John Cleaves

John Cleaves is a Managing Director in the Trial & Arbitration Support group within the Dispute Advisory Services segment at FTI Consulting. Based in San Diego, Mr. Cleaves has more than 25 years of experience supporting trials in state and federal courts across the country and overseas and has worked on matters involving a wide variety of subjects for industry-leading clients, including technology titans, pharmaceutical giants, entertainment icons and manufacturing moguls.

Mr. Cleaves has recently supported trials that involved claims related to commercial (breach of contract, insurance), IP (theft of trade secrets, patent), securities (FINRA), land use (pipeline, wind farm and construction), environmental, antitrust, white collar and probate. He has been to trial throughout England and the United States, including California, Hawaii, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Iowa, Missouri, Florida, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Washington, D.C. He has worked with a number of Big Law and boutique firms, including Latham & Watkins, Irell & Manella, Skadden Arps, Jones Day, Willkie Farr, Davis Wright and Bird Marella, among others.

Prior to joining FTI Consulting, Mr. Cleaves created and managed the internal trial consulting team at Latham & Watkins. In that role, he provided hot seat and graphics assistance to partners throughout the firm, personally hot-seating approximately 50 trials and arbitrations while supervising the hot seat support of more than 150 additional matters. He consulted on and created demonstrative graphics dozens of times each year for matters in the firm’s various litigation practice areas. Mr. Cleaves also managed the e-discovery team at Latham & Watkins for four years and is knowledgeable on collections, processing, hosting, reviewing and producing electronic documents.

In addition to his experience as a consultant, Mr. Cleaves practiced law for seven years in Houston, Texas, where he worked in various aspects of litigation including discovery and depositions and participated in six jury trials along with a number of hearings.

Mr. Cleaves is the creator of several software programs that assist in litigation and is the author of “Demonstratives: Making Effective Graphics for Trial,” published by the National Institute for Trial Advocacy.