Legal Pad

One Lawyer's Long, Lateral Road to Partnership

It was 13 years in the making, but Silicon Valley corporate lawyer Craig Menden is now a partner. He joined Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal on Monday, leaving Fenwick & West, where he was of counsel.

“My practice in the last year has evolved enough that I was really starting to get traction with clients, and it just made sense to go some place where there’s a lot of upside potential,” Menden told Legal Pad.

Menden worked on big M&A deals at Fenwick, like representing Postini in its $625 million sale to Google in 2007. The lawyer said he’ll be bringing a “significant book” of business to Sonnenschein, which opened its Silicon Valley office two years ago. He declined to estimate the size of his book, but said that some of his clients include Solera Holdings and Adaptive Path.

Menden observed that the outlook for making partner isn’t great for lawyers these days, so he was attracted by Sonnenschein’s offer. “This is not looking like a good year for anyone for partnership,” he said.

Menden started his career at Davis Polk before joining Fenwick in 1998. He was an associate at Fenwick, becoming of counsel in 2004.

— Zusha Elinson

Placing Bets on Newton's (Temp) Successor at Hastings

Now that Dean Nell Newton’s resignation from Hastings College of the Law is official, the school will be turning to the task of naming an acting dean and launching the dean search.

“This is a tough time,” Professor Rory Little said this morning. “It’s an unfortunate surprise in the sense that any time there’s a break in continuity it can be disruptive, but it’s not earth shattering.” With the school facing ongoing budgetary, construction and hiring issues, Little said, it will be important to ensure continuity at least through the end of June.

We all know dean searches don’t move at warp speed. Guesses at who’s likely to take the helm in the meantime, after the jump …

Notre Dame Steals Hastings Dean

Quick pointer to our law school blog, The Shark:  Hastings College of the Law Dean Nell Newton has resigned to take the same gig at Notre Dame's law school.

Cal Law had a story up last night about the emergency board meeting about her employment last week, and murmurs of a South Bend connection.  This morning, Newton and Hastings announced exactly that.

Hastings alums, anyone looking for a job deaning a law school, and, um, Fighting Irish fans, there's your morning news.

— Brian McDonough

The IP Stars Come Out for the Hindenburg of Patent Auctions

Hardly anyone bought or sold a patent at Ocean Tomo’s bust of a patent auction on Friday at the San Francisco Ritz-Carlton. But that didn’t prevent an eclectic — and in some very limited cases — fashionable IP crowd from showing up.

Aside from the many anonymous, and well-dressed, slinkers, there on behalf of companies they couldn’t name for reasons they couldn’t state, there were some identifiable individuals as well. Yahoo IP lawyer Duane Valz showed up, not buying or selling any patents, “just checking things out.” Greenberg Traurig’s Bradley Blanche flew in from LA to try and help client George Washington University sell some its patents — no luck, as nary a soul even bid on them.

Ocean Tomo competitors from local patent brokerages were there, naturally casting aspersions on the auction model for selling patents. They were a pair of Rons — Epstein from San Mateo’s IPotential and Laurie from Palo Alto’s Inflexion Point Strategy.

Attorneys from overseas with mysterious missions showed up. Kevin Liu, a patent lawyer at China’s Boss & Young came representing unidentified Chinese-government-owned enterprises interested in buying clean-tech patents.

And finally, there were two individuals who actually showed some stylish flair, which is so badly lacking at pretty much any event involving patent lawyers and inventors. Julie Watters, a biz dev manager at patent translation firm called the RWS Group, was wearing a very short “mod dress [that] is navy blue with Kelly green stripes and a wide Kelly-green belt at the hips,” as she explained it to your not-entirely-au courant correspondent. She was seated on the patio at lunch with James Grant, a chemist who had ruffled, bleached-bond hair and large fashionable sunglasses. Much needed because of all the IP stars, of course.

The auction itself? "What am I bid?" (insert crickets chirping). Cal Law has that story, and see our pal Joe for his take.

— Zusha Elinson

Following the money ain't easy at Ed Jew sentencing

The government’s sentencing memo for disgraced former San Francisco Supervisor Ed Jew just came over the transom, and by far our favorite part involves Jew’s defense lawyer Stuart Hanlon.

According to the memo, Jew accepted $20,000 in bribe money from a store owner and stashed half of it in the freezer. The feds recovered that money — which was premarked — when they raided Jew’s home.

That left $10,000 still out there. But apparently, during the course of this prosecution, “Hanlon returned an additional $5,000 in pre-marked bills that the FBI agents had not found during their execution of the search warrants,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracie Brown wrote.

Moreover: “Mr. Hanlon recently informed the government that he received the remaining $5,000 from the defendant and intends to repay the FBI before sentencing; it is not known whether that sum represents the actual pre-marked FBI bills the defendant received in May 2007.”

Reached by Legal Pad, Hanlon reiterated that all funds will be returned, with none being kept by his client. “We will give comments on the whole situation at the time of sentencing, not piecemeal,” Hanlon said. The government is asking Judge Susan Illston to hand down a 57-month sentence, slightly lower than what the probation office recommended.

— Dan Levine

AG's Prop 8 Man Calls it Quits

The attorney who led Jerry Brown’s efforts to overturn Proposition 8 is swapping government shops.

Senior Assistant Attorney General Christopher Krueger is taking a new job as chief deputy legal affairs secretary in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration, a spokeswoman for the governor confirmed. He starts Wednesday and will replace Louis Mauro, who was appointed to the Sacramento County Superior Court bench by Schwarzenegger last week.

Krueger said the move has been in the works for weeks and that top brass at the AG’s office knew about it.

“The timing of my departure was driven by the timing of Mr. Mauro's appointment,” Krueger said in an email. “I informed the Governor's Office of my interest in replacing Mr. Mauro sometime last fall. I waited to announce my departure from this office until Thursday [March 26] because I was waiting for Mr. Mauro's appointment to be announced first.”

Remember that time Jerry threw him under a bus? Good times, after the jump.

Manatt: 25 'Transitions' as Layoffs Continue

Manatt Phelps & Phillips said Monday that it had laid off 17 lawyers and 8 staff because of the economic slowdown. The L.A.-based firm listed 405 attorneys on its Web site on Monday, with about 75 percent working out of its five California offices.

The news first appeared on Above the Law. A firm statement said it provided those who were laid off with “financial and other assistance to help with their transitions.”

“The broad economic slowdown continues to present challenges to businesses in every industry. The quality and breadth our national practice, as well as initiatives to improve resource utilization and reduce expenses, have positioned us to meet these challenges. Responsible stewardship, however, requires ongoing evaluation and appropriate alignment of staffing levels with client needs,” the statement continued.

A storm of layoffs that swept the industry in February and early March seems to have subsided, but layoff news keeps occasionally trickling in. Manatt confirmed earlier this month that it had laid off nearly fifty people since October, ahead of Monday’s latest batch. Since it appears Manatt’s layoffs have not come in discreet waves, it’s arguable whether Monday’s announcement represents a second wave or just the continuation of a long tide.

— Amanda Royal

Why so sad, Managing Partners? … Oh, right.

When a reporter speaks to a managing partner on the record nowadays, there’s a lot of fluffy talk about how the firm’s geographic diversity helps it weather the storm, or how its culture or visionary leadership keeps it together like super glue, despite plummeting profits and skyrocketing layoffs.

 But when managing partners can say how they really feel, in this case an anonymous, aggregated survey (.pdf) by Citi Private Bank, the news is much different. MPs are downright depressed, it turns out.

Yeah, we know: Hold page one! We’ll just examine the report here, after the jump.

Quick Note: Patent Auction a Total Bust

The ballyhooed Ocean Tomo patent auction fell flat at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco. After selling $12.8 million worth of patents at its last auction in November, Ocean Tomo could barely get people to bid Friday. By Legal Pad’s count, only six of more than 80 lots of patents were sold, for a total of $2.785 million.

A crestfallen Jim Malackowski, Ocean Tomo’s CEO, blamed the recession for the poor showing after the auction.

Cal Law will post a complete report late Monday.

— Zusha Elinson

Feds Back Off From Former Software GC

Federal prosecutors in San Diego decided Friday to cease and desist its efforts against the former GC at Peregrine, a software company. Last week a jury hung on accounting fraud charges, meaning Eric Deller is now a free man.

The government indicted a regiment of Peregrine executives, accusing them of cooking the company’s books to inflate revenue. Deller’s predecessor in the GC slot, Richard Nelson, moved into other jobs, eventually becoming the company’s interim CEO as the accounting scandal broke. Nelson handed the top legal job to Deller in 2000.

Fourteen executives pled guilty, including Nelson, who has not yet been sentenced. Deller’s lawyers, Melinda Haag and Tom McConville at Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe, said in a press release that they were “obviously pleased and thankful” that the jury saw it their way, and “grateful” that the U.S. Attorney’s office has dropped it.

— Dan Levine