Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP
Capps, chair of the corporate department at Century City-based Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP, has represented prominent families in Southern California in business and personal succession planning and also handles complex transactions. Last year, Capps worked with individuals and foreign companies affected by Russian and Ukraine sanctions as well as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
What’s the best advice you ever got? ‘You should understand the business deal from the businessman’s standpoint as well as you understand it from the lawyer’s standpoint’ was the advice my former partner Jack Liebau (then at Adams Duque & Hazeltine before its demise) gave me as a young lawyer. I always treasured his understanding and good humor since I didn’t really have a business background coming out of law school. (He owned a chain of Mexican restaurants and taught me that 60% of the gross income of the restaurants revolved around liquor.)
What’s your favorite movie, all time and in any category? “Groundhog Day” from 1993 with Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. This is watchable again (and again) to ponder the perfectibility of each day. Without cliché, the start of each day is really the start of a new beginning.
What’s at the top of your bucket list? I’ve been fortunate to travel a lot in my practice as I helped manage our network of foreign law firms. However, except for a brief (involuntary) time in the U.S. Army, I never have had the chance to live for an extended period of time in a foreign country. Sequestering in a Tuscan village in Italy near San Gimignano for a few months and practicing Italian seems like a lot of fun.
What was your first car? The 1955 Ford Farlane. It used as much oil as it did gas. By necessity, I kept a five-gallon can of recycled motor oil in the trunk. I parked it on a hill so that I could pop the clutch to start the car when the battery failed (as it did frequently).
Like to have it back? No, please!
What’s the best thing about living in Los Angeles? My family (wife, boy, girl and now a 1-year-old grandchild) keeps me in L.A. no matter what the morning AM radio commercials say about ‘leaving Los Angeles.’ I’m an optimist and always believe that tomorrow in Los Angeles can be better. (See Groundhog Day above…)
YEARS ON LA500: 6
