dwin Heafey Jr., the chairman of the East Bay's largest law firm, died of cancer Thursday. He was 71 years old.
On Friday colleagues remembered the Crosby, Heafey, Roach & May partner as a consummate trial lawyer who had watched the legal practice change dramatically during his 47 years as an attorney.
"Good lawyers enjoy what they are doing," said Heafey in a 2001 interview with The Recorder. "Profits are secondary but necessary."
In recent years, Heafey took a less active role leading the firm, but still maintained an office at the firm's Oakland high-rise, advised younger lawyers and had an active civil practice, said Oakland Managing Partner John Lynn Smith.
"For decades, Ed has set a standard of quality in terms of lawyering, mentoring and thinking," said firm CEO Kurt Peterson.
Heafey's court skill made him a giant at the firm that was called Hagar, Crosby & Rosson when he joined it in the mid-1950s.
Heafey graduated from Stanford Law School in 1955. His father, Oakland trial lawyer Edwin Heafey Sr., was a name partner at Clark, Heafey & Martin and a founding figure in what became Farmers Insurance Co.
But the elder Heafey wanted his son to make a name on his own, so young Heafey and a law school buddy, Justin Roach Jr., joined Hagar, Crosby.
There, Heafey and Roach -- who died in 1987 -- became a force to reckon with. In 1968, the elder and younger Heafeys' firms merged. The "Heafey" on Crosby, Heafey's letterhead has come to represent Edwin Heafey Sr., Edwin Heafey Jr. and Richard Heafey -- the senior Heafey's other son, who is also a trial attorney. Richard Heafey is a retired Crosby partner who teaches ethics at the University of San Francisco.
Smith recalls that Heafey -- who was extremely fond of Roach -- used to joke that it's not clear who "Heafey" stands for in the firm name, "but you always know who the Roach is."
Of all the lawyers in the clan, Edwin Heafey Jr. was the major figure at the firm, attorneys say.
Heafey and Roach "were a guiding force in the development of the firm," said Stephen Blitch, a Crosby lawyer who knew Heafey for nearly 30 years.
And when Roach died and Ronald Rosequist replaced Roach as managing partner, "it fell to Ed alone," Blitch said.
Heafey gained a national reputation as a trial lawyer who handled 150 jury trials, both on the defense and plaintiff side. Heafey represented Alameda County in the Oakland Raiders' $100 million antitrust dispute with the National Football League.
Some of his big cases helped shape product liability law, said Rosequist, who sits on the firm's executive committee.
During nearly 50 years of legal practice, Heafey watched the profession evolve. In the 2001 interview, Heafey recalled that he was the ninth attorney at Crosby, Rosson and at the time took home $250 a month. (Crosby, Heafey now has about 230 lawyers.) Over the years, time limits have made trials more efficient, and Heafey also witnessed the rise of mega-firms with hundreds of lawyers.
Heafey didn't cotton to some of those changes in the profession -- like glitzy marketing campaigns.
"You get clients by being good," Heafey told The Recorder. "You're going to hire a lawyer. Are you going to go through the ads in American Lawyer to figure out … who's got whatever-the-hell trendy kinds of branding? I mean how is that connected to anything?"
For 17 years Heafey taught trial practice at Boalt Hall. In those classes he often recruited new Crosby talent. That included Blitch and Raoul Kennedy, a student who later became a firm rainmaker.
"He was a self-contained mock trial and focus group," said Kennedy, who left Crosby in 1996. "He had a real capacity to understand how people thought."
Blitch and Kennedy said Heafey was the rare combination of a trial lawyer and a good manager. Usually trial attorneys are too narrowly focused and iconoclastic to be good firm leaders, Blitch said.
"Ed over and over brought to our firm a commitment to firm-first thinking," Peterson said. "That is to think about the firm over any individual interest or individual practice group."
"That' a quality," he added, "that I hope that we can continue and build on."
Heafey is survived by his wife, three children, three stepchildren, four grandchildren and his brother.
On Friday, services were still being planned.
