Paul Harvey, a conservative radio broadcaster who passed away in 2009,
had a long-running radio show, which included segments called “The
Rest of the Story.” Harvey pointed out the unknown and unexpected
aspects of familiar subjects. Which made me recall three recent signature
BHBA events, and how we learned the rest of the story.
For example,
Morgan Chu, partner at Irell & Manella LLP and Chair of the Litigation Group
and the recipient on February 17 of the
Excellence in Advocacy Award at our Litigation Awards Dinner, has an extraordinary resumé. I
knew that he was named The Outstanding Intellectual Property Lawyer in
the US in 2006, was recognized in 2010 as one of the Decade’s Most
Influential Lawyers, that he “delivers staggering results for clients,”
and that he was lead trial counsel in some of the world’s largest
and in some cases precedent-setting verdicts, judgments and settlements,
resulting in actual payments totaling over
$5 billion.
The rest of the story? It turns out that Morgan dropped out of high school
but later earned advanced degrees from Harvard, Yale & UCLA. His Mother
traveled by freighter from China to San Francisco in the middle of WWII,
risking Japanese submarine attacks, to earn a doctorate in Economics at
MIT. She joined Morgan’s Father, who also earned a doctorate in
engineering at MIT and later taught at two universities. Further, Morgan
has two brothers and is regarded as the under-achiever in his family.
His oldest brother, Gilbert Chu, holds an M.D. and a Ph.D. and is a professor
of biochemistry and medicine at Stanford. And the middle brother, Steven
Chu, was a professor of physics at Stanford, later a professor at UC Berkeley,
was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics and served for four years as President
Obama’s Secretary of Energy. Morgan’s story about his Mother’s
sacrifice to come to the U.S. brought tears to all eyes. You had to be
there to understand.
Another example, Darrell D. Miller, Los Angeles Managing Partner at Fox
Rothschild LLP and recipient on May 17 of BHBA’s Entertainment Lawyer
of the Year (ELOY) award, was well known as a prominent entertainment
lawyer with more than 20 years’ experience in entertainment transactional
work who was named to The
Hollywood Reporter’s list of Power Attorneys multiple times. We knew that Darrell has personally
transformed the careers of many entertainers and was credited as a central
factor in their enduring success, including Academy Award-nominated actress
Angela Basset, rapper/actor Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, actor
Blair Underwood, and producer and best-selling author TD Jakes, among others.
The rest of the story? Before attending law school, Darrell had earned
a B.F.A. from the University of Cincinnati Conservatory of Music studying
opera and had toured through Europe performing before attending law school.
For the ELOY event, he erupted onto the stage at The Beverly Hilton singing
a Puccini aria (to the delight of his assembled pop music and rap clients),
and wowed everyone in the room. It was a remarkable night and explained
how he was so much more than a successful entertainment lawyer.
A third example?
Judge Gilbert Manuel Lopez, a speaker at the BHBA’s 62nd Supreme Court Luncheon on June 1 who was named to the Los Angeles Superior
Court in 2001 by Governor Gray Davis. We knew he was a graduate of USC
and Loyola Law School who sits in El Monte and was re-elected without
opposition in 2010. The rest of the story? Judge Lopez is a former BHBA
Bar Foundation scholarship recipient. That scholarship had a powerful
impact on his career, permitting him to finish law school, embark on a
varied private practice where he became certified as an immigration law
specialist, and ultimately propelling him to become a Municipal Court
Commissioner and then a Judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court. And there
is the account by retired Chief Justice Ronald M. George, who in numerous
speeches, including a 1998 State of the Judiciary address to the Legislature,
told how the jurist built a jury box, bench and bailiff’s desk in
his home workshop at his own expense when the court could not afford to
furnish his courtroom. One thing more, Judge Lopez is a Native American
who gives back to his community by presiding over Teen Court at the Anahuacalmecac
Prep School in East Lost Angeles, which serves a largely Native American
student population.
So my message: make a point of coming to the BHBA’s next signature
event (our Installation Dinner in September) and you will meet another
surprising, impressive, multi-faceted leader of our community. And that’s
the rest of the story.
Howard Fredman is a business litigation partner at Fredman Lieberman Pearl LLP,
www.flpllp.com, with extensive trial and appellate experience, especially
in federal court.
He can be reached at 310 226 6796, or hsflawyer@gmail.com.