About Joe Mullich
Joe Mullich’s writing has appeared in more than 500 publications, ranging from the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and Wired Magazine to Consumer Reports, Cosmopolitan, and The Onion. He has received more than four dozen writing awards from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, National Headliners, International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors, LA Press Club, and other press organizations. He has written more than 50 stories for Super Lawyers, including regular cover features in Southern California. The common thread in his work is story telling—relating even the most complex topics in terms of the effect on people.
Articles written by Joe Mullich
Life After Life Without Parole
Marshall Camp successfully argued the first case under the Fair Sentencing for Youth ActJohn Marshall, the fourth chief justice of the United States, famously said, “The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it.” Marshall Camp, who was named after the chief justice and is distantly related to him, has put that thought into action. Camp, a partner in the Los Angeles office of Irell & Manella, was lead attorney in the first case to test changes to the hard-line stance California has long taken toward juvenile criminals. The Fair Sentencing for Youth Act, …
The Contrarians
Aitken•Aitken•Cohn takes on Disneyland, mountain lions, and hit-and-run executivesPeople were skeptical of the case. On Christmas Eve 1998, the sailing ship Columbia, which plows a leisurely pace around Tom Sawyer Island in Disneyland’s Frontierland, was approaching its dock when a 35-pound cleat came loose and shot out, as if propelled by a slingshot. A man standing on the dock was killed; his wife was severely maimed. His family hired Wylie Aitken. “There was a lot of belief in Orange County that you could never be successful against Disneyland,” Aitken says. “It …
Extraordinary Abilities
Julie Pearl leads Pearl Law Group’s pro bono charge on immigration casesThe day after Christmas, Katherine Rivera opened her front door and saw what looked like a SWAT team on her stoop—a group of officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The officers handcuffed her husband, Miguel, saying he would be deported to El Salvador. The problem? She was a U.S. citizen; they had been married for 14 years, owned a home and paid taxes; and two years before their marriage, an attorney had filed papers securing his political asylum. The Riveras had done …
How Jeff Lawson Doubled His Lifetime
An unlucky draft number proved transformational for the San Jose environmental lawyerIt was Aug. 5, 1971, the height of the Vietnam War, and Jeff Lawson’s draft number came up. He calls it “the luckiest day of my life.” “I remember watching the ball being selected,” he says. “All my close friends drew numbers that did not require them to go.” Yet the military would, in a roundabout way, propel him into law, then shape the kind of attorney he would become. For much of the four decades following his wartime service, Lawson—who has become one of the country’s …
The Ownership Society
What makes Andrews Lagasse Branch & Bell work?“A lot of people asked us if we took the fire as a sign.” That’s Jennifer Branch, the only partner who managed to make it into the office on the day that Andrews Lagasse Branch & Bell—a female- and minority-owned firm specializing in employment law and professional liability—was scheduled to open its doors in Scripps Ranch. Unfortunately, that same day, Oct. 22, 2007, six wildfires swept through the southland. So instead of a celebratory opening, the four founding members watched …
Across the Aisle: Linda Miller Savitt and David deRubertis
The two employment attorneys share alma maters and a big-picture perspective; but their disagreements are legendDuring Spring 2012, Linda Miller Savitt, an employment litigation defense attorney at Ballard Rosenberg Golper & Savitt, and David deRubertis, an employment plaintiff’s attorney at the deRubertis Law Firm, were on opposite sides of a case that went to mediation. They were too far apart and unable to get a second mediation, so they got on the phone and talked through the case. They delineated each other’s good and bad points. Eventually they found common ground and reached a settlement. …
Friending Ted Ullyot
Facebook’s first general counsel participates in hackathons, runs races, and brings the legal and engineering teams togetherWhen Ted Ullyot was named general counsel of Facebook in 2008, some Wall Street analysts were puzzled, and many employees of the social networking company were wary. Ullyot was a Washington, D.C., attorney with deep ties to the Republican Party—he’d clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, served as associate counsel to President George W. Bush and served as the White House deputy staff secretary during the Bush administration. This strongly conservative pedigree put him on a …
A Civil Defense
Don’t underestimate the cordial Nancy SheehanA number of years ago, employment lawyer Nancy Sheehan found herself in an unusual position in the courtroom: seated in the jury box. Surprisingly, she had been selected as a juror for a DUI case by a criminal defense attorney whom she frequently opposed on civil cases. Sheehan says she found the jury deliberations “both fascinating and horrifying.” Jurors ignored the judge’s direction not to take into consideration anything that wasn’t evidence—making Sheehan feel an ethical …
Billion-Dollar Man
Commercial real estate lawyer Stuart Graiwer navigates the global financial meltdownTransactional attorneys generally aren’t pinned to the wall at cocktail parties by people eager to talk about their work, and, for most of his career, Stuart Graiwer, a partner at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, was no exception. Then the bottom fell out of the economy. Suddenly the type of transactions he handles became sexier in Los Angeles than weekend movie grosses. “Real estate used to feel niche, but since the global financial meltdown it’s a topic of conversation everywhere,” …
The Defense (Never) Rests
John H. Gomez was already a top trial lawyer; then he went back to college—Gerry Spence’sOutside the Marriott TownePlace Suites in Rancho Cucamonga, a water main has burst open, spewing a geyser into the air. After the problem is handled, firefighters and workmen, lingering in the hotel’s corridors, come across a man with facial stubble and a muscular frame, wearing jeans, a faded T-shirt and a baseball cap. They fall into easy conversation, using the laconic shorthand of blue-collar workers on a lunch break. “What do you do?” one of the workmen asks him. “I’m a …
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