Dahlia Mignouna was a litigation associate in Munger, Tolles & Olson’s Washington, D.C., office from November 2017 to June 2019 and again from January 2021 to June 2023. Between her two stints at MTO, she served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and worked on the Biden-Harris transition team as a policy advisor. She joined the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) after she left MTO. Dahlia now serves in two roles for centers at NYU Law: as a senior attorney advisor for litigation at the Tax Law Center and as a senior fellow at the Center for Law and Public Trust. 

MTO Associate Sarah E. Weiner speaks with Dahlia about her work and how her time at MTO shaped her legal career. 

What led you to law school?  

As a kid, my nickname was pourquoi, the French word for “why.” I always asked questions, trying to understand the reasons behind things and debating people. The joke in my family is that I was always destined to be a lawyer. 

But family lore aside, as a Black person, a woman and an immigrant to this country (we moved here when I was 10), I’ve always been sensitive to the ways in which different power structures affect vulnerable communities — not just those I’m part of, but others too. I saw that in many real ways growing up. And I had a sense that understanding the law would help me understand why things happened as they did and learn how to protect communities that I saw being taken advantage of. 

What was your experience like in MTO’s D.C. office? 

I was the 11th lawyer in the D.C. office. We were just starting off and building the office, so no matter what I do in my life, MTO and the D.C. office will always have a very special place in my heart. My practice was a mix of appellate work and trial-level litigation. As a young lawyer, I loved that MTO provided me the opportunity to work on different things, from appellate briefs and dispositive motions to discovery and depositions — and didn’t limit my experience based on my appellate-focused resume.  

You transitioned back to government when you left MTO. Tell us about your government service. 

I was lucky enough to get a political appointee role at the DOJ working in the Associate’s Office, which oversees many parts of the DOJ, including all its civil litigation. I worked under two associate attorneys general, first Vanita Gupta and then Benjamin Mizer.  

I served as deputy chief of staff throughout my time there and later also became a deputy associate attorney general. The role required balancing a 10,000-foot view of what was going on across the department with digging deeply into specific issues the associate needed to address. Additionally, I helped the associate oversee several components, including the Tax Division and all three grantmaking components (the Office of Justice Programs, the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services and the Office on Violence Against Women).  

Now you’re a senior attorney advisor for litigation at the Tax Law Center of NYU Law. What does the Center do, and what does your role involve?  

The Tax Law Center brings a public interest perspective to tax law. The tax system is incredibly complicated, and private interests can use that complexity to their advantage, reducing the revenue the government requires to address public needs. The Center provides a much-needed counterweight and voice focused on protecting the tax system as a whole. 

I’m on the litigation team. Part of what we do is direct engagement in court cases, so we file amicus briefs when our expertise is needed and the courts may not otherwise hear an important public-interest perspective. But one of the things I particularly like is that our work goes beyond that. For example, we also advise our colleagues and try to educate the public on court decisions and doctrinal developments that could affect tax law and administration.  

My focus is administrative and constitutional law. Drawing on my background, I look at how legal developments could affect the tax system, including changes where implications for tax law aren’t yet obvious.  

Can you give an example of an issue where the Center might weigh in? 

One example is the current administration’s efforts to share IRS taxpayer information for immigration enforcement, which in several cases seems to have violated the laws protecting taxpayer privacy.  

There are many advocacy organizations working in the immigration space, but the intersection between immigration and the tax system’s privacy protections is an area where we have significant expertise to add. The Center brought that expertise to the issue and published explanations of the statutory protections.  

In addition to your role at the Center, in April you also started as a senior fellow at the Center for Law and Public Trust. Can you tell us about your role there? 

The Center for Law and Public Trust was founded by my former boss at the DOJ, Vanita Gupta. It aims to address the fundamental breakdown in trust that Americans have in public institutions by identifying which systems, policies and reforms are needed to rebuild that trust and by developing concrete blueprints for institutional reform.  

I’m working on the Rebuilding Justice Project, which brings together senior officials from Democratic and Republican administrations to develop proposals for rebuilding the DOJ. That project addresses issues such as strengthening the career workforce, reestablishing DOJ’s independence from political interference and making it more effective and accountable in delivering for the American people. 

Another project I’m involved in is identifying avenues that a future pro-democracy executive branch could use to deliver practical solutions to the problems facing the American people in the current jurisprudential landscape. 

Your career has had a very strong focus on public interest, in somewhat trying times. What have you found most rewarding and most challenging about that? 

The rewarding part is easy to articulate. I always say this work feeds my soul. At the end of the day, I’m trying to think about ways to make policies and institutions better so they can deliver for real people, those both in and beyond the communities I identify with.  

The challenge is holding on to the belief that people trying to do good can make a difference, especially when so much of the news makes that difficult. I remind myself that the opportunities I’ve had were made possible by people facing far more hopeless circumstances but who refused to accept that things couldn’t change. 

Looking back at your time at MTO, what are some of the lessons or skills that you learned here that stayed with you? 

One of the most important lessons was to really listen before deciding what legal advice to give. I watched mentors at MTO step back from the litigation and ask clients what they actually needed — what would make their lives and work better. Then they shaped the legal strategy around that.  

I also saw lawyers take their commitments to pro bono work and their principles seriously. Seeing people live their values in their work was an important framework for me and helped shape the kind of lawyer I wanted to be. 

Outside of work, what passion projects or hobbies do you have?  

I love opera and musicals. I started taking classical voice lessons when we were deep in the pandemic in 2020, with no prior experience. 

Six years later, I’m still taking lessons and singing, and it’s very fun. My voice teacher keeps encouraging me to try out for a choir, but I’m resisting the urge to turn singing into another achievement-based endeavor. I want to keep doing it simply for the beauty and joy of it. 

Jerry Roth was a partner in Munger, Tolles & Olson’s San Francisco office from 1995 to 2022. He left an indelible mark on the firm during his tenure. Today, he runs Roth Global, an international arbitration, mediation, litigation and investigations consulting firm. 

In a conversation with MTO Partner Miriam Kim, Jerry talks about the early days of the San Francisco office, his current practice and his passion for opera. 

What first brought you to Munger, Tolles & Olson?  

I joined the San Francisco office in June 1995 as a partner. I had recently become a partner at McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Anderson, which later became part of Bingham McCutchen and ultimately disappeared. So I certainly made a good career move! MTO was recommended to me by another white-collar criminal law colleague, Dan Bookin, who told me that this was a fabulous opportunity to become a litigation partner in the San Francisco office. At that time, the office had wonderful litigation associates, but no litigation partner — only two environmental law partners, my mentors Pat Cafferty and Ron Hausmann, who cofounded the office.  

The subsequent development of the San Francisco office is what I’m most proud of in my professional career and perhaps my personal life. The office blossomed.  

We built the litigation practice in San Francisco from the ground up. We were able to attract extraordinary young lawyers, many of whom are now MTO partners. There was a deep investment by the youngest attorneys in the success and reputation of the office. In the space of 10 to 15 years, we became one of the most significant players in the San Francisco market and developed a national reputation that has stood us in great stead through the present day.  

What led to your decision to retire from the firm, and what have you been doing since? 

My practice changed over the years to become almost exclusively internationally focused, in large part because of my personal interest in foreign cultures, legal systems and especially languages. Linguistics and language have been a lifelong vocation for me. I took a year-long sabbatical in 2008 and received a French law degree from the University of Paris. Afterward, I had a series of wonderful global opportunities, including a Warner Brothers criminal case in France (referred to me by John Spiegel — I’m still very grateful) that led to other international criminal and civil cases. 

In 2022, I was no longer getting the same excitement from depositions, arguments and trials. I could see that the San Francisco office was fully self-sufficient and that younger partners were flourishing in their careers and were fully capable of leading the firm into the next decades. I felt it was time for me to step aside, leave them the reins and pursue my other interests, including international law, language and linguistics, travel and opera.  

I wanted to continue my international practice but focus on international arbitrations and consulting for companies involved in international criminal and civil litigation. I opened my own small firm called Roth Global. I joke that “global” refers to wherever I happen to be in the world at the time. 

I also became involved with FedArb, a San Francisco-based arbitral institution, where I head the European/Latin American/African desk.  

Tell us about the transition from working at MTO to international arbitration. Were there lessons you took from MTO that are relevant to your current roles? 

Retiring from the firm after 25 years was a mixed experience. In some ways, it was very liberating to be free of some firm obligations. Yet it was also a bit disorienting to find myself untethered from an institution that had been such an enormous part of my adult life. Not to get too New Agey, but I leaned into the process of trying to rediscover myself. It felt important to take the time to ask myself: What do I love to do? What don’t I like doing? And, at the end of the day, what matters to me?  

Starting Roth Global was a great landing pad for me. I was able to stay involved in the parts of legal practice I enjoyed — international law and arbitration, but it also gave me space to focus on other activities and passions, like language and opera. 

We’d love to hear more about those other activities. Can you tell us about your involvement in opera? 

I developed a genuine interest in music and opera over the years. I got involved in San Francisco’s contemporary opera scene, where I became a board member and ultimately chair of the board at Opera Parallèle, the modern opera company in the city. These roles introduced me to a whole world of composers, lyricists, singers, designers and other opera enthusiasts.  

After my term as board chair ended, I became a trustee of OPERA America, a national service organization for the opera field. It oversees more than 200 opera companies and supports the field nationally and internationally. Arts organizations are facing unprecedented challenges, so the organization also supports their capacity building, development efforts and creative decision-making. I’ve also been able to combine my legal expertise and passion by supporting opera companies on various legal compliance issues.  

When you were at the firm, you were instrumental in developing the Alumni Network. What led to the establishment of MTO’s alumni program?  

As I was approaching retirement, I realized that MTO didn’t have a well-developed “offboarding” process to ensure that people left the firm on a positive note, maintained their relationships and received support during the transition. I thought the firm could do more to help partners navigate the retirement process. 

At the same time, it was clear to me that we have some of the best, most impressive alumni around the world. I had worked with many young attorneys who later became law firm partners elsewhere, often looking for co-counsel relationships. Some became in-house lawyers or general counsel or pursued careers in academia or at impressive nongovernmental and legal organizations doing critical work to support the rule of law. I thought it was critical for the firm — and beneficial — to stay connected with those alumni as their careers developed over time.  

What are some of the highlights of the alumni program that you see as an alum?  

I’m thrilled to have maintained my relationships with so many people from the firm. That is a really important part of my post-MTO life. I love reading the newsletter. I pore over it. It brings back fond memories, and I’m always so impressed by the things people have gone on to do. The alumni events are a fantastic way to stay in touch with former colleagues, meet new alumni and stay connected with the firm. Finally, the Alumni Lunch Series is another fabulous program for learning what people have been up to.  

Any final thoughts you’d like to share?  

While at the firm, colleagues work together; however, there is also a bit of competition to climb the ladder and advance individually. And that’s the way it should be. But once I started heading into retirement, I noticed a shift in myself: Every firm accomplishment became something we all shared and, in that sense, felt like my own too — it belonged to all of us. 

Even now, the firm’s success and reputation feel like part of me. I take pride in that. The question is no longer, “Why am I not doing that?” Instead it’s, “Wow, look what we are doing now.” It’s a wonderful position to be in, and it helps make retirement all the richer.