Former CFTC senior counsel Danielle Abada joins Mayer Brown
Mayer Brown has hired former Commodity Futures Trading Commission senior counsel Danielle Abada for its New York office. Abada's practice will cover event contracts and artificial intelligence, the law firm said. She previously represented financial institutions in private practice before her government service. Bloomberg Law AI assisted in producing the report of the hire. The move comes as event-contract platforms face intensifying state and federal legal pressure.
Mayer Brown is building specialized firepower for the prediction-markets fight at the exact moment CFTC-registered platforms are bleeding in state courts. Abada arrives with insider knowledge of how the CFTC staffs event-contract enforcement and rulemaking desks. For Kalshi and Polymarket, that means a competitor-side lawyer now has a pipeline into their regulator's recent thinking.
The hire signals that Big Law expects the battle over federal preemption to deepen and remain profitable. Firms that landed platform clients early are now stacking commission alumni to defend them. Abada's AI focus also positions Mayer Brown for the next front: automated market-making and algorithmic trading scrutiny that the CFTC has not yet fully mapped.
Mayer Brown adds a CFTC veteran to its defense bench as platforms like Kalshi face state gambling-framing suits that have already stripped federal preemption shields in Ohio and Tennessee.