Limits to Attorney-Client Privilege and Juror Background Checks

J Craig Williams

founding member
The Williams Law Firm, PC®
Orange County , California

The founding member of WLF | The Williams Law Firm, PC® Mr. Williams practice focuses in the areas of complex business litigation with emphasis on environmental, real estate, land-use and computer matters and their respective insurance coverage and related tort issues. Mr. Williams also handles corporate and commercial lending issues.

An accomplished speaker, Mr. Williams lectures at the University of California at Irvine on Toxics Law, the UCI Extension Environmental Management Program on The Regulatory Framework for Hazardous and Toxic Materials, Stanford Law School on Environmental Insurance Coverage and at Chapman University School of Law on Legal Writing and Research. He has spoken for Continuing Legal Education credit to numerous organizations, including the Orange County Bar Association, the Celtic Bar Association, the Hispanic Bar Association, the Professional Environmental Marketing Association (PEMA), the California South Coast Air Quality Management District, and the Orange County Emergency Management Agency.

He was a contributing reporter on environmental litigation of the ABA Real Estate Quarterly Report, and is the author of many articles, including Son of the California Environmental Quality Act: A Look at Public Resources Code 21081.6, 33 Orange County Lawyer 36 (1991) and Co-author of The Practical Implications of the Aerojet Decision, California Environmental Law and Remediation Reporter, April, 1998. Mr. Williams experience includes practice at nationally recognized law firms and has appeared as lead litigation counsel in numerous states.

Robert Ambrogi

Atttorney at Law

Boston, MA

Robert J. Ambrogi is a Massachusetts lawyer, writer and media consultant. He is author of the book, The Essential Guide to the Best (and Worst) Legal Sites on the Web. He also writes the blog Media Law, co-writes Legal Blog Watch and co-hosts the legal affairs podcast Coast to Coast.

Blair Jacobs

Partner
Sutherland Asbill & Brennan
Washington, DC

Blair¿s practice focuses on intellectual property litigation. He has achieved favorable results for both plaintiffs and defendants in patent infringement, trade secret, trademark, copyright, and other commercial disputes. Blair represents clients in a variety of technical areas, including fiber optic telecommunication equipment, photolithographic equipment for imaging semiconductor devices, Internet technologies, iris recognition security devices, computer hardware and software, medical devices, pharmaceutical drugs and various technologies. Blair also counsels clients on intellectual property and corporate matters, including strategic IP counseling, patent portfolio management, product development strategy, and on litigation avoidance and risk minimization. He advises clients on general business matters relating to licensing, trademarks, copyrights, sales strategies, due diligence and employment matters.

Blair has extensive trial experience in federal court and has specific experience trying patent infringement issues before juries. He is experienced in the appellate phase of litigation at the Federal Circuit and other federal appellate courts, including the presentation of more than 20 oral arguments.

Blair traveled to China in 2006 as a selected member of the Sutherland China Initiative. This project is focused on serving key clients who conduct business throughout Asia and is also dedicated to helping U.S. companies successfully manage their global commerce.

Prior to joining the firm, Blair worked at another large national law firm, served as a Trial Attorney with the United States Department of Justice and served at the White House where he worked for the President¿s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. He began his career as a law clerk to the Honorable Walter E. Hoffman, Senior Judge, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Blair lectures and writes on topics that include trial tactics and trial advocacy, patent litigation strategies and issues associated with electronic discovery. He teaches trial advocacy at NITA and served on the faculty of the Attorney General's Advocacy Institute while at the Department of Justice.

Christine Byrd

litigation partner
Irell & Manella LLP
Los Angeles, CA

Christine Byrd is a litigation partner in the Los Angeles office of Irell & Manella LLP, where she specializes in complex business and patent litigation. Mrs. Byrd is a Fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers and in the College of Commercial Arbitrators.

Mrs. Byrd has represented parties in a wide variety of civil and criminal matters for over 30 years and has successfully taken more than 20 major cases to trial or arbitration.

Mrs. Byrd also has an active practice serving as a neutral in arbitration and other forms of alternative dispute resolution. She has served as an arbitrator in numerous cases, domestic and international, including energy contracts, international purchase and sales, lender liability, offshore oil spills, concert promotion contracts, earthquake repair costs, solid waste landfills, and a class action over medical insurance premiums. Since 1996, she has served as an arbitrator in numerous energy industry disputes between utilities, oil companies, QF's and energy companies involving power purchase and power exchange agreements, power plant construction, wind park development, natural gas purchase and sale, and oil and gas exploration and development costs. She is on the American Arbitration Association's Commercial Panel, its Large Complex Case Panel, and its National Energy Panel and served as an instructor to train neutral arbitrators for the National Energy Panel. She also is on the Panel of Distinguished Neutrals of the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution and is a member of the California Academy of Distinguished Neutrals.

Mrs. Byrd received her B.A. in 1972 from Stanford University and her J.D. in 1975 from the University of Virginia. She served as law clerk to Judge William P. Gray, Central District of California (1975 Term). She served as a criminal prosecutor in the United States Attorney's Office in Los Angeles, California, for five years. Her assignments included one year in the Public Corruption and Government Fraud Unit and two years on the Presidential Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.

Mrs. Byrd serves on the Board of Directors of the American Arbitration Association and the Ninth Judicial Circuit Historical Society. She was one of the founding members of the Historical Society and served as its vice president and then as its president from 1993 to 2002. She is a former member of the California Law Revision Commission, where she served as a commissioner and then as chairperson from 1992 to 1997. She also formerly served on the Board of Directors of the Century City Bar Association (2001 to 2005) and the Board of Governors of the Association of Business Trial Lawyers (1996 to 1999).

Mrs. Byrd has been selected for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America for 2007-2008 in the specialty area of alternative dispute resolution. Mrs. Byrd is also listed in Los Angeles Magazine's Southern California Super Lawyers of 2006, Who's Who in America, Who's Who in American Law, Who's Who in American Women, and Who¿s Who in the World.

Randy Jonakait

Professor

Randolph N. Jonakait has devoted his career to the criminal justice system¿working in it, monitoring it, writing about it, and now teaching it.

After finishing his law studies, Professor Jonakait joined the Criminal Defense Division of the New York City Legal Aid Society. He spent the next eight years there working on a full range of felony cases.

It was a time, he recalls, when the court system was expanding and he handled an extraordinary number of cases, going to trial almost 30 times during his first 15 months alone. As part of the Test Case Unit, he was involved in cases that ranged from allegations of police brutality to challenges of inadequate interview facilities for defendants.

In many ways, Professor Jonakait views his work as a public defender as a continuation of the work he had done as a Garfield Graduate fellow with organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the New York City Human Rights Commission. Both, he says, sought to put a check on potential government abuses. He was involved in a major study by the ACLU and the United Church of Christ of the military chaplaincy that was later described in a book he helped write, titled The Abuses of Military Chaplaincy.

While at Legal Aid, Professor Jonakait served as a consultant to the National Wiretap Commission, a watchdog agency that had him going into courtrooms to monitor the performance of different courts and jurisdictions.

In 1979, Professor Jonakait took leave for a year from Legal Aid to accept a position at Pace Law School. He enjoyed teaching so much that he decided to continue in the academic world, and in 1983, he joined the faculty of New York Law School where he started teaching Criminal Law and Procedure and Evidence.

Several years after he came to the Law School, he started the Criminal Appellate Clinic, to give students the experience of working with a real case record, an area he felt was largely ignored in most legal education. The clinic enables students to file an appeal on behalf of a Legal Aid client, and has proven valuable for students hoping to work as public defenders.

During the past two decades, Professor Jonakait has written extensively about forensic science and its impact in the courtroom, as well as on the intersection of criminal procedure and evidence. His book, New York Evidentiary Foundations (Lexis Law Publishing, 1998), is designed for beginning attorneys to help bridge the gap between law school and practice.

Professor Jonakait¿s latest work, The American Jury System, is a history and description of the U.S. jury system and how it fits into the overall judicial system. Designed for the educated lay audience, it was published by Yale University Press in 2003.

Phillip K. Anthony

CEO
Decision Quest
Los Angeles, CA

Dr. Philip K. Anthony has 30 years of experience in trial consulting and has been involved in more than 1,000 civil cases in all 50 states. In addition to his management responsibilities at the firm, Dr. Anthony consults on a wide variety of high-profile disputes including contractual matters, intellectual property, antitrust, insurance, lender liability and toxic tort.

Dr. Anthony is a frequent lecturer on the topic of social science strategy and techniques in litigation for the American College of Trial Lawyers, The American Bar Association, the National Institute of Trial Advocacy, The Association of Business Trial Lawyers and other professional organizations. He is a sought-after expert on trial consulting and has been featured on a wide variety of television programs and quoted in numerous magazines and newspapers.