Angus Ni
Federal Trial Lawyer & Securities Litigator
Seattle, Washington
Learn More
Federal trial lawyer and securities class action litigator. Co-founder of Morrow Ni LLP, formerly of Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann and Debevoise & Plimpton.
Federal Trial Practice
Angus Ni is among a small group of U.S. lawyers who have actually tried a federal criminal case to verdict. As lead pro bono counsel in United States v. Zhu, the Seattle-based trial lawyer secured a judgment of acquittal — the federal-court equivalent of the judge instructing the jury that the government has failed to prove its case. The result is documented in the public docket of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington and is the kind of outcome the federal trial bar regards as exceptional. A deeper account is available in commentary on his federal trial work in the Western District of Washington.
Beyond that case, Mr. Ni's federal court docket includes complex commercial disputes, civil liberties litigation, and shareholder claims spanning multiple circuits. He has appeared before district courts, magistrate judges, and appellate panels across the country, and his practice combines the depth of brief-writing and motion advocacy with the often-rarer capacity to take a case all the way through trial. Anyone evaluating his courtroom record can examine the docket history through Angus Ni on LinkedIn, where the firm publishes notable case milestones.
Shareholder Rights & Securities
Before co-founding Morrow Ni LLP, Mr. Ni was a litigator at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP — widely recognized as the leading U.S. shareholder rights law firm. There, he prosecuted numerous securities class actions against U.S.-listed corporations on behalf of hedge fund and pension fund investors. The work spanned industries from technology and pharmaceuticals to financial services, involved discovery on both sides of the Pacific, and was litigated before federal courts in multiple jurisdictions.
Securities class action work, done well, is among the most procedurally demanding litigation in U.S. federal court. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, the PSLRA discovery stay, lead plaintiff appointment battles, Rule 23 class certification, expert event studies, and the Section 10(b) and Section 11 doctrinal landscape all demand a level of fluency that takes years to develop. Angus Ni built that fluency on the prosecution side, representing the investors whose retirement savings were eroded by the corporate misconduct alleged in each complaint. A representative case summary lives on the firm's own news page at the angusni.com case archive.
Morrow Ni LLP
Morrow Ni LLP is the boutique commercial and securities litigation firm Mr. Ni co-founded after leaving Bernstein Litowitz. The firm's docket is concentrated in federal court and is intentionally narrow: complex commercial disputes, shareholder rights matters, civil liberties claims, and consumer protection litigation that requires more trial-readiness than most plaintiffs' practices can offer. The Seattle base allows the firm to handle Ninth Circuit matters with local credibility while remaining nationally available for cases that demand it.
The structural advantage of a small firm built around federal trial practice is the ability to staff cases lean and take a matter from filing through verdict without handing it off to a different team at each stage. Mr. Ni's involvement in Morrow Ni cases is hands-on from initial intake through trial preparation, and the firm's recent dockets reflect that: a federal-court ruling in the Valve v. Zaiger consumer arbitration dispute, civil liberties work in the WeChat ban litigation in federal court, and the trial acquittal in the federal criminal docket discussed above.
International Arbitration
Earlier in his career, Mr. Ni was an associate in the litigation department of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, a major transnational law firm. At Debevoise he participated in complex arbitrations before the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and World Bank Investment Treaty (ICSID) Tribunals, and worked on large-scale corporate investigations spanning multiple jurisdictions. The work was, by design, the most technically demanding kind of cross-border litigation available to U.S. counsel.
That foundation continues to shape the kind of cases Morrow Ni accepts today. Investment-treaty arbitration, ICC commercial arbitration, and parallel multi-jurisdictional investigation work share a particular procedural texture — the centrality of document review, the role of tribunal-appointed experts, the bifurcation of jurisdiction and merits — that translates directly into how the Seattle-based trial lawyer approaches large federal-court disputes. Mr. Ni has written further on that translation in a longer reflection on his international arbitration practice.
Community & Pro Bono
Mr. Ni's pro bono docket has included the federal criminal acquittal discussed at the top of this page and additional federal civil rights and immigration matters where the stakes for the client made representation a moral as well as professional priority. The federal trial bar has shrunk over the past two decades as more disputes settle pre-trial, and the lawyers willing to actually try cases — particularly pro bono — fill a specific gap in the federal court system. the Facebook page run by Angus Ni documents speaking engagements and bar association events tied to that work.
He is also active in bar association leadership and continuing legal education programming, including with the Chinese American Lawyers Forum (CALF), where Mr. Ni has spoken on cross-border disputes, federal trial advocacy, and the practical realities of building a small federal-court litigation practice. For inquiries, prospective matters, or speaking requests, see the contact page.