- BakerHostetler has launched a dedicated Crypto Asset Disputes team.
- It will handle litigation, enforcement, insolvency, asset recovery and cross-border matters involving digital assets.
- The move builds on the firm’s Web3 practice, launched in 2018, and reflects the growing specialization of crypto-related legal work as digital assets become more integrated with traditional finance.
BakerHostetler is carving out a dedicated practice for crypto-related litigation, reflecting how disputes involving digital assets are becoming a more established part of corporate and financial law.
The US law firm on Tuesday launched a Crypto Asset Disputes team covering litigation and arbitration involving cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology and emerging digital markets. The practice will be led by New York partner Joanna F. Wasick, a founding member of BakerHostetler’s broader Web3 and Digital Assets team.
BakerHostetler says it is the first Am Law 100 firm to establish a dedicated Crypto Asset Disputes team.
The distinction is narrower than being the first major law firm to handle crypto litigation. Several large firms already maintain substantial digital-asset litigation practices, including Latham & Watkins, McDermott Will & Schulte, Skadden and Greenberg Traurig.
What BakerHostetler is doing is formally separating disputes into a specialist team within a crypto practice it has been building for years.
“Crypto disputes are no longer an emerging issue; they are a core business risk for market participants across the digital asset ecosystem,” Wasick said.
“BakerHostetler has been litigating and arbitrating crypto asset disputes for years, across commercial, regulatory, insolvency and enforcement matters,” she added. “This team provides a formal platform for those capabilities and brings together BakerHostetler’s deep litigation bench, technical fluency and practical experience in digital assets to help clients navigate disputes that often move quickly, cross borders and involve novel questions of law and technology.”
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From crypto regulation to crypto litigation
The new practice will cover commercial and tort disputes, securities and commodities litigation, regulatory investigations, enforcement actions, asset tracing, bankruptcy disputes and cross-border proceedings.
Those categories illustrate how crypto litigation has expanded beyond early disputes over token sales or whether particular digital assets qualify as securities.
Crypto platforms and investors now face questions involving ownership in bankruptcy, fraud recovery, sanctions, commodities rules, contractual obligations and the treatment of assets that can move across jurisdictions within minutes.
The bankruptcy failures of Celsius, FTX and BlockFi helped expose some of those unresolved questions. Courts have had to address issues including whether customer crypto belongs to an insolvent company, how claims should be valued and when digital assets should be valued during bankruptcy proceedings.
Asset recovery adds another layer.
Unlike conventional financial assets held through identifiable intermediaries, stolen or disputed cryptocurrency can move through multiple wallets, blockchains and jurisdictions. That can require lawyers to combine conventional litigation tools with blockchain analysis and asset tracing.
BakerHostetler’s existing Web3 practice already lists litigation, arbitration and regulatory enforcement among its services, drawing on the firm’s wider litigation organization.
The new team therefore represents an organizational shift more than an entirely new legal capability.
An eight-year buildout
BakerHostetler’s move follows an expansion into digital-asset law that began well before the latest institutional push into crypto.
Its Web3 and Digital Assets team was established in 2018. Its work now spans blockchain protocols, token issuers, decentralized-finance projects, NFTs, regulatory matters, enforcement and disputes.
In 2020, BakerHostetler created its Digital Assets and Data Management Practice Group, bringing together areas including privacy, cybersecurity, emerging technology and digital assets. The group now includes more than 100 attorneys and technologists, according to the firm.
Its crypto work also became increasingly tied to financial-market regulation.
In December 2024, BakerHostetler launched its Digital and Innovative Markets team to advise clients where traditional securities, commodities, derivatives and crypto markets overlap. The practice covers regulatory strategy, enforcement, transactions, market structure and product development.
BakerHostetler said Tuesday that Isabelle Corbett Sterling will now lead that team.
Both the Digital and Innovative Markets group and the new disputes practice will operate alongside the firm’s Web3 and Digital Assets team, led by partner Robert A. Musiala Jr.
Chambers currently ranks BakerHostetler in Band 3 nationally for FinTech Legal: Blockchain & Cryptocurrencies, describing the firm as active in blockchain and cryptocurrency matters including regulatory enforcement and product launches.
Why Does It Matter?
The creation of a specialist disputes group is another indication that crypto is being treated less as an isolated technology practice and more like an established financial market capable of generating its own recurring litigation.
That matters to law firms because the legal needs of the sector are changing.
During the earlier phases of crypto adoption, much of the legal work centered on token launches, securities classifications and regulatory interpretation. The market now also generates bankruptcies, enforcement cases, commercial disputes, fraud claims, asset-recovery proceedings and conflicts involving products that cross between traditional and blockchain-based finance.
The legal industry is already adapting.
Latham & Watkins is ranked Band 1 by Chambers for US crypto-asset disputes and combines that work with a broader Digital Assets & Web3 practice. McDermott Will & Schulte is also ranked Band 1 for Crypto-Asset Disputes and says its crypto lawyers handle litigation, investigations, transactions and regulatory strategy.
Skadden similarly advises digital-asset companies and investors in securities and commercial litigation and arbitration, while Greenberg Traurig operates a global Blockchain & Digital Assets group comprising more than 100 lawyers across different disciplines.
That means BakerHostetler’s launch is not evidence that large law firms are only now discovering crypto disputes.
Instead, it points to the next stage of specialization: firms reorganizing existing crypto expertise into narrower practices built around litigation, financial-market regulation and other recurring areas of client demand.
Ted Kobus, who leads BakerHostetler’s Digital Assets and Data Management Practice Group, said understanding cryptocurrency alone is no longer sufficient.
“Clients need advisers who understand how digital assets intersect with data, technology, regulation and enterprise risk,” he said. “These teams bring those capabilities together under one roof, allowing us to provide practical, business-focused counsel from prevention through resolution.”
For BakerHostetler, the trajectory has moved from a broad blockchain practice in 2018, to a wider digital-assets and data organization in 2020, a financial-markets-focused team in 2024, and now a practice devoted specifically to disputes.
That progression mirrors a larger change in crypto itself: the legal questions are increasingly about what happens when digital assets become embedded in ordinary financial and commercial activity — and when those transactions go wrong.
The above article “BakerHostetler Builds Dedicated Crypto Litigation Team as Digital Asset Disputes Grow” was first published on AlexaBlockchain. Read the complete article here: https://alexablockchain.com/bakerhostetler-builds-dedicated-crypto-litigation-team/
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