Former Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo has joined Goodwin Procter as counsel in its litigation department.
“This is an outstanding place to practice law,” Delgadillo said. “They are a group of innovative thinkers that do not look to the past, look to the future for solutions.”
In addition to litigation, Delgadillo will be part of the real estate and public finance group, helping do public-private partnership work. But he said he’ll also continue his run for state attorney general, for which he has $900,000 cash on hand.
Fiscal highs and ethical lows, water under bridges … after the jump.
Lewis Feldman, chairman of Goodwin Procter’s Los Angeles office, said the firm expects Delgadillo will take a leave of absence once the campaign gears up next year.
Feldman said Delgadillo, who was with O’Melveny & Meyers before joining L.A. government, had an impressive eight years as city attorney, and saved the city money by taking some cases to trial instead of settling.
“Rocky probably saved the city $500 million over the course of his eight years,” he said. “He and a team analyzed each case, determined which cases were specious, what cases the city attorney was being asked to pay more than the case was worth, and freed up other money for other city services.”
During his tenure at the city, Delgadillo was criticized for allowing his wife to drive a city-owned car, then using city money to fix it when she got in an accident, and for his use of city employees for personal tasks. He also paid fines for campaign finance violations in 2004. He also sued to prevent the city controller from auditing payouts from the worker compensation program he controlled.
As for the FBI investigation into alleged ethics violations reported by the San Francisco Chronicle last year, Delgadillo said “I’m not aware of one.”
After follow up questions, he said he was aware newspapers reported on the investigation but that he has never been contacted by the FBI.
“We did extensive diligence as an organization and we were completely satisfied with Rocky’s integrity and conduct,” Feldman said.
— Amanda Royal
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