When Japanese gaming billionaire Kazuo Okada hired elite litigation boutique Bartlit Beck in 2017, he was in a difficult spot.

For five years, he’d been locked in a billion-dollar battle with Wynn Resorts, which had ousted him from its board and forcibly redeemed his shares. Trial was six months away, and a series of adverse rulings—not to mention a finding of fact by the trial court judge in Nevada that he “was not a credible witness”—left Okada’s prospects for recovery dim.