| |
Gordon K. Davidson
AGE: 51
FIRM: Palo Alto, Calif.'s Fenwick & West L.L.P.
Highly regarded adviser to high-tech companies; practice also includes startup counseling, venture capital financing, initial public offerings, major transactional activities and intellectual property protection; has handled IPOs for such companies as @Home Corp., Cadence Design Systems, Intuit, Oracle and VeriSign Inc.; represented VeriSign in its $21 billion bid this March to purchase Network Solutions Inc.; other clients include Cisco Systems, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. and Sun Microsystems; since he became Fenwick's chairman in 1995, the firm has gone from 130 attorneys to more than 250, and its revenues have jumped from $48.2 million in 1995 to $100.8 million in 1999; the only law firm on Fortune magazine's 1999 list of the 100 best companies to work for.
Donald Dunner
AGE: 69
FIRM: Washington, D.C.'s Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner L.L.P.
Noted patent and trademark litigation specialist; has argued more patent appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit than any other lawyer, often winning reversals of verdicts -- won the reversal of an $80 million jury verdict against Mattel Inc. in the Hot Wheels patent litigation and also won the reversal of a $36 million patent infringement judgment against Biomet Inc.; in other litigation, won tax refund case worth $100 million for Lockheed Martin, in May; was chairman of the advisory committee to the Federal Circuit for the first 10 years of the court's existence and participated in the drafting of its rules.
John E. Echohawk
AGE: 54
FIRM: The Native American Rights Fund (NARF)
A major power in the American Indian rights movement and the leading litigator in cases involving tribal sovereignty issues and protection of tribal natural resources; in 1970, co-founded NARF, a national legal defense fund, and has been its executive director for more than 20 years; in the past three years, he and NARF have won a series of court battles, including Mustang Production Co. v. Harrison, and Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma v. Manufacturing Technologies Inc. in which the Supreme Court ruled that Indian tribes retain sovereign immunity from litigation without their consent, even in-off reservation transactions; his biggest recent win is in a class action seeking redress for U.S. government mismanagement of some $2 billion in trust accounts of about 300,000 American Indians -- the next step is to determine how much money has to be repaid.
Bruce J. Ennis Jr.
AGE: 60
FIRM: Washington, D.C., office of Chicago's Jenner & Block
Respected appellate attorney in First Amendment and commercial speech cases; has argued numerous cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including such landmark cases as Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Co. v. Haslip, on the constitutionality of punitive damages; led a successful challenge before the Supreme Court to the federal Communications Decency Act; in the past three years, has argued five cases before the high court, winning four; represented ABC in its successful appeal of the Food Lion verdict; also represents major video producers in defense of the first comprehensive suit claiming they can be liable for criminal acts of individuals who view their videos. Floyd Abrams, of New York's Cahill Gordon & Reindel, remains the most influential First Amendment attorney for traditional media.
Entertainment law
Allen J. Grubman
AGE: 57
Bruce M. Ramer
AGE: 66
Kenneth Ziffren
AGE: 59
Among the dealmaker attorneys for the nation's top recording, movie and television artists, producers and executives are Allen J. Grubman, of New York's Grubman Indursky, Schindler P.C., whose longtime clients include Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Madonna, Sting and U2, as well as newer hitmakers such as Ricky Martin, Marc Anthony and Vitamin C; known for an ability to spot talent before it achieves public acclaim; Bruce M. Ramer, of Los Angeles' Gang, Tyre, Ramer & Brown Inc., a high-profile movie industry lawyer best known for his representation of longtime client Steven Spielberg; and Kenneth Ziffren, of Los Angeles' Ziffren, Brittenham, Branca & Fischer L.L.P., lead partner at what some consider the premier entertainment law firm; his clients include Liberty Media Group, DreamWorks SKG and DirecTV Inc.
Richard A. Epstein
AGE: 57
LAW SCHOOL: James Parker Hall Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School
Heir-apparent to Chief Judge Richard A. Posner of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal; defines the intellectual conservative movement; often published and quoted opponent of liberal orthodoxy on campuses and in government; sometimes controversial, but many consider him a visionary -- and even critics praise his intellectual ability; also involved in significant litigation, as appellate counsel (in the Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. litigation), as expert witness (in an insurance coverage matter for McDonald's Corp.), and as a consultant in high-profile cases involving patents, trade secrets and First Amendment privacy issues; editor of the Journal of Law and Economics.
Kenneth R. Feinberg
AGE: 54
FIRM: Washington, D.C.'s The Feinberg Group L.L.P.
A leader in mediation and alternative dispute resolution, with a long record of appointments as special master in mass torts and other complex litigation matters, including Agent Orange, the closing of the Shoreham, N.Y., nuclear plant, asbestos personal injury litigation and DES; court-appointed special master handling recent $142 million settlement of the Informix Corp. class action securities fraud litigation; in 1999, mediated for Consumer Products Safety Commission a $50 million settlement of national furnace defect litigation; one of three attorneys on the arbitration panel setting the $16 million price for the Zapruder assassination film; one of three experts called by both sides in current hearings on fairness of American Home Products Corp.'s diet-drug settlement.
Robert B. Fiske Jr.
AGE: 69
FIRM: New York's Davis Polk & Wardwell
Widely recognized as one of the best white-collar and civil enforcement defense attorneys; represents many corporations and individuals in grand jury proceedings and investigations; known for keeping his clients out of the headlines; original independent counsel in the Whitewater investigation; represents the Judicial Council of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in disciplinary proceedings against U.S. District Judge John McBryde; chairman of the New York State Judicial Commission on Drugs and the Courts; won one of the biggest defense verdicts ever for Babcock & Wilcox Co. in a $4 billion suit by GPU Inc. over the design and manufacture of the nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island; securities clients include Bankers Trust, General Electric and Exxon Mobil. Gary G. Lynch, also of Davis Polk, is another white-collar and enforcement litigation star; a former director of enforcement of the SEC, he is often the first attorney called when companies are accused of wrongdoing.
Willie E. Gary
AGE: 52
FIRM: Stuart, Fla.'s Gary, Williams, Parenti, Finney, Lewis, McManus, Watson & Sperando
A dynamic plaintiffs' lawyer who has cases active in more than two dozen states; has won numerous stunning victories, including a $500 million jury verdict in Mississippi in an antitrust/fraud lawsuit against the funeral home chain Loewen Group Inc., which later settled for nearly $200 million; often called in to represent black plaintiffs in high-profile battles with deep-pocket defendants -- most recently four plaintiffs in the racial discrimination lawsuit against Coca-Cola; known for forcing substantial pretrial settlements; in 1999, had two major defense wins representing sugar cane growers in a breach-of-contract action; the co-founder, chair and chief executive of the Major Broadcasting Cable, a network, targeted at black audiences; his negotiation of a major sponsorship deal with Coca-Cola for the network drew criticisms of conflict of interest with Coca-Cola plaintiffs; involved in civil rights activities as counsel for the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Greedy Associates
Arthur B. Schwartz, aka "Cornholio Esquire, CEO of the Greedy Associates"
AGE: 28
The hereby-outed, new public face of the Greedy Associate phenomenon is a business development leader at FindLaw Inc.; credited, through Internet message boards ranging from Greedy New England to Greedy Wild West with goosing the great associate raise of 2000 and, by the way, building a community; serves as ringmaster of factious, fractious Infirmation.com chat groups drawing up to 1.5 million page views a week; as a junior associate at New York's Thacher Proffitt & Wood, led gang that hijacked traffic from the original GreedyAssociates Yahoo! board to the RealGAs Yahoo! board -- then moved RealGAs to Infirmation, which FindLaw bought in April 2000. Another key figure is nowhitenoise, founder of the original GA club in 1998; rumored to be a paralegal-turned-law-student.
Joseph A. Grundfest
AGE: 48
LAW SCHOOL: Stanford University Law School
Dominates the corporate governance movement; often quoted on securities law and testifies frequently before Congress; former commissioner of the SEC; continually expanding influence on attorneys and executives, particularly in Silicon Valley; director of the Institutional Investors' Forum; directs the Roberts Program in Law, Business and Corporate Governance at Stanford; coordinator of the Grundfest Group, an informal association of select Silicon Valley securities attorneys who meet to evaluate and respond to new and proposed SEC rule changes; principal investigator for Stanford's Securities Litigation Clearinghouse, which posts online the full texts of all class action securities fraud complaints and other significant pleadings filed in federal court.
<previous / next>
|
|