Elizabeth Pipkin

Litigation

San Jose

Elizabeth M. Pipkin, the managing partner at the litigation boutique McManis Faulkner, focuses on business, government and civil rights cases. She joined the firm in 2006.

The Harvard Law School graduate is also active in pro bono and community affairs. She's a past president of the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, an organization that serves underrepresented individuals.

"At the Law Foundation, we understand the importance of social justice and equality," she said in an earlier statement. She was on medical leave and unavailable for an interview for this story.

In 2024, Pipkin remains on the Law Foundation board, and she is an integral leader in its impact litigation case work, with a focus on criminal matters targeting individuals living in mobile homes.

At work, Pipkin tackles tough assignments. "I really don't have a lot of easy cases," she said earlier. "I'm fortunate to have clients come to me with difficult issues, and I do enjoy the challenge. One of the things that I try to do is bring in diverse team members who can really look at the situation from different angles."

For client Seagate Technology LLC, Pipkin has handled numerous confidential matters. In 2021, she was retained to bring a new approach to a class action case that had recently been revived by a Court of Appeal ruling. Pipkin's team quickly analyzed the key issues and developed a strategy for moving to decertify the class, which had been certified in 2017. On Aug. 10, 2022, the court granted Seagate's motion to decertify, ending a litigation that had been pending since 2015. Pipkin and her team recently secured a complete victory in the court of appeal. Nalick v. Seagate Technology, CGC-15-547787 (S.F. Sup. Ct., filed Sept. 4, 2015).

"The client hired us after a reversal on appeal and asked us to take a new look and recommend the best strategy going forward," Pipkin said. "We thought we had a really good decertification argument because of changed circumstances."

Pipkin represented Apple in prosecuting a trade secrets case against a former engineer who left the company to start his own business. The company argued that the former engineer, whose company was ultimately acquired by Qualcomm for $1 billion, misappropriated Apple's chip specifications. This matter settled on confidential terms. Apple Inc. v. Williams, 19-cv-352866 (S. Clara Co. Super. Ct., filed Dec. 10, 2019).

"I think that Santa Clara County Superior Court, in particular, is somewhat ground zero for a lot of the cutting-edge litigation in Silicon Valley," Pipkin said.

-- John Roemer