Mr. Lewis received his B.A. in 1968 and his M.A. in 1974 in Philosophy from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He earned his J.D. in 1979 from the University of California, Davis, School of Law, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif. In his final year of law school, he clerked for United States Supreme Court Justice the Honorable Anthony M. Kennedy, then of the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Since graduating from law school in 1979, Mr. Lewis has practiced bankruptcy and insolvency with Morrison & Foerster, where he became a partner in 1985. His practice covers the entire range of issues and interest in bankruptcy matters, including such areas as structuring transactions to minimize the impact of bankruptcy, representation of creditors such as lenders, landlords and other parties to executory contracts, and sureties, and assisting clients in the purchase of assets or companies in distressed circumstances or bankruptcy. He has represented debtors and creditors committees as well as creditors, bidders, contract counterparties and other interested parties. Mr. Lewis’ experience includes such diverse areas as telecommunications, agriculture, intellectual property, high technology, energy, construction, asset-based finance and real estate.

Mr. Lewis has developed a special expertise in such important and complex fields as bankruptcy jurisdiction (including bankruptcy consumer class actions), environmental law, telecommunications, airlines and airports, intellectual property, high tech and biotech, preference or fraudulent conveyance actions and other bankruptcy litigation. He also has extensive experience in all aspects of distressed real estate matters, representing such diverse interests as mortgagees, purchasers and developers, and in the real estate aspects of other kind of matters (such as retail chain bankruptcies).

• In 2008, Mr. Lewis was appointed by the judges of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California to a three-year term as one of the District’s Lawyer Representatives to the Judicial Conference of the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Since 2006, Mr. Lewis has been a member of the Bar-Bench Liaison Committee of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California; currently, he is the Co-Chair of that Committee. Presently, he is also one of the two lawyers members of the Forms Subcommittee of the Bar-Bench Liaison Committee working with the judges of the Court on development of standardized forms

for select bankruptcy proceedings. Mr. Lewis is a member of the American Bar Association’s Business Bankruptcy Committee and Chapter 11 Subcommittee. In the 1980s, Mr. Lewis was also a member of the California State Bar Association’s Debtor/Creditor Relations and Bankruptcy Committee for a regular three-year term. In the last few years, he also has served on committees of the Commercial Law League of America providing commentary to the appropriate authorities on standardized small business bankruptcy plan and disclosure statement forms, proposed new attorney discipline provisions for the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure and the proposed Interim Rules of the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure.

Mr. Lewis has been included in The Best Lawyers in America for 2008, Top Lawyers for 2008 by Corporate Counsel, and Northern California Super Lawyers for 2007 and 2008 by Law & Politics. Recently, h was named among the Best Lawyers in the Bay Area by the San Francisco Business Times. He has appeared on panels for programs on bankruptcy sponsored by national continuing legal education, trade and professional organizations. From 1992 to 2003, he was a member of the Editorial Board of the American Bankruptcy Institute. Mr. Lewis taught the Bankruptcy course by invitation at the University of California at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law in the Spring of 2004.

Representative Published Cases

• In re The SCO Group, Inc., 395 B.R. 852 (Bankr. D. Del. 2007). Our client Novell, Inc., obtained stay relief to complete key intellectual property litigation between itself and the debtor then pending in the United States District Court for the District of Utah. The Bankruptcy Court agreed with Novell that determination of the issues in the litigation, which was closely watched in intellectual property circles, was central to any reorganization strategy the debtor was likely to pursue.
• Cline v. First Nationwide Mortgage Corp. (In re Cline), 282 B.R. 686 (W.D. Wash. 2002). In this case, the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington overturned a Bankruptcy Court decision that the Bankruptcy Court had subject matter jurisdiction over a class action brought by chapter 7 debtors against our client, First Nationwide Mortgage Corporation.
• Kerney v.Capital One Financial Corp. (In re Sims), 278 B.R. 457 (Bankr .E.D. Tenn. 2002). In this case, the Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee narrowed the scope of a class action brought by chapter 13 debtors and the standing chapter 13 trustee against our client, Capital One Financial Corporation.
• Leslie Salt Co. v. Marshland Development, Inc. (In re Marshland Development, Inc.), 129 B.R. 626 (Bankr. N.D. Cal. 1991). The Bankruptcy Court ruled that the debtor waived its jury trial right when it removed our client Leslie Salt Company’s prepetition action against the debtor to the debtor’s chapter 11 case.