Kenneth C. Feldman

Los Angeles

Professional Liability/Responsibility, Legal Malpractice Defense

Feldman is the national co-chair of Lewis Brisbois' legal malpractice defense department, and he estimates that 98% of his practice is defending lawyers in malpractice litigation.

"It's been that way for probably 10 years," he said. "I don't know of anyone else in town who has that percentage."

So when defending a lawyer sued for malicious prosecution, he often writes to the plaintiff's attorneys to tell them things aren't likely to go well for their case. An anti-SLAPP motion to strike can often knock a lawsuit against attorneys for malicious prosecution out -- something Feldman demonstrated 20 years ago in the first appellate ruling on that point. White v. Lieberman, 103 Cal.App. 4th 210 (Cal. App. 2nd Dist., Oct. 29, 2002).

Since that case, he and his team have done well with the procedure, even collecting some six-figure awards for fees and costs when there have been appeals. The Courts of Appeal generally are more receptive to anti-SLAPP motions than trial courts, he said.

He and his colleagues scored another appellate victory upholding an anti-SLAPP motion in a malpractice case that grew out of what the appellate court described as "an extremely tangled thicket of legal proceedings in both state and federal court, as well as in Switzerland."

The Lewis Brisbois team's win for the attorneys was especially impressive because the same court had previously reversed the anti-SLAPP motion won by those attorneys' client. Optional Capital Inc. v. Akin Gump Strauss, Hauer & Feld LLP, 18 Cal.App.5th 95 (Cal. App. 2nd Dist., Nov. 16, 2017).

Last month, Feldman and his team won a summary judgment in an arbitration on behalf of a prominent law firm being sued by a minor celebrity. "I'm quite proud of that one," he said. "It's a little more challenging to win [a summary judgment motion] in the arbitration arena."

He regularly defends firms of all sizes. "We represent the gamut from sole practitioner to thousand-plus [attorney] law firms," he said.

The underlying legal issues also run the gamut, with the most common area still being personal injury. He also sees many cases involving real estate, family law, trusts and estates and bankruptcy, he said.

Besides handling litigation, Feldman said he also tries to improve the law of legal malpractice. To that end, he co-chairs the lawyer defense committee of the Association of Southern California Defense Counsel. The committee primarily urges publication of unpublished appellate opinions that advance its clients' interests.

-- Don Debenedictis