For years, Nick Yocca has been the face of Newport Beach law firm Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth.
Some call him a “godfather of Orange County” for his role as one of the county’s first corporate lawyers and for his ties to local groups, boards and universities.
“When you are around for 40-plus years doing that, someone is bound to remember your name,” Yocca said.
At 79, Yocca still keeps an office at Stradling Yocca’s Newport Center headquarters, but largely just to hang out. He doesn’t practice law anymore. And while some clients still call for Yocca, a power shift has played out at the county’s third-largest law firm.
Yocca and partners Fritz Stradling, Craig Carlson, Bill Rauth and K.C. Schaaf have groomed younger lawyers to take over.
“We’ve spent many years working together and building a culture together,” Yocca said. “As you do that, people emerge as leaders. You see in them what you had.”
New Breed
These days, partners Mike Flynn, John Cannon and Shiv Grewal largely direct Stradling Yocca.
But with Yocca at the end of his career, some clients and legal types have wondered who among Stradling’s new breed would fill his shoes as the public face of the firm.
Flynn, chair of the executive committee and head of the firm’s dominant corporate law practice, appears to have taken on that role.
Like Yocca, Flynn’s active in local groups and boards, including the University of California, Irvine’s Chief Executive roundtable, the Orange County Venture Group and Aliso Viejo’s Octane. He’s also a director and member of Newport Beach’s Pacific Club.
“He embodies the same qualities that Nick Yocca has laid down and he’s a part of the community,” said James Hickey, senior vice president of the Irvine office of Minnesota’s Merrill Corp. and president-elect of the Association for Corporate Growth’s local chapter.
Yocca recently was honored by the Association for Corporate Growth with its inaugural Nick Yocca Award of Distinction and Merit.
Flynn downplays comparisons to Yocca.
“There could never be another Nick Yocca,” he said.
Stradling, like other local law firms, grew up with the county as OC evolved from farmland to a business hub.
The firm, which has offices in Sacramento, Santa Barbara, San Francisco and San Diego, serves small to midsize private and public companies in technology, healthcare, consumer products and dining.
Stradling has 120 lawyers, most in OC. It’s the No. 3 law firm in the county after Costa Mesa-based Rutan & Tucker LLP and Irvine’s Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear LLP.
Transitions from one generation of lawyers to the next is a challenging issue that law firms have to deal with, said Frumi Barr of Frumi & Associates LLC, a Newport Beach-based consulting firm that works with law firms and others on management issues.
Changing Mix
Flynn has built community ties but is best known for bringing changes to Stradling, according to Cannon, a partner and member of the executive committee alongside Flynn.
The biggest change under Flynn: upping the mix of more lucrative practices such as securities work and litigation, mergers and acquisitions, private equity deals and general corporate representation.
“Premium practice work is a trend in the legal industry and it’s a trend for us,” Cannon said. “Areas that generate that kind of income are critical.”
Some recent deals reflect Flynn’s push.
In November, Stradling worked on a $100 million financing for Irvine-based online advertising firm Specific Media Inc. from Menlo Park’s Francisco Partners. The funding easily was the county’s largest last year.
In October, the firm represented North Carolina medical device maker TranS1Inc. in its $82.5 million initial public offering.
In August, Stradling represented Irvine-based Yard House Restaurants LLC in its 70% sale of the company for an estimated $200 million to TSG Consumer Partners, a San Francisco private equity firm.
“We had a banner year,” Flynn said. “We’re going after more work like that.”
Jeff Coyne, senior vice president and general counsel at Irvine-based Newport Corp., has seen changes play out at Stradling from both sides.
Coyne was a partner at Stradling before moving in 2001 to Newport, a maker of industrial lasers and related gear. He worked under Yocca and has seen the changes Flynn brought as a client at Newport.
“Stradling has done a good job of evolving and that’s due in part to the vision of some of the younger partners like Mike,” Coyne said.
Adding Lawyers
The firm plans to add seven or more lawyers this year in a bid to bolster its business doing corporate work and securities litigation, according to Flynn.
Stradling doesn’t plan to add lawyers in other parts of its practice, including real estate and estate planning.
“You have to look at the economics and ask yourself what practice areas are growing and then go after the ones that have higher premiums,” Flynn said.
As Stradling goes after more corporate law work, it stands to bump up more against regional and national firms, many with OC offices.
More competition and a focus on more profitable practices are pushing Stradling to manage itself more like a business, Cannon said.
“Law firms today are very much like our clients,” he said. “We’re very focused on the bottom line.”
Yocca, who helped start the firm as an entrepreneur, said he’s comfortable with the changes.
“The firm never did stand on ceremony but I think you would find there is more structure than there used to be,” he said. “I am confident in the firm. The guys are committed to making it work, making it grow and helping it succeed.”
Reluctant Retiree
Nick Yocca helped build the law industry in Orange County by cofounding Newport Beach law firm Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth 40 years ago.
But law doesn’t run in his blood.
The son of Italian immigrants and one of 10 children, Yocca grew up in a Pennsylvania coal town.
His father urged him and his siblings to go to college and pursue careers.
“We would go to funerals every few weeks because a mine would cave in,” Yocca said. “That was just a part of life and my father urged us to get away from that.”
Yocca served in the Korean War before attending college, where he developed an interest for law and later earned his law degree.
In 1959, Yocca came to California to work as an associate at Los Angeles-based O’Melveny & Myers LLP.
After having his car broken into several times, Yocca said he and his wife Bonnie moved to OC because they thought it would be a better place to raise their children.
In the 1960s, Yocca went to work for Costa Mesa-based Rutan & Tucker LLP, Orange County’s oldest law firm, which, at the time, had about 20 lawyers specializing in real estate, litigation and government work.
There he met Stradling cofounders C. Craig Carlson, William Rauth and K.C. Schaaf, who broke away from Rutan in 1975 to start their firm. Name partner Fritz Stradling joined soon after.
“Our client base was small,” Yocca said. “We had to be out there hustling business for eight hours and doing the work the next eight or more. Our wives would literally drive by with the kids in the car with our dinner and wave and we’d go back to work. That happened night after night for years.”
These days, Yocca said he has family and health matters to attend to but hesitates to call himself “retired.”
“I love my family and I love being home, but Stradling is also home and the new leadership has made it clear that I can come in every day as long as I desire,” he said.
And he does, decked out in a suit, tie and all.
“It isn’t easy to let go of some of the things I once enjoyed,” Yocca said.
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Jessica Lee
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Bear: joined firm in 1974 |
Retired Knobbe Martens Partner Dies
James Bear, former managing partner of Irvine’s Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear LLP, died last month from an aneurysm. He was 66.
Bear, a native of Austin, Minn., joined Knobbe Martens in 1968 after earning a law degree from University of Cali-fornia, Los Angeles. He became a name partner in 1974 and managed the patent law firm for more than 30 years before retiring in 2006.
Bear focused on patent litigation and client counseling. He helped the firm carve a niche as Orange County’s largest intellectual property firm with founders Louis Knobbe, Don Martens and Gordon Olson.
“I personally owe Jim an enormous debt of gratitude for always taking the time to teach me everything he knew about our firm and management,” managing partner Steven Nataupsky said.
Today, Knobbe Martens is the second largest law firm in the county with 142 lawyers in Irvine and 205 firmwide. It has offices in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Riverside and San Luis Obispo.
Bear was involved with the Orange County Bar Association, the Orange County Barristers Club and the George A. Parker Law Foundation, among others.
He is survived by his wife, Sandra, daughter Doreen Trenholm, sons Matthew and Stephen, six grandchildren and four siblings. A celebration of Bear’s life was held last week at the Marconi Automotive Museum in Tustin.
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Jessica Lee
