Legal Pad

Reed Smith Bags Fenwick Partner in Calif. Effort

It was one of those rare days when Robert Dellenbach, a Fenwick & West corporate partner, answered the phone himself.

“I picked it up thinking it was a client,” he said.

But it was Gary Miles, a recruiter, who tried to convince him to consider jumping to Reed Smith. Miles spoke of Reed Smith’s recent global expansion, and the quality lateral partners they’d been attracting in California.

Dellenbach was intrigued, so he agreed to attend a Cal basketball game with Miles, where the recruiter used the teamwork on the court as an analogy for Reed Smith’s approach.

Later, Dellenbach met John Iino, the head of the corporate and securities practice, and other senior management, who were equally enthusiastic about their California growth.

“I was probing and poking on the quality — what kind of lawyers are here?” he said.

Those meetings — and dealing with a Reed Smith attorney on a Fenwick matter — convinced Dellenbach, who starts today at Reed Smith’s San Francisco office.

Dellenbach adds to a long list of lateral hires in California in recent months.  In the past year, 1500-lawyer Reed Smith has added 17 lateral partners to its California offices, and management says this is just the beginning.  Leaders say rising profits and new international offices are transforming the firm once known in California as “that Pittsburgh firm.”

“Now, more people know our name in California,” Iino said. “The barrier to entry — that obstacle to recruit top talent — is gone.”

—  Kellie Schmitt

Confusion Soup on Diversity Gets Tangier

Whew. That was close. Legal Pad almost had to endure a day without a single government agency releasing statistics on judicial diversity. But just as 5 o’clock was starting to creep into sight -- bingo -- the Administrative Office of the Courts came through with its annual report (.pdf) on judicial demographics.

In a nutshell, California’s courts in 2007 looked very much like the courts of 2006: very white and very male. Here are the stats:

 

(Click on the graph to enlarge it.)

Note that the AOC’s ethnicity classifications are slightly different from those contained in reports released earlier this week (breakdowns in all their graphic glory here) by the governor and the State Bar, which makes informed comparisons, ahem, challenging shall we say. In case you’re wondering, 2007 saw a slight increase in the percentage of women on the bench -- up to 28.3 percent from 27.1.

Some other tidbits from the AOC’s 53-page report: Yuba (60 percent) and San Francisco (51 percent) superior courts had the highest share of women serving on the bench. Among trial courts with more than two judges, Imperial (44.4 percent) and Sacramento (42.9 percent) reported the highest percentage of non-white judges.

—  Cheryl Miller

New College Law School May Lose Accreditation

Now that New College of California has lost its Western Association of Schools and Colleges accreditation, its law school stands to lose its accreditation from the State Bar, too.

Law students, staff and faculty, who continue working without pay since the Department of Education froze $2 million in federal funds last fall, are waiting to see what the Committee of Bar Examiners of the State Bar, which accredits state law schools, decides to do.

WASC announced in a letter dated Feb. 26 and leaked here that it was pulling New College of California’s accreditation. WASC president Ralph Wolff’s executive assistant today confirmed the legitimacy of the letter to LegalPad, saying that it wasn’t meant to be public. The sfist.com says it got the letter from a former New College student.

George Riemer, director of educational standards for the Committee of Bar Examiners, paid New College law school a visit Feb. 26 to reassess its compliance with educational standards. In the next few weeks, the Committee of Bar Examiners will decide whether its accreditation should stay in place.

“Our decision is independent of what WASC does, but some of the issues are the same,” said Gayle Murphy, the committee’s senior executive for admissions.

The committee had reaffirmed the law school’s accreditation in March 2006, after a routine visit which happens every five years, but WASC’s move raised new concerns, Murphy said.

“What’s of ultimate concern is the impact on students,” Murphy added, and their ability to take the bar exam. “That’s something that we want to make sure students are able to do.”

—  Petra Pasternak

Bass Expected to be Next Assembly Speaker

Meet the new not-quite-but-almost Speaker of California’s Assembly, Karen Bass.

The Legislature elected Bass, a Los Angeles Democrat, speaker-elect this morning. Bass and termed-out Speaker Fabian Nunez said they’ll decide sometime soon when exactly she’ll get the job for real. In the meantime, she gets hugs and flowers from colleagues and he gets to grapple with a $16 billion budget deficit.

Bass isn’t a lawyer, but she’s no stranger to legal circles. In 2006, Chief Justice Ronald George named her to the Blue Ribbon Commission on Children in Foster Care, a panel charged with finding ways to get more kids out of the child welfare system and into permanent homes. As an assemblywoman, Bass has sponsored numerous bills (.pdf) trying to improve foster care.

As the Majority Leader in the Assembly, Bass’s campaigns have also enjoyed financial help from a number of lawyers’ groups, from the Consumer Attorneys of California to the California Applicants’ Attorneys Association.

Bass will be the first African American woman to lead the Assembly. And she’ll be the only woman in the room when the Big 5 — the governor and legislative leaders from both parties — meet to hash out deals.

“I’m so happy I grew up with three big brothers because it completely prepared me for this,” she told reporters today.

—  Cheryl Miller

Charting the Confusing Judicial Appointment Stats

Remember the old saw about lies, damned lies and statistics? Well, after this week it’s quite clear, to Legal Pad anyway, that the sage who first uttered that adage was talking about judicial diversity numbers.

Over the past few days the governor and the State Bar released figures detailing the gender and ethnicities of California’s judicial applicants. Required by law, the numbers’ release was supposed to give us all a clearer idea of how well Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is doing on his pledge to diversify his judicial picks.

But instead of clarity, the numbers only seemed to provide ammunition for those who support the governor and his judicial appointments secretary, Sharon Majors-Lewis, and those who think Schwarzenegger prefers middle-aged white male appointees.

So Legal Pad crunched some numbers and came to the conclusion that, as with many things shaped by race and politics, success in diversifying the judiciary is in the eye of the beholder.

Consider the first numbers, the composition of judicial applicants over the last two years (and click on any of our four charts to blow them up nice and big):

It looks pretty straightforward. More attorneys of color are applying. But look at the jump in the number of applicants describing their ethnicity as “other” or declining to say altogether. The application question about race is voluntary and it appears that a lot of applicants either don’t feel like they fit into a single category or just don’t want to fill in a box.

Now things get really dicey.

Outsourcing Drives O'Melveny Partner to Gibson

Legal Pad caught up with the latest O’Melveny departure: Bill Peters, a partner who took off for Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher this week.

Peters said his departure was motivated by “wanting to work with a firm that had an interest in growing an outsourcing business, a firm that looked at it as a strategic opportunity.”

He had been a partner at O'Melveny since 2002, and previously worked at Shaw Pittman and Milbank.

Peters’ practice helps large companies that want to outsource a function such as finance or accounting or human resources on a global basis. He works with clients such as Marsh & McClennan and Safeco, helping them structure those outsourcing transactions.

At O'Melveny, the practice area wasn’t a priority, he said — even though the practice collects at the firm’s regular rates, he said.

“They didn’t see it as strategic to their overall plan,” he said. “I gave them a good run at it, but I wanted to take it to the next level.”

Legal Pad asked Peters whether O’Melveney’s flat PPP for two years in a row contributed to his decision.

“You want to be rewarded for the contributions you make,” he said, adding that “that contributed to the decision” but wasn’t the driving factor. 

Peters said he’s working on the details of bringing his associates — and clients— over to Gibson.

“I was the only partner that did outsourcing, so there will be no one else to service the work there— my assumption is the work will follow.”

Peters isn't the first O'Melveny-to-Gibson departure in the past year. Last summer, transactional partner Terrence Allen jumped from O'Melveny to Gibson, Dunn in Orange County.

—  Kellie Schmitt

Ropes Associate Chris Place, 35, Passes Away

A Palo Alto Ropes & Gray associate whom friends and loved ones described as spirited and selfless has died following a longstanding battle with melanoma.

Chris Place was diagnosed with melanoma more than a decade ago. The disease made a comeback two years ago and he had been fighting it until he died on Feb. 21. He was 35

“It came back with a vengeance,” said his wife, Lee Ann Place. “… And we just couldn’t fight it anymore.”

Mark Rowland, the managing partner of the Palo Alto office, had worked closely with Chris Place, who spent two summers with the firm before becoming a full-time associate. Place, who worked on intellectual property litigation, enticed coworkers to stop into his office by stocking homemade cookies and puzzle games, Rowland said.

“To this day, there are some of them I have no idea how to do,” Rowland said.

New Weapon Scores Win in Patent Battles

In October, Cal Law reported that defense lawyers in patent cases were increasingly using a new secret weapon to win — or at least delay — cases: inter partes patent re-exams at the PTO.

Turns out the tactic can be very successful as San Jose patent licensing outfit Tessera unhappily found out Tuesday. The company had a patent infringement suit against Motorola, Qualcomm, Spansion and others stayed in the ITC — a popular patent venue — after a re-exam invalidated a number of the patent claims in question.

Although Tessera pledged to appeal both decisions, the company’s shares plummeted to a three-year low Tuesday on news of the stay.

Many of the patents in question were part of a portfolio that generated more than $250 million in licensing profits for Tessera, according to a press release from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, which worked on the re-exam for Siliconware, a company that was also facing an infringement suit from Tessera in federal court, although not in the ITC.

“I think it’s a very good result,” said Michael Heafey, an Orrick IP lawyer who also got the case in federal court stayed. 

At the ITC, Spansion’s lawyers from Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal argued the motion to stay with Jones Day also pitching in. Irell & Manella, Gibson Dunn and Goodwin Procter were on the losing side of the motion for Tessera.

—  Zusha Elinson

Fun with IPO Filings: What Visa Pays Lawyers

There's an interesting post up on one of our sister blogs.

The Blog of Legal Times reports on some interesting information in the filing for San Francisco-based Visa's $18 billion IPO.

Joshua Floum, who worked at Heller from 1985 to 1996, apparently made $3.2 million last year as general counsel for Visa.

Also, former Pillsbury Chairwoman and partner in the firm’s San Francisco office Mary Cranston is listed as one of the company’s non-employee directors, a position which would enable her to receive an annual stock grant of $162,000, according to the S-1 filing.

—  Niraj Chokshi

On Second Thought, Lessig Won't Run

Well, that was quick.

Stanford Law professor Laurence Lessig generated quite a buzz online last week by announcing that he might run for Congress, but killed his candidacy on Monday.

Lessig told Legal Pad that he spent all day Sunday cooped up in his dining room with his advisers, calculators and computers, poring over district maps and hammering out his battle plan. In the end, he said, the 30 days until a special election was not enough to build his candidacy. The 46-year-old Internet freedom fighter will not run for a seat for the 12th Congressional District of California, which opened up after Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, died of cancer earlier this month.

Lessig said that his message promoting change in Congress — to help rein in the influence of money on Capitol Hill — was too complicated to get out by the April 8 ballot. Lessig said he didn’t want to risk wounding the reform movement with a “dramatic” loss against the popular Jackie Speier.

“It would be so hard in this compressed period to make the campaign sound like it was anything other than an extremely negative campaign against the extremely popular representative [Speier], and that wouldn’t be productive for anybody,” he said.

Instead, Lessig is turning his attention to launching a site in about a week, at which Democrats and Republicans inside and outside the Beltway could share their views about reform.

—  Petra Pasternak