David J. Grais is one of New York’s leading lawyers for the trial of complex financial and technical disputes. In 30 years of practice, Mr. Grais has seen an unusual percentage of his cases actually go to trial or hearing and has won several dozen trials, preliminary injunction hearings, and arbitrations.

Since mid-2007, Mr. Grais has focused on the legal aspects of recent turmoil in the credit markets. Mr. Grais is the author of "'I Can Resist Everything Except Temptation': Undisclosed Effects of Moral Hazard in Recent Subprime-Backed Securities," presented at the Mealey’s Subprime-Backed Securities Litigation Conference in March 2008, which Mr. Grais chaired, and of the widely discussed article "Not 'The World’s Shortest Editorial': Why the First Amendment Does Not Shield the Rating Agencies from Liability for Over-Rating CDOs," published in Bloomberg Law Reports. Mr. Grais is leading the firm’s work on a class action against Countrywide Financial Corporation on behalf of investors in its securitizations of subprime mortgage loans.

Over the last several decades, Mr. Grais has handled disputes involving virtually all aspects of reinsurance, including most recently the accounting treatment of finite reinsurance, as well as fraud in the sale of equity and various asset-backed debt securities. He has also tried cases involving the performance of complex computer, satellite, telecom, and other technical systems. Chambers USA describes Mr. Grais as an "aggressive and proactive lawyer and a brilliant thinker."

Mr. Grais is a member of the American Law Institute and has written and spoken widely on reinsurance, information technology, and civil procedure. Before starting in private practice, he served as a law clerk to the late Honorable Milton Pollack, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York. Mr. Grais was educated at The Yale Law School (J.D. 1978), where he was an articles editor of The Yale Law Journal; Balliol College of the University of Oxford (M. Phil. 1975); and Princeton University (A.B. magna cum laude 1973).

Outside the office, Mr. Grais is a director of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Westchester and Hudson Valley chapter, and a former director of the Musica Sacra Chorus and Orchestra and the Battery Dance Company.