Century City Attorney Moving Behind the Bench

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For years, Marc Marmaro had thought about ending his legal career by serving as a judge.

“I don’t think there was any one moment,” said Marmaro, one of the founding partners of Century City-based Jeffer Mangels Butler & Marmaro LLP. “As your career progresses you think, this is something I might be interested in doing at one point. For a while I thought that, at the right time, I would pursue it, but I concluded there is no right time.”

“Right” time or not, Marmaro, 62 decided to take the plunge nearly a year ago, and began the long judicial selection process. On June 30, it was announced that he and ten others had been appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to judgeships in Los Angeles Superior Court. He’ll remain at Jeffer Mangels until he’s sworn in, which he expects to be sometime in early August.

Marmaro’s close friend, Bob Mangel, another of the firm’s founding partners, said he wasn’t surprised by the news because his partner made it clear for a long time he wanted to go into public service. Still, he added, Marmaro would be missed.

“What he’s meant to the firm is a legacy of hard work and absolute dedication to practice of law,” Mangel said. “He’s trained a very strong group of litigators who I think will continue his legacy.”

Marmaro worked in public service at the beginning of his career as an assistant U.S. attorney in New York from 1975 to 1978, and clerked for Judge John J. Gibbons on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals from 1972 to 1973.

Leaving a firm he helped start almost 30 years ago, which he calls a second home, was a tough decision.

“I just think about having been here from the start, and watching the firm grow from 11 lawyers in 1981 to 120 or so today in three cities,” Marmaro said.

How does he know he’s made the right choice?

“I guess I’ll know when I start,” he said.

Blanket Buds

Ashley J. Camron keeps a blanket in her office. She blames Dennis M.P. Ehling, whom she recently joined at Blank Rome LLP’s Century City offices after working with him at two other law firms.

“I purchased it specifically several years ago as a young lawyer because of the way Dennis would edit briefs,” she said. “I would sleep on the floor of my office waiting for him to make changes.”

The two have teamed up successfully for years, to the point where clients call one in order to talk to the other. So when Ehling jumped from the Century City offices of K&L Gates LLP to Blank Rome on June 21 as a partner in its commercial litigation group, he began recruiting Camron. She joined as of counsel June 23.

Ehling, 42, said that he left K&L Gates because it had become too much of a “megafirm” while he was there.

When Ehling and Camron joined the Pittsburgh-based firm in 2003, it was still known as Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham, and there were 675 attorneys. Today, after a 2007 merger with Seattle-based Preston Gates & Ellis, K&L Gates has grown to more than 1,900 attorneys worldwide.

The approximately 500-attorney Blank Rome “fits my personality a little better,” Ehling said. “I tend to be a little more flexible in the way I approach things.”

Going Back

Mike Patton is heading in the opposite direction of Marmaro. After more than 30 years out of law firms, Patton is heading back.

July 6 was Patton’s first day at the Century City office of London-based DLA Piper.

He came from accounting firm Ernst & Young, where for 15 years he specialized in international transfer pricing issues – the buying and selling of assets, services or funds within an organization and across borders. He previously was at the IRS Chief Counsel’s Office for 15 years.

Patton, who worked at a small practice at the beginning of his career after graduating from law school in Maryland, called DLA Piper “the first major law firm I’ve worked at.”

Patton, 63, said he was switching to be a partner at a law firm because international transfer pricing and asset valuations are drawing greater scrutiny from governments seeking new sources of tax revenue.

“I think that there’s a change in the tax environment that’s going on right now,” he said. “The traditional kinds of tools that accounting firms could provide to resolve controversy simply aren’t working as well as they used to in the past.”

Michael Lebovitz, head of DLA Piper’s tax group in Los Angeles, said that with the addition of Patton and his 30-plus years of experience, there are now 10 lawyers and economists in the firm’s L.A. tax group.

“Most other law firms, certainly in L.A., if they have one or maybe two people doing international tax, that would be a lot,” Lebovitz said. “We’ve made a real commitment to delivering international tax capabilities to clients in Southern California.”

Staff reporter Alfred Lee can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 221.

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