About Rose Nisker
Articles written by Rose Nisker
Game Changer
How Daralyn Durie and high-tech clients like Google are shaping the future of copyright lawSix years ago, Daralyn Durie and her colleagues at their fledgling law firm were seated at low-slung, purple desks, left behind—along with a supply of Nerf guns—in the office building’s basement by a tech-startup tenant. Not surprisingly, Durie often met her clients outside of the office. Today, in a space that was featured in Interior Design magazine, they’ve lost the purple desks but kept the tech vibe. With exposed beam ceilings, a conference room floor lined with green rubber …
Details, Details
How Kathryn Doi’s penchant for wading through regulations helped save dental coverage for millions of CaliforniansWhen budget-strapped California lawmakers yanked most dental benefits provided through Medicaid for the state’s lowest-income adults in 2009, a group of clinics that service the poor struck back: They asked Kathryn Doi to turn things around. The health care litigator, who once worked in the highest ranks of state government, was an ideal candidate to wade through layers of state and federal Medicaid and Medicare rules, searching for a way to restore reimbursement for adult dental, podiatry …
Who We Do This For
Divorce lawyer Esther Lerner makes it her business to see that kids don’t get caught in the crossfireDozens of children smile down from a bulletin board at the San Francisco family law offices of Lerner Poole. “We ask people to bring in pictures of their kids—it’s a nice reminder of who we’re doing this for,” explains firm founder Esther Lerner, scanning the photos and smiling back at the representation of three decades of work. Lerner’s family law cases often involve wealth and power. But whether she’s working out the financial complexities of a venture capitalist’s divorce, …
The Compassionate Approach to Divorce
Mindy Ross says the human issues are the same, even if the client is named Sean PennIn 1985, Mindy Lauren Ross faced a rookie attorney’s nightmare. It was the fourth week of a contentious, high-stakes divorce trial, and the 29-year-old attorney’s mentor, whom she was assisting on the case, didn’t show up at court one morning. “I had never even taken a deposition before, and suddenly I was about to cross-examine a forensic accountant regarding a bifurcated issue in the valuation of a client’s business,” Ross says. The news turned out to be worse than she imagined. …
Detail Person
To Susan Popik, insurance law is riveting stuffIn the early 1980s, a series of powerful rainstorms swept through California, bringing heavy floods, mudflows and landslides. As homeowners across the state assessed the damage, a wave of litigation hit California courtrooms. State Farm Insurance called on attorney Susan Popik to handle the onslaught. “Basically, I spent an entire decade dealing with one small paragraph of State Farm’s homeowners insurance policy,” Popik says. It might sound tedious to most, but she’s not complaining. …
Tough as Nails
That’s Linda L. Addison, the daughter of Holocaust survivors and current leader at Fulbright & JaworskiWhen Linda L. Addison was in college, she traveled through Africa, stopped off in Tanzania and climbed to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro without any previous mountaineering experience or training. “I wanted to prove to myself that I could do anything I set my mind to,” she explains. The young student pushed through miles of altitude sickness and was met with deep skepticism from more experienced climbers along the way. While the mountaineers may have been surprised when the novice reached the …
City Person
Pamela Duffy loves San Francisco, which makes sense—she’s behind some of its most successful developmentsWalking through the streets of San Francisco with land use and real estate attorney Pamela Duffy is like getting a backstage tour of the city’s past two decades of development. Yerba Buena Gardens, AT&T Park, Levi’s Plaza, Cal Pacific Medical Center, Westfield San Francisco Centre—she’s the power broker behind them all. Duffy represents clients in all stages of development, and much of her energy is spent dealing with government agencies on everything from roads and sewers to big …
Thoughts on a Thriving Life
Timothy Tosta was given two years to live … 19 years agoIn 1991, land use attorney Timothy Tosta was on fire. The 41-year-old attorney had a wildly successful practice, a reputation for sealing some of San Francisco’s most impossible development deals, and a future that could only get bigger. On the cover of a 1988 edition of California Executive, the attorney appears under the headline “Tim Tosta: Pit Bull or Polly Pure?,” his face revealing both his determined nature and youthful demeanor. Then he received a phone call from his dermatologist …
Keeping White Collars Clean
After a stint in the ultra-intense U.S. attorney’s office, nothing fazes criminal defense lawyer David WillinghamA year and a half into David Willingham’s stint as a federal prosecutor at the Los Angeles U.S. attorney’s office, the young attorney’s supervisor came to him with an investment fraud case involving a $250 million Ponzi scheme. The case spanned multiple countries and the scheme was allegedly operated by a group of players that included a former counsel to the Canadian parliament. “My supervisor said, ‘Handle this,’” Willingham recalls with a laugh. “I guess he had a lot of …
Kid Stuff
Few lawyers do more to advocate for the rights of children than Andrea HeynAndrea Heyn has made a career out of advocating for children. She got started early. Even before she graduated from law school, she had co-authored an amicus brief regarding In re Nicholas H., a seminal case in the area of non-biological parental rights. “The overarching reason I’m in this area of law is because of my interest in what’s best for kids, and how we as a society can use the legal system to protect and care for them,” she says. Today, she’s doing just that at the Law …
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