| “ | Mike: This guy's kind of a badass. Harvey: You want me to get you an autograph? Mike: No, I'm just respecting our foe. |
” |
—Mike Ross and Harvey Specter | ||
Travis Tanner is a lawyer who graduated from Yale at the top of his class and is currently a senior partner with Smith & Devane.
Background
Travis Tanner was originally a senior partner of Clyde-MacPhee in Boston. Tanner first challenges Harvey Specter in a case on a petroleum firm and loses. He is said to be an exceptional tennis player, a similarity with Louis Litt.
Travis later returns in Discovery, opening up a case that Harvey closed 4 years before. On top of it, he also sues Harvey and Pearson Hardman for fraud for burying evidence, with his main settlement terms being Harvey's disbarment.
Knowing that a trial puts Harvey's career at risk, Mike digs up dirt on Tanner, looking for anything illegal on any of his cases. When Daniel Hardman sees what Mike was doing, he offers to help and apparently finds one. Daniel then uses it to blackmail Tanner into backing down on his request for Harvey's disbarment, but aggravates the terms for the firm's partners by making them pay more for damages.
It is later revealed that Hardman had actually indirectly hired Tanner to execute the CM fraud case for him by giving Tanner the fake CM document that led him to re-opening the case and accusing Harvey and the firm of fraud, and that Tanner settled because Hardman pointed out to him that the document was a fraud. Harvey later taunts him into a boxing match and gets him to tell him about it.
Tanner later returns to represent Ava Hessington in Stay.