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Rachel Fleder

Associate
Rachel Fleder's headshot
Rachel Fleder Associate
Rachel Fleder focuses her practice on complex commercial litigation and white collar defense relating to cryptocurrency, digital assets and securities.

Rachel’s experience includes defending and advising companies and individuals in investigations and enforcement actions by the Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and state regulators. She also has experience representing individuals in civil litigation, as well as conducting internal investigations and assessing compliance and litigation risks.

Rachel has a strong commitment to public service and pro bono work. Her pro bono practice has involved representing an incarcerated woman in her application for resentencing under the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act and documentary film organizations in a suit challenging U.S. Department of State rules pursuant to the First Amendment and Administrative Procedure Act.

Prior to joining Morrison Cohen, Rachel was a litigation associate at a major international law firm and litigation boutique and clerked for the Hon. Ona T. Wang in the Southern District of New York. Before law school, she worked as a paralegal at the New York County District Attorney’s Office.
 

Experience

White collar and regulatory enforcement defense

  • Counsel for Web3 development companies and Foundations in non-public SEC investigations, including through the Wells process, which concluded with no enforcement action
  • Counsel for Jonathan Mann and Brian L. Frye in a preemptive suit against the SEC seeking a declaratory judgment that their proposed NFT projects do not violate federal securities law
  • Counsel for former executive of a cryptocurrency exchange in a DOJ investigation into AML issues
  • Counsel for individual cryptocurrency trader in an asset seizure and market manipulation investigation by the DOJ
  • Counsel for several individuals related to a DeFi platform manipulation attack
  • Counsel for multiple cryptocurrency companies in DOJ investigations of other parties’ alleged criminal activity
  • Counsel for digital payments company in a New York State Attorney General investigation

Class action, commercial and bankruptcy-related litigation

  • Counsel for Dragonfly Digital Management and Robot Ventures in a putative class action in the Northern District of California alleging unregistered sales of the LDO token as a security
  • Counsel for Phantom Technologies, Inc. in litigation in the Southern District of Florida against an individual who claimed that SOL tokens were stolen by a third party from his self-custodial wallet 
  • Counsel for Mohammad Nawaaz Meerun in adversary proceeding in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware brought by the FTX estate in connection with margin trading on FTX exchange
  • Counsel for Compound Labs, Inc., Robert Leshner and Geoffrey Hayes in adversary proceeding in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York brought by the Celsius estate related to a protocol price oracle

Amicus brief advocacy

  • Counsel for Crypto Council for Innovation in the U.S. Supreme Court concerning the application to the digital assets industry of the extraterritoriality doctrine set forth in the Supreme Court’s landmark Morrison v. Nat’l Australia Bank Ltd., in support of a petition for a writ of certiorari

Recognition

  • Recipient, Sanctuary for Families’ Above & Beyond Award for Excellence in Pro Bono Advocacy, 2021
  • Harvard Law School
    • Development Chair and Editorial Board, Harvard Journal of Law & Gender
Rachel Fleder's headshot

Practices

Sectors

Education

  • Harvard Law School, J.D.
  • Duke University, B.A., summa cum laude

Bar Admissions

  • New York
  • U.S. Supreme Court
  • U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York
  • U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York

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