LATERAL ASSOCIATES

If I had to put the day in the life of Joe Magnas at MoFo ... I do a lot of work and I work hard and I take my work seriously and that, to some people, may be the bad news. But the good news is working with good people, people that I enjoy, people I look up to and respect and I enjoy it.

My two-and-a-half-year-old daughter painted this for Father's Day, so this was my Father's Day gift.

If all I wanted was to be a partner in a New York firm, the safest bet would be to have stayed where I was. But I made the decision that I'd rather be a partner of Morrison & Foerster. My friends from law school and my friends that are lawyers, I still hear nightmare stories that I've just never seen. I'm blessed that way, or lucky that way.

I am a kid of the eighties so, I like my Kiss. They were great.

MoFo Mojo. I don't know if I've been around long enough to answer the question appropriately. Maybe if I got to visit some of the other offices. If I happen to, you know, be working in D.C. for a day and saw the D.C. office or have to do something in San Francisco, see the San Francisco office, and, maybe I could say better whether there's a MoFo Mojo. But I like, I'd like to believe there is, and I'll tell people there is, because it sounds really good.

My name is Danielle Coleman, and I am in the patent litigation group.

Before coming to MoFo I was doing a clerkship here in the Northern District of California. Towards the end of my clerkship it was time to apply to different law firms and I thought about where are my friends happy, where have they been several years, and actually enjoying their experience – and I thought about MoFo. Because I actually have the experience of working at another law firm prior to my clerkship, and I definitely can feel the difference. Just walking in the hallways, I think is different. The people are friendlier. They’re also very hands-on, as far as trying to guide me, as far as my work. There is one senior associate I actually met at one of the very first cases I was working on, and she was a great mentor, as far as just getting me oriented to different things in the office. Also, about just how to enter your time notes, for example.

MoFo has high profile patent litigation cases, different complex matters. They’re challenging. They’re exciting. In my backgrounds particularly – in biotech and pharmaceuticals – so that appealed to me that they had those types of cases, as well as other ones, so that I could expand my knowledge of different technology areas as well as do patents.

I work hard, but I also like to plan activities whenever I can on the weekend, or cook a nice dinner – which is one of my hobbies, cooking.

I can cook southern food. I actually, when I first learned how to cook I was living in New Orleans where I went to college. So I do a little bit a Cajun or Creole type of dishes as well.

This is my husband here in the photo. This is from our wedding that was in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, about four years ago.

I do think that MoFo embodies diversity in the culture of the firm. It is actually one of the things too that appeals to me when I was applying. It’s been great even being here, we have different groups, like the Black Affinity group, as well as the Women’s group. To have those different groups, where we have regular meetings to talk to people that are similar to you, and also to reach out to the community through those groups, has been great.

I’m Patrick Zhang, and I’m in IP litigation.

MoFo had two different reputations in my mind. One was, quirky, culturally progressive, socially progressive. And on the other hand, I had heard that it was a very hard working firm. In terms of being a life style firm, I think that would only probably hold for people that are like law students and who don’t know law firms very well. They think that there are places that are life style firms. Especially in litigation, when you’re opposing other firms who are, the people are just as smart as you, and you don’t want to be like working eighty hours for every hundred hours they work, because then you’re going to get beat.

I feel like I have a better network of mentors here than I’ve had anywhere else. Just guiding you along, and taking care of your career, and making sure that you are getting the types of experiences and opportunities that you need to be getting at your class level, at your seniority level. Giving those strategic moments to put you in front of clients, like taking you to client meetings, taking you to court hearings so that you don’t stagnate as an attorney.

I’m married and I have a two year old daughter. She is running around talking, jumping, a lot of fun.

I’m from Shanghai and my zodiac is the Horse. It says when the Horse arrives success follows. That’s the saying, it’s a four character saying.

As a minority attorney, I feel very comfortable practicing here. I work for a number of different minority partners. I don’t really think about it too much. But then if you really sit down and think about it, maybe that’s not . . . it’s not available everywhere, and you just take it for granted. I feel like there’s definitely a future for you here. No matter what your skin color is, or where you come from.

My name is Ruchika Agrawal. I’m in the IP litigation practice group.

One of the things that drove me to MoFo was that I did feel like I was getting pigeon holed because I have a technology background. And so coming to MoFo I put in my development plan that I want to be really good at discovery. I want the full discovery skill set and they took it seriously. I took several depositions last year and I was mentored by the partner on the case. The partners are just fantastic. Each one of them is happy to mentor you. They’re very, very smart people, very accomplished attorneys, they could probably run the country and yet they are so down-to-earth.

Life outside of MoFo – well, I’m married, and so I like to spend time with my husband as much as possible. I like to teach. I do this course at Stanford through the Computer Science department. It’s called, “TechLaw with Progressive Minds.” I actually created it. These are the future engineers of the world. They are going to be at big companies, and I feel like they need to learn how writing a stupid email can really come back and bite them, you know, or what is a patent, you know. When they think about invention, what are the sorts of things that get patented. It means a lot to me in my life. I feel like if I do anything in my life that makes a difference, it’s something like that.

One of the things that I immediately appreciated in my transition over was the infrastructure. If you’re serious about your own professional development, the resources are there for you. Any sort of training, any sort of classes. I mean, I took a Pocket MBA course. The other thing that immediately appealed to me was the range of pro bono services that we offer and that are open to you. Like they really take that to be a part of a definition of a lawyer, and what we owe to society, and our obligations to improve society and give back. And I really, really appreciate that.

My name is Wynne Erickson and I work in Litigation.

(Interviewer) Give me your litigation face?

I don’t really have a litigation face.

Before I came to MoFo, I clerked for two years on the Eleventh Circuit, and after that, I did a brief stint at the Social Security Administration in their General Counsel’s office.

I ended up at MoFo because it was a place that I always wanted to go. It’s definitely one of the top firms in terms of the people and the work. And when I came and interviewed everyone was so enthusiastic and passionate about what they were doing, and I liked that kind of excitement to be around.

I’ve been surprised how much I was able to take on in terms of my own responsibility right from the start. My first few weeks at Morrison & Foerster were very different than I thought. I thought there would be a lot more hand holding or, kind of, protecting me and having me do sort of fake projects for a little while or something.

On my first day the head of litigation came in and gave me a big case to immediately start working on. You know, take this project, run with it, bring it back and there will obviously be feedback and editing and what not. But have this project, take it, and take responsibility for it. So my first few weeks were intense and crazy and really interesting.

I definitely think the enthusiasm for the work sets Morrison & Foerster apart. I think people care about what they’re doing and are genuinely interested in the law, and interested in doing a job that they are proud of. They are also fun people to be around. You know, the down moments in between work, you actually enjoy talking to your co-workers, and get along really well – and that’s important to me.

(Interviewer) I like your eraser.

You probably should not put that on.

My name is Anton Ware. I practice in the litigation group here. I am originally from Chicago. I’ve lived in a number of different places, around the world actually, but most recently spent six years in New York.

You notice the volley ball trophy which I brought with me from back in my Urban League days in New York. I’ve been playing in a urban volley ball league here in San Francisco, so I try to keep that up.

My wife and I like to get out and explore different parts of the Bay Area and go on hikes and enjoy the beautiful weather as much as we can.

I think life here at MoFo is, more or less, what I expected. It’s always hard to know before you get started in a new place what things are going to be like. Some part of me had this fantasy that moving to California would be ... everything would be so much more laid back, and, you work a lot less. That hasn’t so much panned out exactly.

I found a lot of continuity between my new practice and my practice at my previous firm. I was able to jump in right away on a big international arbitration matter that was very much in the, kind of in the heartland of the same kind of work that I had been doing previously. I have almost constant interaction with the partners and given a lot of responsibility to work directly with the client, to interview witnesses, to take on other key aspects of the case -- including, being involved in strategic decision making and that’s part of what makes working here enjoyable. Even when the work is tough, you feel like your work matters and its appreciated.