IP Attorney Trades In Big Law for the Simple Life

After 16 years at law firms -- most recently Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher -- James Isbester switched to a Berkeley, Calif., office above a bagel shop. Isbester & Associates' rates run $220 to $400 an hour, a fee that Isbester calculated by subtracting the overhead from his Gibson rate of close to $600. But the lack of a high-end salary hasn't spelled an end to high-stakes lawyering; last year, the patent litigator bested Kirkland & Ellis at trial, winning a $213.9 million award for Advanced Medical Optics.

A conference call changed James Isbester’s life.

Several years ago, Isbester, a patent litigation partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s San Francisco office, pitched a South Dakota-based company via conference call on his firm’s legal services.

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IP Attorney Trades In Big Law for the Simple Life

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