Alumni in the News

November 2003

Jeffrey Lewis
The Recorder, 11/10/03

You might say that Jeffrey Lewis ['74] and ERISA grew up together.

After all, Lewis had just begun his third year at Boalt Hall School of Law when the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act took effect in September 1974. He started handling some of the earliest ERISA-related cases, as a plaintiffs' employment lawyer, not long after he was admitted to the California Bar in December 1975.

Lewis and his former partner, Dan Sigman, "just kind of fell into it," says Lewis, referring to the specialty ERISA practice that has since defined his career. Lewis' six-lawyer Oakland firm, Lewis & Feinberg, has recently branched out into some wage-and-hour matters on behalf of employees, but the focus remains squarely on litigating ERISA and related employee benefits matters. (The firm may soon expand to eight lawyers, with two prospective associates awaiting results from the most recent bar exam.) …

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Eric Danoff
The Recorder, 11/10/03

To Eric Danoff ['74], admiralty law is a throwback.

"It's one of the few areas where you can quote a case with a straight face from the 1800s. And I do," he says.

Admiralty is a small bar that's regarded as more collegial than most. "You see the same people over and over again, and you have to treat people fairly," Danoff says. "Very rarely do you get into serious discovery disputes."

The amiable, low-key Danoff seems a perfect fit, even though he fell into the field by chance. Thirty years ago he was all set to join a mid-sized law firm as a litigation associate when, the day before he took the bar exam, the firm disbanded and withdrew its offer.

"A position opened up at Graham & James in maritime, and I took it," Danoff says. "I needed a job, plain and simple." …

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Peter Benvenutti
The Recorder, 11/10/03

In his nearly 30 years of practice, Peter Benvenutti ['74] has built up impressive cachet within the Bay Area bankruptcy community.

The Boalt Hall School of Law graduate gets high marks from colleagues who note his prodigious work ethic along with his pragmatic approach to bankruptcy cases.

"He's constructive when you're negotiating something" and "doesn't create artificial crises," says Morrison & Foerster partner Adam Lewis. "He gets to the point and stays on point."

This tack yields tangible results, such as in Benvenutti's recent role representing the trustee in the Software Logistics Corp. bankruptcy. Unsecured creditors, who were initially expected to get nothing, wound up with a pool totaling between $60 million and $80 million, thanks to a successful auction. …

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Mr. San Jose: James McManis is the ultimate insider
The Recorder, 11/3/03

The first of three profiles of colorful lawyers who loom over San Jose's legal scene

James McManis ['67] was once fined $1,500 for calling reporters to a deposition, a stunt an angry court commissioner described as an "invitation to a circus."

So it was fitting that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus turned to the San Jose lawyer in 2001 to defend its star trainer on animal abuse charges.

McManis, who says the circus also hired him before it hit town to "make things go smoothly," landed on front pages across the country when he won the trainer an acquittal at trial.

With a carefully cultivated reputation as the ultimate insider, McManis is Mr. San Jose. He has a knack for landing in the middle of whatever legal sideshow sets up tent, and he's known to everyone at the courthouse. Public officials are well acquainted with him too—he's sued nearly all of them. …

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Court Adding a Little Variety to the Law Clerk Ranks
Legal Times, 11/3/03

WASHINGTON--Five years after the lack of diversity among the Supreme Court's law clerks became an issue, diversity seems to have taken hold and become more commonplace in their ranks--and not just racial and gender diversity.

A survey of this term's 35 law clerks reveals that more and more of the clerks are from non-Ivy League schools, and, like last year, a growing number have not taken the traditional path to the court -- arriving directly from an appeals court clerkship.

Fully 19 of the clerks ended their lower court clerkships a year or more ago, and a different 19 graduated from non-Ivy League law schools. Boalt Hall School of Law is the alma mater of four clerks, and the University of Texas sent two of its own to the high court. The law schools at Notre Dame, Ohio State and Brigham Young are also represented.

"Four is a record for us," says former Boalt Hall Dean Jesse Choper, who applauded the court for expanding its horizons beyond Ivys Harvard, Yale and Columbia as well as non-Ivy elite schools like Stanford, which sent three alumni to the court this term. "We don't do as well as we should. The students we turn out are as good as they get." …

The court does not keep or release demographic information on the clerks and does not assist in the tally. But based on publicly available information and observation, it appears that eight of the clerks, or 23 percent, are minority members--down from last term's record high number of nine.

The two African-American clerks this term are Leondra Kruger, working for Justice John Paul Stevens, and Bertrand-Marc Allen, in Justice Anthony Kennedy's chambers. Both are from Yale Law School. The six Asian-American clerks, followed by the justices they work for, are Sambhav Sankar ['00] (Sandra Day O'Connor); Chi Kwok (Kennedy); Jeannie Suk (David Souter); Aziz Huq (Ruth Bader Ginsburg); and Pratik Shah ['01] and Davis Wang (Stephen Breyer). There appear to be no Hispanic or Native American law clerks. …

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