Location: San Diego, California
Phone: (619) 696-9500
Direct: (619) 225-7422
Fax: (800) 868-9350
Email: [email protected]
Paul Reynolds is a Partner based in the firm's San Diego office. He has specialized, and practiced exclusively, in securities and complex business litigation for over 25 years.
Paul has a state-wide and, indeed, national (particularly in New York and Delaware) practice, representing defendants and plaintiffs in state and federal trial and appellate courts and arbitration forums.
At the trial level, he has tried and arbitrated complex securities and businesses cases to verdict or award, including matters with amounts in controversy reaching into nine figures, and achieved numerous trial and arbitration victories, as well as complete victories short of trial via motion practice and successful settlements in countless matters.
At the appellate level, he has successfully briefed and argued these same types of cases—including the California Supreme Court’s seminal case on shareholder derivative standing, Grossett v. Wenaas, 42 Cal. 4th 1100 (2008), where he was the primary author of the prevailing parties’ briefs, and Swortwood v. Tenedora de Empresas, S.A. de C.V., 2014 WL 1664480 (9th Cir. April 28, 2014), where he obtained a reversal of a preliminary injunction from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in an expedited interlocutory appeal on an important issue of first impression of Delaware law regarding the rights and obligations of majority shareholders as they relate to preferences afforded holders of preferred shares. (For more details, please see the “Biography” tab.)
Paul was previously a partner at DLA Piper, one of the world’s largest law firms, and its predecessor, Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich, which was San Diego’s oldest and largest law firm; there, he was mentored for years by some of the city's most admired lawyers, several of whom went on to become federal or state court judges.
Paul has, particularly, an exceptionally deep and integrated knowledge of the federal and state securities laws and regulations and accompanying case law, and, equally, the Delaware (and also California and Nevada) law and case law regarding the proper governance and operation of corporations and limited liability companies and the duties of corporate fiduciaries. He limits his practice to the following sub-specialties, on behalf of defendants and plaintiffs alike:
From the very beginning of his career, Paul has been especially interested in leveraging technology to manage, analyze, and present most efficiently and effectively the vast amounts of data and evidence that are involved in large-scale corporate litigation—and has written on and presented to his peers on these topics. These technologies range from cloud-based document databases for review, searching, and coding of documents, emails, texts, and other evidence (often using relatively inexpensive outsourced teams of contract lawyers to both contain costs and scale manpower to immediate needs); specialized litigation chronology software; trial presentation tools; sophisticated graphics and demonstratives that can condense and deliver vast amounts of data in a way that is immediately and powerfully understood by the trier of fact; and carefully edited video deposition testimony from important witnesses who cannot be hauled into court to testify in person or to impeach trial witnesses on cross-examination. He is also extremely knowledgeable and experienced in gathering and preserving electronic evidence from clients and adversaries alike, as well as the litigation of sanctions proceedings where alleged non-compliance with parties’ obligations in this regard is an issue—a critical core competency in modern litigation.
Paul employs a rigorously analytical and, above all else, pragmatic view to everything he does, or does not do, in service of the particular matter at hand and the client’s interests in that matter.
There is—never—a one-size-fits-all “checklist” applied; every case and every client are unique, and approached with that reality in mind. Advice is provided in this spirit and ethos and with a sense of realpolitik—looking at things as they are, not as one may wish they were. The big picture, the costs and benefits, the upsides and the downsides (including economic and risk considerations), must always be considered.
Ultimately, litigation is a dispute resolution process. Cases should only be litigated or, even, tried if there is no other option available that is superior. And this calculus must be dynamic, constantly reapplied and reanalyzed as the facts on the ground change. Part and parcel of this philosophy is to not be aggressive just for the sake of aggression itself—to fight just for the sake of fighting. Rather, the objective is to be intelligently, strategically aggressive; to pick one’s battles and only engage on those issues that actually move the ball forward toward the client’s ultimate objective. And to avoid the trap of letting emotion or stubbornness cause one to take untenable or unsellable positions—positions that will ultimately cause a loss of credibility.
Matters Paul has handled as lead or co-lead counsel since leaving large law firm partnership include:
Matters Paul handed earlier in his career include: