By DANIEL TAUB
Staff Reporter
It seems that almost everywhere you turn in Los Angeles, Lisa Specht is there.
She sits on the Coliseum Commission, which has been working to bring a new pro football team to the L.A. Memorial Coliseum. She’s on the city of L.A. Recreation and Parks Commission. She’s raising funds for Democratic political candidates.
Specht works with some heavy hitters at her day job as well as a senior partner at West L.A.-based Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP. Among her clients are the developers of the massive Playa Vista project, the L.A. Unified School District, Federal Express, the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority and the County of Los Angeles.
And Specht, 53, often shows up on television offering legal commentary. For most of the 1980s, she was a legal commentator on KABC-TV Channel 7’s evening news, and she co-hosted an NBC television show, “TrialWatch,” in 1991 and ’92.
All this from someone who left home at 17, never went to college and, after taking a college equivalency exam, got her law degree from what she herself calls a “lesser” law school, the University of La Verne College of Law.
Question: Where do things stand with the National Football League, from the Coliseum Commission end?
Answer: Well, the commission obviously is very interested in having a team in the Coliseum in the new Coliseum. We’re at this point quite pleased with the fact the governor has stepped up to the plate and has asked (L.A. real estate investment banker) Bill Chadwick to take a position in connection with NFL negotiations. The key issue with the NFL is going to be how much, if any, public subsidies are coming their way. And that’s going to be a tough one because Los Angeles and California are different than many of the other NFL team locations.
My fellow commissioners and I will do everything we can to convince the NFL that this is the place to be. But in the end, they have to make the decision based on economics, based on public policy issues, based on a number of different issues. At this point we’re not actively negotiating with the NFL. We are being briefed on those negotiations. We are up to date on the negotiations, and we are doing whatever we can to help behind the scenes.
Q: You represented Playa Vista in getting tax credits for jobs to be created by DreamWorks, which has now pulled out of the project. That package only was for DreamWorks, right?
A: It was specifically for DreamWorks. So that means that we’ll have to renegotiate with the next studio owner, whoever that is renegotiate with the city.
Q: There is a sense of disappointment about DreamWorks about the four years spent on negotiations. Won’t it be harder to get tax credits next time around?
A: I don’t know. I think the rationale will be the same. The rationale will be that there are jobs that are being created. They are being created in the city. Money is being made for the city. Taxes are being paid in the city. So I don’t think it should be more difficult. Will it be more difficult? I don’t have a crystal ball. Yes, of course people are disappointed now. We’re disappointed. Playa Vista is disappointed. After negotiating with DreamWorks for four years and finally getting this deal together, it’s tough when they decide that it doesn’t work for them economically. But it’s life. And on a project of this size, there are always ups and downs. We’ll be around tomorrow.
Q: You’ve been appointed to two commissions by Mayor Richard Riordan. Did you know him from before he was elected?
A: No, I didn’t know the mayor before he was mayor. I was very lucky that he selected me to be on the Rec and Parks Commission because it is considered to be one of the top five commissions in the city. I think he knew of me, and obviously I got to know him after he was mayor, and thought this might be a place to use my talents. I’ve always been very involved in civic activities involved in the city, and the state, both in terms of politics and social issues. So it was a good meld.
Q: You perform legal work for clients seeking approvals for various things by the city. How do you keep that separate from your commission work?
A: Well, the clients that I represent in the city may have matters before commissions or the City Council or city agencies. I never represent a client before my own board, and I’m very aware of potential conflicts of interest. For example, if a matter comes up before my Rec and Parks Commission and it involves a client of the law firm’s, I recuse myself. So, yeah, you have to separate.
Q: You and your husband, Ron Rogers of public relations firm Rogers & Associates, used to throw a lot of political fund-raisers. Do you still?
A: Not very often. We get involved in fund-raisers, but we’re not really usually hosting them in our home. We co-hosted something for Gov. Gray Davis when the president was in town before the governor was governor, during the campaign, when he was running. And we do get involved in Democratic politics quite a bit. Although, obviously, I support the mayor. I’ve supported Republicans before.
It takes a toll on you after a while. It’s hard to believe, but it does. We were probably doing half a dozen a year. And now we’re really not doing fund-raisers. We are joining up with other folks who are doing it and assisting when we get involved. But we’re picking our races very carefully, because there’s only so much time.
Q: Both you and your husband’s firm represent Playa Vista. Is that more than a coincidence?
A: It was a coincidence. He actually has been representing them for a number of years, and we were referred by another source my law firm was, I was. And when I came home and told him that we were representing Playa Vista too, he said, “OK, I’m not going to be in those meetings.” Because it’s very awkward sometimes to have a husband and wife in the same strategy meetings.
He actually doesn’t do that much hands-on stuff for any of his clients because he has 70 people who work for him, and they have a lot of clients. So he is, at this level, supervising plus doing all of the personnel things, and the administration and marketing and that kind of stuff.
Q: You two have a ranch in Colorado. How much land do you have?
A: We have a section, which is 640 acres. It’s on the western slope of the Rockies, outside a little town called Rifle, Colorado. We’ve had it almost 11 years now.
My husband is a frustrated cowboy. He used to ride in the rodeo, and he’s ridden horses since he was not even in his teens. So he’s always wanted to have a cattle ranch. We started looking around actually about 14 years ago in different states, in different areas. And we settled on Colorado because the climate is so wonderful and it’s so beautiful and we love the Rockies. And we have been building up this place. It’s really spectacular, and we try to get there every minute that we can. We probably only get there once a month sometimes just for a long weekend. But it’s still great.
Q: What do you have there?
A: We have cows. It’s a working cattle operation beef cattle. We have a couple hundred head of cattle. We have 10 horses, dogs, geese, chickens, pigs everything. We have a foreman who lives there and a ranch hand, because obviously somebody has to be there every day to check the cattle and to do all the work involved. So we have people who run it when we’re not there.
The last time we were there, we took the cows up to the high country, which is where they stay for the summer. And that’s quite an arduous day. It’s about 10 hours on horseback, going straight up into the mountains with the cows herding them up. We took up our cows with a neighbor, and so we had about 800 to 1,000 cows, and we had six people.
Q: It seems like quite a life, especially considering you launched out on your own at a such a young age, right?
A: I left home at 17 because I didn’t have a great relationship with my stepfather. So I was on my own and traveled around and had a great time. I lived in different cities. I lived in Chicago and I lived in Las Vegas and I lived for a while in Texas, and had just a variety of different jobs and a lot of different experiences, which was, I think, great.
Q: In Las Vegas, you were ?
A: A dancer in a chorus line. I also was an airline stewardess. I also worked as a legal secretary. I also worked as a waitress. I also worked as a model. I had some kind of fun experiences, too. I worked at a variety of different things. I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t know what I wanted to do until I started working as a legal secretary and realized that the law has such interesting issues. There were such interesting social issues, political issues, issues of justice. And that really appealed to me the idea of helping people really appealed to me. That’s when I decided I was going to go to law school.
Lisa Specht
Title: Senior partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP
Born: Los Angeles, 1945
Education: J.D., University of La Verne College of Law
Career Turning Points: Joining Manatt, Phelps; getting involved in management of the firm
Hobbies: Horseback riding, skiing, reading
Most Admired Person: Eleanor Roosevelt
Personal: Married, no children
