Robert E. Jordan

Partner

1330 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington DC 20036
TEL: 202.429.6290
FAX: 202.429.3902

Robert E. Jordan has been a partner at the Washington office of Steptoe & Johnson LLP, where he is a member of the Litigation Department, since leaving his position as General Counsel of the Department of the Army in 1971. A senior litigator, he has both trial and appellate experience before both courts and a number of federal and state administrative agencies.

Complex Litigation
Since joining Steptoe, Mr. Jordan has served as the lead counsel for clients in a number of complex litigation matters in state and federal courts and before federal and state administrative agencies.

Since 1991, Mr. Jordan has been involved in representing clients in courts and administrative agencies where the adversary was an alleged “whistleblower” who claimed to have been discharged or discriminated against because of “whistleblowing” to congressional committees or governmental agencies. Three of these cases have gone to trial with successful results for the client in every case.

In the last four years Mr. Jordan has been lead counsel for clients in three litigation matters involving the scope and sufficiency of environmental assessments for environmental impact statements for major projects. In one of these matters he was principally responsible for reviewing the work of consultants with regard to preparing a large and complex environmental assessment document. In early 2000 he won a major victory for ARCO Alaska, Inc. and Anadarko Petroleum Corporation in a National Environmental Policy Act ("NEPA") litigation involving a challenge to a major new oil development on the North Slope of Alaska. He led the litigation team in the major environmental suit regarding construction of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System, and in connection with that matter, was the outside counsel principally involved in dealing with issues concerning the adequacy of the draft and final environmental impact statements and in dealing with a large body of engineering and other consultants who were engaged in the effort.

Mr. Jordan led the litigation team for Atlantic Richfield Company in the FTC antitrust challenge to the structure of the petroleum industry, served as lead counsel for ARCO Pipe Line Company in a series of major proceedings involving oil pipeline rates, and has served as lead counsel in a variety of other major cases involving the valuation of oil from the North Slope of Alaska and DOE regulation of energy pricing. He has also litigated in federal court complex cases involving the price regulation of petroleum during the ’70s and ’80s. He has represented ARCO Chemical Company on antitrust and consumer protection issues at the Federal Trade Commission, and in related court litigation challenging a major acquisition.

During Mr. Jordan's ten years of government service in appointed positions, coupled with many years of practice in areas involving federal administrative law, he developed a broad knowledge of the ways in which imaginative use of the principles of federal administrative law can produce benefits for clients.

During his government service, Mr. Jordan was involved in a number of investigative congressional hearings and testified in a number of hearings. On a number of occasions since that time in private practice he has represented clients who were summoned for highly adversarial investigative hearings, educating those clients in the unique environment of such hearings, preparing high level executives for testimony at such hearings, and accompanying them as counsel at the hearings. His clients have included Morton Thiokol on hearings relating to the Challenger space mission accident and Alyeska Pipeline Service Company and the owners of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System with respect to a series of Congressional investigations, and related whistleblower litigation and major court actions.

Because of Mr. Jordan's educational background in engineering, mathematics and science, clients have often turned to him when technology or quantitative skills need to be combined with legal skills. He can "talk the talk" with company personnel and retained consultants in technical areas, and has demonstrated skills in converting scientific, engineering and mathematical concepts into terms capable of being understood by judges and others who lack a technical background.

Ethics and Professional Responsibility
For more than 20 years, Mr. Jordan has also represented law firms and individual clients in both advisory and litigation matters involving federal conflict-of-interest laws and legal ethics involving lawyers. He served on the Ethics Committee of the District of Columbia Bar in 1976-82 and chaired that Committee for four years. From 1983 through 1990, he served as Chair of the Bar's Special Committee on the Model Rules of Professional Conduct which was responsible for making recommendations concerning the adoption of the ABA's proposed Rules of Professional Conduct by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. During the Court's consideration of the DC Bar's recommendations, he also served as an advisor to the Board of Judges. In his practice he advises lawyers and law firms on a wide range of ethics and professional responsibility issues and appears as an expert witness on such issues.

Computer Technology
Mr. Jordan is a confirmed computer buff, and has since 1974 pioneered in the application of computer technology to the organization and management of complex litigation matters to improve efficiency and reduce costs. In recent years that interest has expanded to taking computers and sophisticated trial display systems into the courtroom, and he has used such presentation systems in trials since 1993. For the past several years he has led efforts at Steptoe to develop sophisticated document assembly programs to improve the firm's efficiency in creating both transaction documents and litigation documents. He also has had extensive experience in the discovery problems associated with electronic mail and other forms of computer-based information.

In addition to his ethics-related contributions to the District of Columbia Bar, Mr. Jordan also served as President of the District of Columbia Bar in 1987-88. He is a past president of the DC Bar Foundation, which provides grants to organizations providing legal services to those who cannot afford to pay for representation.

Noteworthy & Success Stories

Listed in Best Lawyers of America 2008 for Commercial Litigation and Corporate Law
President, District of Columbia Bar, 1987-1988
Chair, Ethics Committee of the District of Columbia Bar, 1978-1982
Chair, District of Columbia Bar's Special Committee on the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, 1983-1990

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