Since its establishment on February 1, 2000, the Los Angeles office has achieved steady growth and substantially broadened the scope of its client portfolio.   Leveraging K&L Gates’ prominence, the Los Angeles office has attracted a number of leading lawyers in the region to join its ranks, and it has tripled in size since opening.  Our Los Angeles lawyers counsel local, regional and international business clients across a wide range of dispute resolution, transactional, and regulatory issues. Industry sectors served include financial services, technology, manufacturing, construction, entertainment, hospitality, food services, distribution, retailing, and wholesaling, among others.

The corporate and securities lawyers in Los Angeles address the financing needs of both public and privately held companies.  These lawyers have represented underwriters or issuers in scores of initial public offerings.  They handle specialty finance, high technology, "going private" transactions, private equity, and debt placements.  They also manage single-lender unsecured financings, complex transactions involving numerous lenders and multiple tiers of debt, and sophisticated debt restructurings.  The corporate and securities lawyers in the Los Angeles office represent lenders in leveraged acquisitions, underwriters, and purchasers of high-yield instruments issued in these transactions, and investment bankers who provide underwriting services for companies making their initial and follow-on public offerings.  For publicly held clients, this group advises and assists in the preparation of all periodic regulatory filings, including annual and quarterly reports, proxy statements, and other required filings.  Corporate lawyers in the Los Angeles office also represent clients in M&A and other sophisticated business transactions.  They also regularly advise trustees and directors of investment funds such as banks, thrift institutions, trust companies, investment advisors, broker-dealers, and other institutional investment managers regarding their fiduciary duties under ERISA and state fiduciary statutes.  Real estate lawyers in Los Angeles focus on financings as well as traditional real estate practice, and handle the negotiation and drafting of leases, purchase and sale contracts, exchanges, and construction and permanent financing for regionally based lenders, debt restructures, and development joint ventures.

The litigation practice engages in dispute resolution counseling and representation in numerous areas including contracts, construction, commercial, business torts, banking, bankruptcy, securities, real estate, environmental, toxic tort, products liability, white collar criminal, and insurance coverage.  Matters handled range from complex class actions to more routine disputes addressed in alternative dispute resolution settings.  Because California statutes and state rules of court frequently present unique challenges for corporate defendants, the Los Angeles litigation group has teamed with its counterparts in K&L Gates' San Francisco, Palo Alto and Orange County offices to organize a California litigation practice that offers niche competencies in addressing special challenges such as California Unfair Competition Law (Section 17200) lawsuits.  Other lawyers in the Los Angeles office have extensive experience counseling clients on employment and labor law issues, as well as representing them in employment-related litigation matters.  The employment and labor practice group provides counseling to employer clients in matters involving the employment application process, employee handbooks, employee discipline, employee terminations, employee benefits, wage/hour, compliance with federal and state labor laws, government investigations, and traditional labor matters involving unions.

Finally, the Los Angeles office maintains an entertainment litigation practice.  Its members represent entertainment companies in litigation disputes arising in the areas of music, television, motion pictures, and sports.