Environmental Law Firm Steps Up The Fight The Capital Times (8/7/06)
In 1999, just a few years out of law school at the University of California-Berkeley and after a brief stint with a Washington, D.C., law firm aiding victims of toxic pollution, Melissa Scanlan '99 decided to start a nonprofit law center in Madison to assist small towns and grass-roots groups in taking on corporations and/or big government...
In other words, to help fill the void that had existed ever since Gov. Tommy Thompson and the Republican-controlled Legislature had gleefully dismantled the public intervenor's office in 1995...
Great idea, her environmental colleagues told her, but you'll need about a $2 million endowment just to get off the ground. It simply wouldn't be possible, they insisted, on the $60,000 in grant money she had...
But the plucky young woman from Darboy -- a farming community near Appleton -- forged ahead anyway. She opened Midwest Environmental Advocates in a windowless office on State Street and, along with a college intern, immediately began seeing clients...
A Counselor Pulled From the Shadows The New York Times (7/30/06)
Larry W. Sonsini '66, Silicon Valley’s most feared and sought-after lawyer, dresses in fine Italian suits even as the rest of the Valley — other high-priced attorneys included — ply their trades in chinos and blue Oxford shirts. He is soft-spoken and restrained, sometimes eerily quiet, in contrast to the brash and kinetic entrepreneurs and financiers who otherwise dominate the landscape.
While the Valley can be a chummy, clubby place where even adversaries freely trade tales of children and outside activities, Mr. Sonsini would no sooner share personal information about himself, a longtime legal rival said, than a soldier at war would fraternize with an enemy combatant. In a land in which even the top executives and most successful venture capitalists generally use verbal mallets to drive home a point, he is a surgeon, adroit at using an intellectual and legal scalpel to win an argument or get his way...
Silence, in Mr. Sonsini’s case, has been golden. During his 40 years as a lawyer, Mr. Sonsini, 65, has served as legal counsel to the most prestigious venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. He helped to bring public many of the leaders of the technology boom, including Netscape Communications, Pixar, Google, Apple and Sun Microsystems. The investment banking firm of Robertson Stevens, based in San Francisco until it closed its doors in 2002, handled more than 500 initial public offerings over a 30-year period, and Mr. Sonsini was there for most of them...
“In one way or another, Larry was involved in almost every deal we underwrote,” said Sanford R. Robertson, founder of the bank that bore his name. Mr. Sonsini, who briefly served on the board of the New York Stock Exchange, is not just the area’s most influential lawyer, Mr. Robertson said, “He’s probably the most powerful person in Silicon Valley...”
Napa gets new court commissioner Vallejo Times Herald (7/21/06)
A native Vallejoan has been selected to be Napa County's newest Superior Court commissioner...
The selection of Monique Langhorne-Johnson '99, 31, will fill a vacancy left by the governor's appointment of Commissioner Rodney G. Stone to Superior Court judge in April, according to a statement released to the media Tuesday...
"As far back as I can remember, I always said that I wanted to be an attorney and a judge. It really had to do with my background - being black, being in Norfolk, Virginia and dealing with a lot of racism and inequality. I just wanted to make a difference and I wanted to stand for equality and justice and I feel like the law is at the center of that," she said...
She's worked as an attorney for six years, but even as a law student did attorney work, she said. Right now she's prosecuting narcotics cases. Before that - domestic violence...
Minal Hasan '06 was exploring careers -- teacher? journalist? -- when two planes sliced through the World Trade Center...
In the days and months that followed, friends and relatives exchanged tales of harassment, dubious arrests and assaults nationwide. Someone threw rocks at Hasan's car. Someone else spat at her...
The Fremont woman then followed an increasing number of American Muslims, rocked by the fallout of Sept. 11: She applied to law school...
The ``civil rights of our community are being encroached upon, and we don't even have enough lawyers in our community to help us. A lot of people in our community thought that,'' said Hasan, who graduated from Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law in May. ``I thought that, too.''
Though firm numbers are elusive -- law firms and schools don't ask about an applicant's religion -- the number of Muslim lawyers and law students is growing. The National Association of Muslim Lawyers, which began in 1996 with 24 members, now has 500. Half of the 100 members of the Bay Area Association of Muslim Lawyers, known as BAAML, are law students, a sign of the swelling ranks. And Muslim law student associations are sprouting from Berkeley to Yale...
Maguire Properties Promotes Mark Lammas to New Position of Executive Vice President, Development MSN Money (7/7/06)
Maguire Properties, Inc. MPG, a Southern California focused real estate investment trust, today announced that it has promoted Mr. Mark Lammas '92 to the newly created position of Executive Vice President, Development to oversee the Company's development initiatives. He will work closely with Mr. Robert Goodwin, the Company's Senior Vice President of Construction and Development, to lead the efforts on the Company's significant development pipeline. Mr. Lammas begins his new role effective immediately and joins the Company's Executive Committee. Mr. Lammas will continue to provide internal legal and corporate governance support until a replacement General Counsel and Secretary is identified...
Mr. Lammas most recently served as Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of Maguire Properties. His primary responsibilities included negotiation of all transactional and financial matters with respect to the Company's portfolio of assets and administration of various internal operational matters including oversight of the Board of Directors and SEC compliance. During Mr. Lammas' tenure with the privately held predecessor Maguire organization, he was a key participant in completing nearly $5.5 billion of project and corporate financings and approximately $3.7 billion of asset acquisitions and dispositions. Prior to joining the Maguire organization in 1998, Mr. Lammas was an attorney with Cox, Castle & Nicholson LLP where he specialized in representing developers, institutional investors and pension funds in their acquisition, development, financing, investing, and restructuring activities. Mr. Lammas is a graduate of the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. He obtained a B.A. in Political Economics from the University of California at Berkeley, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1988, with High Distinction (summa cum laude) in General Scholarship and departmental High Honors...
McClatchy CEO aims for full-court press The Miami Herald (6/26/06)
McClatchy Co. CEO Gary Pruitt '82 spoke with The Miami Herald's Gregg Fields Thursday from the firm's Sacramento headquarters.
Q: Aren't you from Florida?
A: I grew up in a small town called Satellite Beach, just south of Cocoa Beach...
I went to the University of Florida, and graduate school and law school at the University of California-Berkeley...
I then returned to practice media law at the now defunct [Miami] firm of Paul and Thomson, where we represented Knight Ridder and The Miami Herald...
Q: Why such a big investment in newspapers, which are often seen as struggling?
A: We think newspapers are still an excellent business and remain probably the most important media in terms of informing people and allowing people to participate in society...
As far as the business side goes, people have written off newspapers before...
They have the biggest reach and biggest audience in each market...
From that base we can leverage a whole portfolio of print and electronic products. They may be niche products, they may be other daily newspapers, as in the Spanish-language El Nuevo Herald, and of course and importantly the leading local Internet site...
Janavs' Courtroom Blends High Drama, the Mundane Los Angeles Times (6/16/06)
The tiny Latvian-born judge with the sharp, flashing eyes burst into the public eye last week when she was unseated by a Manhattan Beach bagel shop owner with limited legal experience, then reappointed three days later by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger...
In the aftermath, many judges and lawyers flew to her defense, calling her one of the smartest and hardest-working jurists in Los Angeles County, while others criticized her courtroom manner as unnecessarily sharp and even abusive toward those who come before her...
Janavs '61 came to Northern California at age 13 from Latvia by way of a displaced-persons camp in Europe after World War II. Her mother had been a lawyer in Latvia, her father a law student. In the U.S. he found work as a gardener, while her mother cleaned houses...
After high school, she went to San Jose State University, then to UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. She worked in the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles before being appointed to the bench in 1986 by Gov. George Deukmejian. Her husband, an architect, took a major role in raising their children while she worked the punishing hours demanded by the profession at a time when employers made few concessions to working mothers...
Over the years, she has handled hundreds if not thousands of cases. Striking nurses, police officers and teachers have come to her courtroom, as have dozens of gang members fighting the city attorney's pursuit of gang injunctions. She has ruled on countless land-use disputes, involving the Getty Villa and the Ambassador Hotel, among others...
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today announced the appointment of Preston DuFauchard '84 as commissioner of the Department of Corporations...
"Ethical business practices and a growing economy go hand in hand," said Governor Schwarzenegger. "Under Preston's leadership, the Department of Corporations will continue its role as a financial watchdog to protect Californians, especially our seniors and armed forces..."
"I share Governor Schwarzenegger's unrelenting commitment to enhance the business climate in California," said DuFauchard. "I am truly honored to serve in this position to ensure the safety and soundness of our financial institutions and to also improve financial literacy programs aimed at helping California consumers achieve economic prosperity..."
DuFauchard, 49, of Oakland, earned a Juris Doctorate degree from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley and Bachelor of Arts degree from Stanford University. This position requires Senate confirmation and the compensation is $123,255. DuFauchard is a Democrat...
