ANGELA AGRUSA
DLA PIPER, Managing partner, Los Angeles
Angela Agrusa, the managing partner of DLA Piper’s office in Century City, prides herself on reputational defenses for her clients.
Representing a wide variety of corporations and celebrities, Agrusa has defended brands in more than 50 class action-suits that combined for more than $100 billion in potential exposure. Her clients have included Hilton Hotels, NeuroBrands, the Cosmopolitan Hotel of Las Vegas and Peter Frampton.
How did you discover your interest in law? And how did you arrive at your specialty?
I started out in big law as an antitrust lawyer and had the opportunity at an early stage in my career to work on a high-profile price-fixing case in the oil and gas industry. It was the largest antitrust case pending in the state of California at that time, and reporters with the Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Wall Street Journal were all following it from the courtroom. It was during that case that I really started to understand a client’s defense in the courtroom is just as important as a client’s defense in the court of public opinion. In many ways, it’s where I developed my skills in brand crisis litigation, navigating client legal problems in the courtroom, but with an eye toward preserving their larger brand and their investments in the court of public opinion as well.
Tell us about the most noteworthy or interesting case (or cases) that you’ve been involved with.
I still think back to the three antitrust cases I tried early in my career. When I started at my big law job, the first of the cases had been sent back from the court of appeal for trial. Every major oil company was a defendant, and because of the high stakes of the suit, I worked with a “who’s who” of influential trial lawyers in the country at that time. When all the other defendants settled ahead of trial, I went from one of 50 associates on the case to the senior associate. Because of the importance of the…
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