Ralph Dado chairs Aronberg Goldgehn’s White Collar Investigations, Risk & Integrity practice, which he launched in 2025 after fifteen years at the international law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Ralph has guided companies, institutions, and individuals through some of the most significant crises of the past two decades and is often called on to lead mission-critical matters at the highest levels. His practice spans investigations, government enforcement defense, risk enhancement both proactively and after catastrophic incidents, research and academic integrity, and crisis management.

Ralph’s investigations work occurs at all levels of companies and other entities, including in the C-suite and at the board. Much of this work is non-public, but as a public example, Ralph investigated Valeant on behalf of its board regarding pharmacy and accounting issues following the Philidor scandal. In 2024, Ralph served as a member of the senior staff for the independent panel commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security at the direction of the president of the United States to conduct a security review of the attempted assassination of former President Trump in Butler, PA.

A substantial part of Ralph’s practice focuses on defending against government investigations and enforcement. As two public examples, he defended BP in the Department of Justice’s criminal investigation into the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) incident, and, in 2025, Ralph defended Boeing in DOJ’s criminal inquiry related to the 737 MAX incidents, the company’s deferred prosecution agreement, and other matters. Over his career, Ralph has defended companies in many sectors in actions involving, among others, the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), numerous U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, and various state agencies.

As an example of his safety and risk work, from 2017–2022, Ralph was a principal member of the team that monitored Pacific Gas & Electric after its conviction for the San Bruno pipeline explosion, where he focused on improving the company’s gas operations.  He has been at the forefront of the response to numerous catastrophic safety events, and he is actively working with Fortune 500 companies in this regard, including to proactively improve their risk and safety systems.  In the research and academic integrity arena, in 2023 Ralph completed the investigation of Stanford University’s president on behalf of Stanford’s board regarding allegations of research misconduct, and he has assisted various top 25 universities on integrity and leadership selection matters.

PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND

Before beginning practice, Ralph worked as a principal researcher and analyst for Judge Richard Posner and Professor William Landes. His contributions to their work are acknowledged in a number of published books, including The Behavior of Federal Judges: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Rational Choice (Posner, Landes, & Epstein, 2012); The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy (Posner, 2010); A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent Into Depression (Posner, 2009) and articles, including “Why (And When) Judges Dissent: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis” 3 J. Legal Analysis 101 (Posner, Landes, & Epstein, 2011); “Rational Judicial Behavior: A Statistical Study” 1 J. Legal Analysis 775 (Posner & Landes, 2009); and “Uncertainty Aversion and Economic Depressions” 52 Challenge 25 (Posner, 2009).

SPEECHES AND PUBLICATIONS

• Speaker, 38^th Annual DEKRA Safety in Action Conference, 2025 (Intersection of Risk, Safety, and Legal Considerations)

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