Cristina C. Arguedas

Hours after San Francisco Giants’ CEO Larry Baer and his wife, Pam, had a brief public tussle that was caught on video, Arguedas got a phone call from team officials. A call from Baer quickly followed. The Giants knew Arguedas well from her defense work in the 2011 Barry Bonds perjury case. Would she represent Baer?

She would, and she immediately set to work to persuade prosecutors they had no case—despite images that show Baer appearing to grab for a phone in his wife’s hand as she sat in a chair in a San Francisco plaza, where the couple was having coffee. Pam then falls backward screaming “Oh, my God, no, help!”

The look wasn’t ideal.

“It’s a bad combination to be a well known person in a situation that could suggest domestic violence these days,” Arguedas said.

She soon was analyzing footage of the March 1 incident frame by frame and explaining to reporters, “That’s not a misdemeanor. That’s not a crime. That’s not anything. … Yes, they have to review it, but there is no case to bring.” Three weeks later the district attorney agreed there would be no criminal charges.

“I was proud of being able to have no charges filed,” Arguedas said.

As with Baer, a lot of Arguedas’ work takes place in the background, far from the courtroom. She and her partners at Arguedas, Cassman, Headley & Goldman LLP represent several ex-employees at the defunct biotech company Theranos Inc.

“The first job is to put them in a category in which they are not targets of the ongoing government investigations,” she said. “So we became experts in what Theranos was doing, so that in our clients’ interviews with investigators, we know the facts, we know the case.”

Likewise, Arguedas represents an executive committee member of Wells Fargo & Co. as the banking giant undergoes regulatory scrutiny for a fake accounts scandal.

“That person could have been a target, but isn’t,” Arguedas said with satisfaction.

Seeking to head off trouble even earlier, Arguedas in March made a rare appearance on a panel in San Francisco before business trial lawyers at which President Donald Trump’s new Northern District chief prosecutor, David L. Anderson, outlined his plans to use wiretaps, search warrants and early plea offers to aggressively pursue white-collar crime.

Arguedas pushed back.

“Dave is a golf partner and a friend, but I do think his proposed changes are a mistake. He says he’s going to tell his people to indict a case, give discovery fast and then give his best plea offer with a short expiration date. I fiercely objected,” she said. “I can’t evaluate an offer without my own investigation. He thinks he’ll move cases more quickly, but mistakes will be made. The battle lines are drawn.”

— John Roemer