Business

• Corporate Transactions - represent individuals, partnerships and corporations in business formations, large and small acquisitions, mergers and entity restructurings, and as general business counsel.
• Real Estate - represent developers, buyers, sellers and property managers in a wide range of real estate and land use and Brownfields matters.

Environment and Energy

• Petroleum and Natural Gas - provide services to both majors and independents in the petroleum and natural gas industry, including oil and gas field, pipeline, refining and marketing transactions and litigation.
• Energy - represent producers of electric power in transactions, regulatory proceedings and litigation.
• Environmental - represent businesses and individuals in all types of environmental matters including federal, state and local issues, in litigation, in proceedings before regulatory agencies, and in transactions.

Foundations and Trusts

• Fiduciaries - represent fiduciaries, largely defending trusts and handling other fiduciary litigation.
• Non-Profit Organizations - create and represent non-profits with particular expertise in creating and representing private foundations.
• Probate - represent complex estates in probate proceedings.

Litigation

• Alternative Dispute Resolution - represent clients in the mediation and arbitration of cases as a cost-effective solution.
• Appellate - represent clients in complex appellate matters, both state and federal, including matters tried by other firms.
• Civil Trials - represent clients in both state and federal courts, including defending class actions and derivative suits. Serve as local counsel for out of state law firms with cases in California.
• Criminal Trials - defend corporate and individual clients being investigated or charged with “white collar” crime.
• Insurance - represent insureds who have been denied coverage.

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We combine long-established traditions with new ideas. On the one hand, we adhere to traditional values of professionalism, honesty and loyalty to our clients’ interests. On the other, we seek new ways of going about our work so as to solve our clients' legal problems more quickly and cost effectively. Our approach is based on seven principles:

Principle No. 1  Reward results, not hours.  Pay for hours, you will get hours. Pay for results, you will be more apt to get results. The key here is that not only must lawyers and clients be able to define good results but both must be willing to take risks. That is, clients must be willing to pay something extra for good results and lawyers must be willing to take a hit for poor results.

Principle No. 2:  Capitalize on experience.  An experienced lawyer generally will do a better job in less time than an inexperienced lawyer. Clients should not be put off by the experienced lawyer’s higher billing rate. Considering the efficiency with which the experienced lawyer works and the high cost of adverse outcomes, the experienced lawyer will generally be much more cost effective in the long run.

Principle No. 3:   Shorten the cycle.  Not only is legal work time intensive and therefore expensive but so too are the often overlooked internal costs associated with legal problems. Based on discussions with lawyers in a number of corporate legal departments, we estimate that for every dollar a client pays a lawyer to handle a problem, it costs another dollar in lost profits because of lost time, internal distractions and loss of focus. The solution? If the goal is to reduce legal costs, find a way to solve problems more quickly. In other words, shorten the cycle.

Principle No. 4:  Build relationships. Retaining a lawyer should involve more than simply hiring a technician – it should involve building relationships. Lawyers and clients need to understand each others’ businesses, know each others' staff and particularly learn each others’ expectations and goals. Solving legal problems requires a creative environment. Good relationships foster creativity; bad relationships destroy creativity.

Principle No. 5:  Use the billing process to build trust. Too often the billing process is a point of friction between lawyers and clients. A lawyer’s bill should not be a relationship breaker. It should be a relationship builder. We don’t charge more than a reasonable fee and our Billing Policies infra give our clients the final word on whether a bill for our services is reasonable.

Principal No. 6:  Make use of technology, outsourcing and teaming. Before lawyers can move away from pricing services solely on the basis of hours spent and begin pricing on the basis of results, they need business plans which permit profits to be made without leveraging off the time of others. To do this requires that lawyers rely heavily on technology, outsourcing and teaming rather than hiring three or four associates per partner. This permits an experienced lawyer to prepare large cases without a large, full time legal staff and the high fixed costs and dependency on hourly rate billing that go with such a staff.

Principal No. 7:  It is not enough for a lawyer to be technically qualified.   In addition to being highly qualified from a technical standpoint, a lawyer must add value by offering creative, practical solutions that help clients do three things: (a) bring problems to satisfactory conclusions in the shortest possible time; (b) avoid future problems, and (c) discover profitable opportunities. For instance, a lawyer may be the very best of trial lawyers but he does his clients a disservice if he does not find creative ways of solving most disputes without litigation. He also does his client a disservice if he does not suggest periodic “near miss” analysis. From time to time every business has “near misses.” Some are problems thankfully avoided. Others are missed opportunities. Either way they need to be identified and analyzed in an orderly fashion so that in the future the dangerous near misses can be avoided and the opportunities can be seized.

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Too often the billing process is a point of friction between lawyer and client. We believe that it is an opportunity to build trust between lawyer and client.  We are flexible and willing either to bill by the number of hours spent on the matter or to establish alternative results-oriented fee arrangements.  We believe that over reliance on so-called “hourly rate billing” oftentimes misses the mark in that it is not sufficiently sensitive to results. It can also lead to inefficiencies. Wherever possible, our preference is to adopt billing methods which align our interests with yours and which reward results rather than reward expenditures of time without regard to results.

We will not charge more than a reasonable fee.  If a dispute arises as to the reasonableness of our fee, the client has the final word. If we were to conclude that the client's determination of reasonableness was unfair, our remedy would be to exercise our right to cease work and withdraw as soon as permitted by the canons of ethics.

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Businesses. For many years we have represented businesses of all sizes. They have ranged from major corporations with large sophisticated legal departments to small, privately owned businesses without in-house legal staff. We typically work on a project-by-project basis although for some we have served as general counsel, giving advice on a day-to-day basis. In recent years, our business clients have included, among others:

Alpha Therapeutic Corporation
British Petroleum (formerly Atlantic Richfield Company)
Beringer Wine Estates
Burbank, California, City of
Carrier Corporation
Clayton Industries (a privately owned manufacturer of industrial equipment)
Exxon Mobil Corporation
Firmenich (an international, privately-owned, fragrance and flavors manufacturer)
Glendale, California, City of
Metal Edge Inc. (a privately owned manufacturer of archival materials)
Modesto Irrigation District
Northern California Power Agency
Northern Trust Bank
Pamarco Incorporated (a manufacturer of printing equipment)
Pasadena, California, City of
Redding, California, City of
Reliant Resources
Shell Oil Company
Silicon Valley Power
Southern California Public Power Authority
Southern California Utility Power Pool
Strategic Energy LLC
Texaco Inc. (now ChevronTexaco Corp.)
Turlock Irrigation District
The Williams Companies, Inc.
Union Oil Company of California (UNOCAL)
Warren Resources, Inc. (an independent oil and gas producer)
Wells Fargo Bank
Witco Corporation

Charitable Institutions. We have substantial experience in the formation, regulation and governance of charitable institutions. Typically we work for these clients on a project-by-project basis although in the case of one of the nation’s largest charitable foundations—the W.M. Keck Foundation—we act as general counsel.

Individuals. We also are well versed in the representation of individuals with significant real estate, business, trust, tax and estate planning concerns.

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