If a Silicon Valley case has stirred gossip lately, Michael Rhodes was probably one of the lawyers.

Facebook settles a class action over its privacy-invading Beacon advertising program? The Cooley Godward Kronish partner represented Facebook.

Tesla Motors Inc. is in a bitter defamation suit brought by ousted CEO Martin Eberhard? Tesla replaced its lawyers at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati with Rhodes, who promptly settled the case.

Craigslist Inc. and eBay Inc. are having a nasty dustup over the online auction site's ownership stake in Craigslist? Rhodes will be doing the talking for eBay in a Delaware courtroom starting Dec. 7. (The trial had been scheduled for this week, but was delayed last week.)

The 51-year-old San Diego lawyer who heads Cooley's litigation practice isn't the new go-to tech law guru. But he's earned a reputation in tech corridors as a sharp, practical guy who can fight or cut a good deal. "Ian Ballon is an Internet expert, or Mark Lemley -- I wouldn't hold myself out as an academic," Rhodes said last week. He said it's all in who you know. "I think lawyering is really very simple: It's word of mouth."

Rhodes is also known as a surfer dude, with his bleach-blond hair, a penchant for wearing flip flops to the office and trips to exotic surf spots. This spring, he and some colleagues and friends chartered a boat and surfed the atolls -- coral-reef islands -- near the Maldives in the Indian Ocean for two weeks. "It was epic," he said.

And he's known for speaking his mind. Last month, after several partners left Cooley, Rhodes caused a minor stir when he ditched the traditional law firm courtesies, saying "there's no there there" about some of the departing partners.

"I'm one of the more blunt people that you'll come across," Rhodes said last week.

It's been a rough couple of months for Cooley, which lost big-name partners like Richard Climan and Keith Flaum, and on Thursday laid off 58 staffers in its second round of layoffs this year. But Rhodes has been a bright spot, with his high-profile cases and having recruited a group of IP litigators from White & Case last month, the only additions of note the firm has made of late.

THE ART OF THE DEAL

Several of Rhodes' current cases come from the work that he's done for eBay, a longtime firm client.

Former eBay lawyer Michael Richter is now at Facebook and got Rhodes on a couple of class actions that Facebook was facing. Marty Roberts was also an eBay lawyer and when he joined Linden Lab, which makes the virtual world called Second Life, he called on Rhodes to handle litigation.

"He's a very practical lawyer, a very good negotiator and fearless litigator," said Roberts. "Some lawyers can be too academic."

Roberts hired Rhodes to handle what could have been a groundbreaking case. Linden Lab had terminated a Second Life user because he was buying virtual land at below-market prices. Although it could have created some new law about virtual worlds, Rhodes came in, facilitated a mediation and settled the case -- just what Roberts was looking for.

"Like most small companies, I'm not all that interested in making law; I'm not interested in taking cases to the Supreme Court," said Roberts. "I'm interested in resolving things."

Last month, Roberts had initially retained Rhodes to fend off a copyright suit by a maker of virtual sex toys. But Rhodes' rate, which is above $800 an hour, was too high for the insurers. Instead, Linden Lab will be using San Francisco's Durie Tangri.

Rhodes' ability to close a deal appears to be the reason that Tesla Motors brought him into its nasty battle with former CEO Eberhard, who sued the high-flying electric car company for defamation. The case had been litigated heavily by Wilson Sonsini and caused a flood of press, with Eberhard trading public blows with Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Rhodes was brought in and soon after the sides went to mediation, settling last month.

Less successfully, he lost a big case for mp3.com, which resulted in a malpractice suit in 2002 against the firm that came to a quick and confidential settlement.

In the Facebook class action, Facebook users had sued the social networking site over a controversial advertising program, Beacon, that mined users' personal information. The suit settled with Facebook agreeing to kill the program and pay $9.5 million to set up a foundation that will study online privacy. The settlement was reached after months of mediation, including some meetings in Hawaii with a mediator there.

Of course, Rhodes took the opportunity to hang 10 with Facebook lawyer Samuel O'Rourke. "In our very few free moments, we found ourselves in Lahaina renting surfboards," he said with a laugh.

That's not the only time Rhodes has surfed Hawaii. Cooley Chairman and fellow litigator Stephen Neal has a house there and partners like Rhodes sometimes visit and hit the waves. But Neal is too tall for a surfboard, Rhodes said.

"We tried to get him to do stand-up paddling," he said. "He sticks to the kayak."