Acquisition International - December 2017 11 O’Connor and Associates is a San Francisco, California-based law firm established in 2006 that provides a tailored approach to complex business litigation. Recently, a spokesperson for the company took time to profile the principal of O’Connor and Associates, John O’Connor, revealing more about his exceptional success over the years. ounded in 2006, O’Connor and Associates is a San Francisco, California-based law firm that provides a tailored approach to complex business litigation. In addition to an active trial practice in intellectual property and general business disputes, a busy subspecialty of the firm’s practice is in attorney fees dispute consulting and expert witness services. John O’Connor, the principal of O’Connor and Associates, is a versatile, highly experienced, complex-case trial lawyer, and has for over 25 years devoted a significant portion of his practice to attorneys and attorney fee disputes, both as an expert witness and as a litigator, bringing a depth of expertise as an expert witness only an experienced litigator can offer. O’Connor has tried a wide variety of cases in federal, state and arbitration courts throughout the United States, including professional liability, attorney fee and law firm buy-out cases, as well as a diverse litigation mixture including intellectual property, construction, employment, tort, civil rights and business claims. This experience allows him to identify inefficiency in litigation management. Although O’Connor has been involved in a significant amount of legal fee review, negotiation and litigation since 1977, his involvement in legal fee dispute work increased significantly in 1989. In that year, he was the partner at Tarkington, O’Connor and O’Neill, a San Francisco-based law firm in charge of working with failed and failing financial institutions on behalf of the United States governmental agencies, FDIC, FSLIC, RTC and NCUA, and the United States government. During that time, the firm performed extensive work for a failed California bank in government receivership Company: O’Connor and Associates Contact: John D. O’Connor Contact Email:
[email protected] 201 Mission Street, Suite 710 San Francisco, CA 94105 Telephone: (+1) 415-693-9960 Fax: (+1) 415-692-6537 Website: www.joclaw.com Super Lawyer F 1712AI37 and was subjected by the insurance carrier to numerous legal fee audits in an unsuccessful attempt to force the government to release the carrier from its obligations. At that point, O’Connor necessarily became immersed in the various billing standards prevalent in the community. During those years of legal fee disputes, O’Connor spent the majority of his time dealing with the developing field of legal “auditing” and related litigation. As a result, he gained a wide knowledge of auditing practices, prevailing billing standards, and approaches employed by legal fee experts, auditors, and litigators. Since 1990, John O’Connor has been retained on over two hundred occasions to provide written and/ or oral opinions to a Court or Arbitrator assessing the reasonableness of attorney’s fee requests. Due to his growing expertise in the legal fee and auditing issues, during the years 1991 through 2001, John consulted with numerous law firms throughout the United States who were seeking advice on audit criticisms levelled against their practices, almost invariably involved in large fee disputes. O’Connor also consulted on numerous occasions with fee payors in fee disputes. As this area of the firm’s practice has grown significantly over the past five years, O’Connor has built a team of specially trained associates and research assistants to aid his analysis and opinions by thoroughly evaluating and charting the disputed fees at issue, allowing John to opine on voluminous billing records efficiently and timely. As an expert witness and consultant, O’Connor has reviewed the billings of lawyers preparing for and/ or trying large, complex cases across the United States, including class action suits and intellectual property matters with legal fees in the multiple millions of dollars at issue. John O’Connor has been consulting and lecturing across the United States through the auspices of NALFA, the National Association of Legal Fee Analysis, a professional association for the legal fee analysis field. NALFA has recognized John O’Connor as the “Nation’s Top Attorney Fee Expert” in 2017. “John O’Connor has been retained on over two hundred occasions to provide written and/or oral opinions to a Court or Arbitrator assessing the reasonableness of attorney’s fee requests.”