SAN FRANCISCO - Listening to Morrison & Foerster senior partner James Brosnahan talk about the early days of his career is a bit like sitting down to hear a legal fairy tale. It was a time, he says, when attorneys weren't in it for the money. A time when leaving the firm you worked for was akin to getting a divorce - and no one got a divorce. A time before mobile phones and e-mail, when it was possible to be truly unavailable.

The time was 50 years ago, when the Harvard Law School graduate took his first job, clerking for Judge Henry Stevens on the Arizona Superior Court in Phoenix. A half century later, the MoFo veteran is as close to being a household name in the Northern California legal community as any attorney can be.

He's landed in the news frequently for his work with high-profile clients like "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh - who received a 20-year prison sentence instead of life, thanks to Brosnahan - and former Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairwoman Patricia Dunn, who was cleared of all charges after being indicted for her role in the use of "pretexting" to investigate leaks of sensitive company information.

His client list also includes Kevin Barry Artt, an Irish nationalist who fled to the U.S. after escaping from Northern Ireland's Maze Prison; Steven Psinakis, a Greek-American accused of shipping explosives to the Philippines in a plot to overthrow the regime of Ferdinand Marcos; and Michael DeDomenico, for whom Brosnahan obtained two not-guilty verdicts in what was, at the time, the largest single-year tax-evasion case brought in California.

He's twice appeared in the nation's highest court, once before and once after he testified against the 1986 confirmation of William Rehnquist to be the nation's chief justice.

By the time Brosnahan joined MoFo in 1975 from Cooper, White & Cooper, he was already a legend with nearly 90 trials to his name. His jump to the firm, which he called the second lateral move ever among San Francisco lawyers, marked the beginning of a new, trial-centered era in MoFo history.

"Bob Raven, then the head of our litigation group, had talked about bringing over to our firm the best trial lawyer in the area. We both said, 'That's Jim Brosnahan,'" remembered Melvin Goldman, a senior partner in MoFo's San Francisco office.

The 75-year-old Brosnahan is as busy now as he's ever been. The proof is written on a slip of blue paper tucked near the worn, pint-sized U.S. Constitution that bulges out of his breast pocket.

"I fill out this form every week with what I need to do," Brosnahan said, chuckling. "I've been doing this for years."

No client is too big, or too small, for Brosnahan. Take his current agenda, which involves defending Orange County billionaire Henry T. Nicholas against drug and civil charges alongside representing Youa True Vang, a Fresno man charged with conspiring to overthrow the Laotian government.

Brosnahan has often said he's not a movement lawyer, meaning he won't take on a case if pushing an agenda becomes more important than doing right by the client, but certain political issues consistently rile him up.

With his voice rising, he began explaining his distaste for the nation's lack of legal aid for the poor, stopping because "I feel myself on the edge of preaching."

Chewing on ICE

He also got incensed discussing one of his current cases, representing Pedro Guzman, a mentally disabled U.S. citizen who was wrongfully deported to Mexico by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

"I have a very negative view of the immigration service," Brosnahan said. "They separate families, they raid places, they detain citizens. They have no jurisdiction to do it. They're a very lawless group."

Brosnahan has taken on the immigration authorities before, including in a case he has called one of his most challenging, defending a group of Arizona church workers indicted in the mid 1980s for aiding Central American refugees seeking safety in the United States. All eight defendants were found guilty, although none received jail time.

"He's the patron saint of lost causes," said James Bennett, a MoFo partner who has worked with Brosnahan for 35 years. After a pause, Bennett added: "Or, desperate causes. Because he doesn't lose."

In the end, only one thing matters when Brosnahan decides to take on a case. "My standards are extremely low," he said jokingly. "Which is my way of saying, if there's going to be a trial somewhere I'm probably gonna do it."

This mantra comes with two caveats: In his 50 years of practice, Brosnahan has never taken on clients in trouble over guns or cigarettes.

His typically booming voice lowered to almost a whisper as he explained how, because President John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy were both lost to gunshot wounds, he could never represent gun manufacturers or defend clients on arms-related issues.

"They inspired us. They inspired a whole generation," Brosnahan said. "They're very important, and we lost both of them, to guns. So I wouldn't be the right person to do that."

In the cases Brosnahan does take on, his track record is nearly pristine: Of his 142 trials to date, he has lost only 11.

Harold McElhinny, recently selected as the firm's co-managing partner, joined the firm as an aspiring trial attorney in 1976 but was disappointed to learn that the year before his arrival, MoFo's litigation group had just one jury trial. All that changed with Brosnahan's arrival.

"He took our litigation practice into the courtroom," McElhinny said. "It would be unfair to say he single-handedly did it, but he was the major mover in that."

Bennett agreed. "He's probably the lawyer who is most responsible for our reputation as a go-to trial practice," he said.

From the early years of his career, which started in plaintiffs' personal injury firm Langerman and Begam in Phoenix, followed by five years in the U.S. attorney's office, Brosnahan has lived for going to trial.

His strengths in the courtroom are many, colleagues say.

"He sees a big picture, he thinks about the entire case, he sees the case through the eyes of the decider - the judge or jury - then executes on that vision," said John Keker, name partner at Keker & Van Nest and a longtime friend of Brosnahan's.

Brosnahan also has a flair for theatrics and a personality that resonates with judges and jurors.

"Like most trial lawyers, one of the secrets is he's very likeable," Bennett said.

"He can be very articulate in a moving, emotional way when need be."

Getting taken to the cleaners

Underlying it all, Keker said, Brosnahan is a fierce competitor.

"If you're not prepared to fight back you'll get taken to the cleaners by Jim Brosnahan," Keker said. "Even if you fight back, you'll get taken to the cleaners by Jim Brosnahan."

As McElhinny remembers it, Brosnahan didn't lose a single case in his first seven or eight years with the firm.

"I'd come back and say I lost and he'd be sympathetic, but I think he didn't understand how that had happened because it didn't happen to him," McElhinny said.

MoFo partner Linda Shostak joined the firm the year before Brosnahan and worked on trials with him for 15 years. She still remembers the advice he bestowed on her as a young lawyer, often doled out during walks he liked to take around the courthouse at lunch.

"One day he was giving me a critique, saying, 'It's all very good, but the questions were too long.' Could I now do a direct examination about the important features of the tree in front of us? And no question could be more than five words."

Brosnahan came of age as a lawyer in a legal landscape that looked much different than it does today. Lawyers largely marketed themselves, Brosnahan said, and the Big Law model was still in its nascent stages.

"I remember when it was first said out loud that the law was a business," Brosnahan said. "That started in the early '70s as an idea, but it gained momentum. People became much more career oriented. Then Reagan came in, and it became a mantra."

Changing with the times

As law became more of a business, attorneys gave up on firm loyalty, realizing they could shop themselves around to neighboring firms to advance their careers.

"I was the second lateral in San Francisco. My friend Joe Rogers was the first," Brosnahan said.

The early 1970s also brought the addition of greater numbers of women into the legal field, such as Brosnahan's wife Carol, an Alameda County Superior Court judge who was one of nine women in the couple's 525-person class at Harvard Law.

"As women came into the profession they looked around and saw things they didn't think were right, that they didn't like, and they were a voice," Brosnahan said. For instance, Brosnahan said women spearheaded the prosecution of spousal abuse and child abuse, which until that time was largely ignored.

Even as he grumbled about the focus on money, business and economics taking law firms in a different direction, Brosnahan conceded the industry has come a long way.

"I think the level of professionalism and education of young lawyers is vastly superior to what it was when I started," he said.

Brosnahan has seen the industry through five decades of change and has no plans to walk away any time soon. As long as he's still got work to do, he'll keep showing up at his 33rd-floor downtown office overlooking San Francisco Bay.

"It's very simple for me, the practice of law," he said. "The client always comes first, OK? Your self-interest and your personal comfort is not first... You get better as the years go by in putting the flak to one side and saying, okay, what's the best thing for this client?

"You aren't always right, but you try."

By Sara Randazzo
Daily Journal Staff Writer