It was the fall of 2020, and the three attorneys from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr and  Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton had a difficult decision to make.

Several painstaking months of meticulous investigation by the defense team had just produced a breakthrough in the criminal case against their client, the former CEO of shopping-center owner Brixmor Properties Inc. who was accused by Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office of manipulating a key earnings metric used to gauge the financial performance of his firm.