It's time for another installment in our Litigation Leaders series, featuring the heads of Big Law litigation practices. 

Meet Jedediah Wakefield, who chairs Fenwick & West's litigation group. Best known as an IP litigator, his clients have included Amazon, Cisco, Facebook and Peloton.

He shared his thoughts on the Silicon Valley-based firm's litigation practice with Lit Daily.

Lit Daily: Tell us a little about yourself – beyond what's in your law firm bio.  

Jed Wakefield: I have two brothers who are professional actors. This may explain why I constantly quote movie lines.

How big is your litigation department and where are most of your litigators concentrated geographically?

We're a national litigation practice with more than 100 attorneys. Most work out of our San Francisco and Silicon Valley offices, but we have a strong presence in New York and Seattle. We routinely work together and staff cases across our offices, so I never feel that our litigators are concentrated in any particular geography.   

In what three areas of litigation do you have the deepest bench? (I know it's tempting to list more, but please just name three)  

You're right – it's hard to list just three, but I would say:

IP litigation, including patent, trade secret, copyright, and trademark litigation.  

Securities litigation, including securities class actions, shareholder derivative lawsuits, regulatory enforcement matters, and internal investigations. 

Consumer class action defense, in areas including privacy and data security, false advertising, technology performance, automatic purchase renewals and statutory violations. 

As head of the department, what are some of your goals or priorities?  

Fostering a collaborative culture as we grow: Our litigation group is an integrated, collaborative practice, and I'm committed to maintaining that culture as we grow. Throughout my 20-plus years at Fenwick, the firm's collaborative and inclusive culture has meant a lot to me. Holding on to that means making sure we are building and preserving connections between people across locations and practice specialties. It also means working together across offices on firm initiatives around diversity, pro bono, and recruiting. 

Continuing to deliver outstanding client service. Continuing to deliver excellent client service is a top priority. It requires continuing investment in our core strengths while remaining nimble enough to meet new challenges. It also requires embracing innovation.

Investing in associate talent: Another priority is investing in our talent. This means not only plenty of practical training and development opportunities—both on cases and in formal training—but also programs emphasizing "soft skills" and other aspects of professional development. It also requires attention to mentoring, and robust knowledge management and knowledge sharing.

How are you coping with the current economic downturn?  

I couldn't be more proud of how our litigators have come together and continued to deliver outstanding service to our clients in a difficult environment. We were fortunate to have the technology infrastructure in place to make the transition to working from home pretty seamless.  

Along with being there for our clients, we've focused on staying connected and supporting our colleagues as we go through this together. That means checking in and communicating even more than we would in the office.  

As for the economic impacts, it's highly uncertain how extensive they will be. In past downturns our litigation practice has been countercyclical, but we also plan to use any slowdown as an opportunity to invest even more in the future success of the litigation group and the firm.

What do you see as hallmarks of your firm's litigators? What makes you different? 

First, we are uniquely focused on the needs of technology and life sciences companies. Many of our trial lawyers have backgrounds in computer science, electrical engineering, biology and chemistry. But even those who—like me—don't have a technical background are passionate about understanding our clients' businesses. This helps us position our clients to win not only in the courtroom but in the marketplace as well. 

Second, our collaborative culture makes us stand out. It helps us attract and retain top talent who are energized about their work, and it gives our litigation clients insights from attorneys in diverse legal and industry practice areas across the firm.   

Third, our approach is scalable—we handle cases for companies ranging from early-stage startups to Fortune 50 companies. These are fast-moving clients, and each has its own set of risks and competitive concerns. We have no standard playbook or one-size-fits-all approach. Our approach is nimble, and we adapt quickly to our clients' changing circumstances. 

Finally, we're trial lawyers.  Most cases settle, but we approach every case as if it will go to trial. Our focus on the endgame helps us limit discovery and motions to get what we need to win. It also positions our cases for favorable settlements.  

How many lateral litigation partners have you hired in the last 12 months? (Please mention names). What do you look for in lateral hires?  

None in the last year, but in mid-2018 we brought in six IP litigation partners in our New York office— Jeff Oelke, Kevin McGann, Jim Trainor, Adam Gahtan, Robert Counihan, and Ryan Johnson. In addition to being tremendous trial and appellate lawyers with successful practices, they have exceeded expectations in becoming excellent colleagues who contribute to the firm across the board. 

In considering lateral hires, we look for top talent who will enhance our services to our technology and life sciences client base, who we think will thrive on the Fenwick platform, and who will positively contribute to our collaborative culture. 

What were some of your firm's biggest in-court wins in the past year? 

Over the past year, we've had a tremendous string of wins for technology and life sciences clients.

In the span of just one month last year, our securities litigators obtained dismissals of four separate class actions in the Northern District of California (for Tesla, GoPro, Chegg and Natus Medical), convinced the Ninth Circuit to affirm dismissal of another action (for Nimble Storage), and prevailed on a motion to dismiss in the Delaware Court of Chancery (for the directors of Uber).

In IP litigation, we won victories at the Federal Circuit for Amazon and UCB. We also won summary judgment for Cray on two supercomputer patents asserted by Raytheon—a victory that followed Fenwick's earlier precedent-setting Federal Circuit win for Cray. We prevailed at trial on trade secret claims against Huawei, clearing our client of misappropriation claims and prevailing on our counterclaims.  

We also defeated a preliminary injunction motion brought by Array Biopharma after a full-day evidentiary hearing, successfully defended that victory on appeal, and ultimately secured a dismissal of all claims for our client Loxo Oncology. In trademark litigation, we scored a decisive summary judgment victory for Peloton Interactive.

In consumer class actions, we secured a dismissal for Symantec in a consumer class action asserting false advertising, warranty, and CLRA (California Consumers Legal Remedies Act) claims, and won motions to compel arbitration for other clients.

Can you give an example or two of tactics that exemplify your firm's approach to litigating cases? 

I mentioned earlier that our focus on the endgame helps us limit discovery and motion practice to get what we need to win. As an example of that, in a case this year where we saw the opportunity for a rifle-shot summary judgment victory, we focused early fact discovery on that issue, convinced the court to stay expert discovery while we pursued that motion, and ultimately won the case—saving the client considerable expert costs. 

Where are you looking to build or expand in the next year?  

As a national litigation practice we handle cases all over the country, so geographic expansion is less about having a presence in a local market, and is more about opportunities to attract talent. We continue to look for opportunities to build on our litigation strengths across all our offices.

For prior Litigation Leader profiles, click here.