 6861

eric@whistleblower.law

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Eric Havian is a partner at Whistleblower Partners. He has spent thirty years representing whistleblowers in nearly every type of case, recovering over $250 million for dozens of his clients, and has received widespread recognition for this work through various awards and media reports.

Through his long career Eric has acted as lead counsel for some of the most successful whistleblowers reporting fraud in a broad range of industries, from dialysis to library books, from electric power to water pipes.

That journey began when Eric was the lead Assistant U.S. Attorney in San Francisco for defense procurement fraud. It continued when Eric entered private practice to represent whistleblowers in such diverse matters as fraud involving satellite technology, mischarging government programs, and most recently in a record breaking 2023 settlement with KBR for alleged Iraq war fraud.

Eric and his colleagues at Whistleblower Partners were also the first to develop a broad practice of representing not only the whistleblowers, but also the defrauded state and local governments who were victimized by defendants in False Claims Act cases. It has been very rewarding to see these government agencies trust our attorneys to represent their interests as well as our whistleblower clients.

Eric strongly believes that a whistleblower firm must be able to litigate matters that end up decided by a jury. He has deep experience and an extensive track record in the courtroom. Building on litigation skills developed as a federal prosecutor, Eric has litigated multiple successful court and jury trials, as well as successful appeals on behalf of whistleblowers.

Eric has also achieved success and recognition in other kinds of whistleblower cases. He worked with the Securities and Exchange Commission staff to help draft regulations that govern the SEC’s highly successful whistleblower rewards program. He has made numerous submissions on behalf of whistleblowers to the SEC, as well as other agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service.

“Surprisingly few lawyers wake up looking forward to their work day. When you represent clients doing the right thing, making a positive difference and not just money, it’s a great motivator. I wouldn’t want to do anything else.”

After winning a $224 million whistleblower verdict, Eric was selected by the National Law Journal as one of the Top 10 “Winning” Attorneys in the nation. Two years later, after a string of additional whistleblower case successes, California Lawyer Magazine named him a “California Lawyer of the Year.”

He has been selected multiple times as a Lawdragon Top 500 Lawyer in America, a Lawdragon Top 500 Plaintiff Financial Lawyer, and every year since 2005 as a “Super Lawyer.”

He has enjoyed mentoring law students in various contexts—as an Adjunct Professor teaching a fraud seminar at Stanford Law School and Berkeley Law School; and more recently as a Wasserstein Fellow at Harvard advising law students on careers in public interest law.

Eric graduated in the top 3% of his class at Stanford University and cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was one of two oralists on the team that won the Ames Moot Court competition.

Before law school, Eric worked for Bain & Company when that business consulting firm was in its infancy. He quickly decided business consulting was not for him, and headed off to law school.

Eric enjoys skiing, mountain biking, tennis, and grandchildren. Some get harder with age.