Global law firm K&L Gates LLP has added trial and appellate lawyer John M. Pierce as a partner in its Palo Alto and Pittsburgh offices. In addition to his practice responsibilities, Pierce will serve as a co-leader of the firm’s global litigation and dispute resolution practice area and a member of K&L Gates’ Management Committee. Pierce joins K&L Gates from Latham & Watkins LLP.
With more than a decade and a half of experience representing clients in often high-stakes litigation matters, Pierce has obtained verdicts, pre-trial judgments, and settlements involving billions of dollars in claims on behalf of corporate defendants and both individual and institutional plaintiffs in the financial services, technology, life sciences, telecommunications, construction, and other industries. This includes a diverse range of complex disputes in the finance, securities, investment, and other areas involving such matters as hedge and mutual funds, private equity and M&A, real estate finance, financial fraud, insurance coverage, trade secrets, copyright, legal malpractice, false advertising, and government contracts.
Among Pierce’s notable cases have been his representation of Mattel Toys in the motion phase of a highly publicized trial involving its Barbie line of dolls; advising on the litigation aspects of approximately $2 billion in domestic and international M&A matters for a mobile payments industry client; the securing of a $30 million verdict in a contract dispute involving a California hotel and condominium development project that was the 67th largest verdict in the nation in 2008 according to the VerdictSearch Top 100 List and was described by local media as a “staggering verdict”; and the representation of a Hollywood producer in a $5 million jury verdict involving a film financing dispute that was featured in The Hollywood Reporter.
In addition to his work with clients based within and conducting business in the Silicon Valley through his Palo Alto office, Pierce — who began his legal career as a litigation associate with a Pittsburgh law firm — will also maintain a practice through K&L Gates’ Pittsburgh office, where he will assist regional, East Coast, and other domestic and foreign technology clients with their litigation needs.
Pierce stated: “I will always count my former partners at both firms of which I have been privileged to be a partner as my very best of friends and colleagues, and some of the finest lawyers in the business. I now have the extremely unique opportunity to combine my experience in California and around the globe with my Western Pennsylvania roots in joining K&L Gates in both Silicon Valley and Pittsburgh. [K&L Gates Chairman and Global Managing Partner] Peter Kalis and his partners have taken K&L Gates from a top-tier regional firm to a global powerhouse in the short span of a few decades, and the sky is truly the limit for this firm and its clients in the decades to come. There is no firm that has more perfectly positioned itself with an integrated global platform to serve clients at the intersection of globalization, regulation, and innovation. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute to K&L Gates’ continued growth and success for many years to come.”
Pierce was an editor of the Harvard Law Review and is a former M1A1 Abrams tank platoon leader in the Army’s famed 1st Cavalry Division who won the prestigious John J. Cavanaugh award for the highest combined academic and military performance in the Army ROTC program at the University of Notre Dame. He is the latest in a series of high-profile additions to K&L Gates’ Palo Alto office, with the firm also having added intellectual property litigators Jeff Randall and Brian Ankenbrandt to the office in late 2015.
“We are so pleased to welcome John to K&L Gates,” commented Michael Zeliger, administrative partner of K&L Gates’ Palo Alto office. “His arrival marks another significant advancement for our litigation practice in Silicon Valley, Pittsburgh, and across the globe. Clients and colleagues alike will benefit from John’s tremendous energy, skill, and experience, with his addition also serving as a particularly good reminder of K&L Gates’ position as a preferred destination for the most accomplished and discriminating practitioners.”
K&L Gates’ litigation and dispute resolution practice — with a team of more than 900 lawyers spanning Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and the United States — handles engagements that are among the largest and most complex of any law firm, in areas that include, among others, insurance coverage, consumer finance, intellectual property, real estate, white-collar criminal, professional liability, environmental, toxic tort, products liability, franchise, tax, bankruptcy and insolvency, antitrust and competition, labor, employment and workplace safety, benefits, government contracts, construction, constitutional and election law, and securities, transactional and investment company litigation. The practice includes international arbitrations before tribunals across the globe, civil and criminal trials, class actions, and appellate work, with K&L Gates lawyers having litigated and arbitrated major disputes in nearly every industry and market sector.
Source: www.klgates.com
