Greenberg Traurig Establishes San Francisco Office

SAN FRANCISCO — International law firm Greenberg Traurig LLP has announced the opening of its fifth California office in San Francisco.

Joining as managing shareholders are business, intellectual property and employment litigation attorney Samuel B. Shepherd and litigator Kenneth Steinthal, who focuses on trying cases in the music and broader media industries. Shepherd was a partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges LLP in its Silicon Valley office. Steinthal joins after practicing at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP since the beginning of his legal career in 1978, and where he was a partner since 1986 and co-chair of that firm's IP/Media Litigation group.

The office features more than 28,000 square feet of space at 153 Townsend St.

Greenberg Traurig established a presence in California with the opening of its Los Angeles office in 2000. The firm will now have more than 200 attorneys in California: in Los Angeles, Orange County, Sacramento, Silicon Valley, and now San Francisco. Most recently, the firm established an office in London, where it operates as Greenberg Traurig Maher LLP.

Steinthal has extensive trial experience and a track record of success in litigating matters in the IP/media areas and across a wide spectrum of other industries and disciplines — in jury and bench trial settings, both in U.S. federal and state court, as well as before copyright tribunals in the U.S. and internationally (where he has received "rights of audience" to represent his clients), and before other arbitral bodies worldwide.

Steinthal speaks at copyright seminars and similar fora about music rights and copyright litigation issues and is a former adjunct professor of law at Fordham Law School. He is admitted to practice in California, New York and numerous federal district and appeals courts. He received his J.D. *** laude in 1978 from Fordham University and his B.A. *** laude in 1974 from Williams College.

Shepherd received his J.D. and M.B.A. in 1992 from the University of Chicago, where he was a University of Chicago Business Fellow. He received his B.A., summa *** laude, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1988 from Bowdoin College. Shepherd has been a trial advocacy instructor at Stanford Law School since 1999 and is a guest legal commentator for the Silicon Valley Business Network. He is a member of the American Bar Association Section on Employment and Litigation.

Joining Steinthal and Shepherd is John Pavolotsky as of counsel. He was previously corporate counsel at SugarCRM, the world's leading provider of open source customer relationship management (CRM) software. He is a graduate of the University of California at San Diego and the University of California at Davis Law School.

Greenberg Traurig LLP is an international, full-service law firm with approximately 1,775 attorneys serving clients from more than 30 offices in the United States, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.gtlaw.com.