Phillips was born and grew up in Leechburg, Pennsylvania, a small steel mill town in western Pennsylvania. His grandparents emigrated from Italy in the early 1900s. Their family name was Americanized and changed from "Filippi" to "Phillips." Phillips received a B.A. degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1966 and a J.D. degree in 1969 from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, where he was a member of the editorial board of the California Law Review.
Professional career
Phillips joined the Los Angeles, California, law firm of O'Melveny & Myers as an associate in 1969. After two years, he left to start one of the first Ford Foundation-funded public interest law firms, the Center for Law in the Public Interest, in Los Angeles with three former colleagues.
Center for Law in the Public Interest
Phillips was co-director of CLIPI for 17 years. During that time, the firm was a major force litigating landmark environmental, civil rights, consumer protection and corporate fraud and accountability cases. Some of its court cases include the following:
Won consumer class actions suit against Toyota Motors resulting in a recall and repair of a brake problem in Toyota's first Camry model and consumer class action against Sprint for overcharging its customers.
Whistleblower work
Phillips played a significant role in the creation of the US government's whistleblower reward program designed to encourage private citizens to expose and stop fraud against the government. He worked closely with Sen. Charles Grassley and then-Rep. Howard Berman to secure congressional passage of the amended False Claims Act with "qui tam" provisions which were signed into law by President Reagan in October 1986. The law has become the government's primary tool in holding accountable corporations that have defrauded the U.S. government. Phillips started a private law practice, Phillips & Cohen LLP, in Los Angeles and later moved it to Washington, DC, and opened an office in San Francisco. Shortly after passage of the amended False Claims Act, Phillips founded in 1986 Taxpayers Against Fraud, a non-profit group that is dedicated to educating the public about government whistleblower programs and advancing public and government support for whistleblower cases.
Phillips invested in a group of houses in Tuscany in 2001 that were more than 800 years old and were in a ruined state. He spent eight years restoring and improving the buildings and grounds, following strict historic preservation rules. The Borgo Finocchieto, which has a total of 22 bedrooms, is designed to host groups, small conferences and educational programs, loosely based on the Aspen Institute model. Phillips was a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Academy in Rome from 2009 to 2013. He rejoined the board in March 2017 after he stepped down as ambassador. Before he became ambassador to Italy, he made more than 50 trips to Italy in the previous decade and has made approximately 100 separate trips to Italy in his lifetime.
