Juanita Brooks

Juanita R. Brooks, a Principal of the firm and an elected member of the firm’s Management Committee, is a nationally recognized trial and appellate lawyer who specializes in complex intellectual property, product liability, and mass tort litigation. In 2017, Ms. Brooks was inducted into the California Bar Trial Lawyer Hall of Fame, the first Latina honoree and only the third inductee from San Diego to receive this honor. In 2014, she was named “Litigator of the Year” by The American Lawyer. Ms. Brooks, called “a titan of the patent bar,” has been lead counsel in more than 13 patent trials over the past two years, and has handled more than 150 trials in her career.

In 2016, she led a team that successfully defended one of the largest mass tort/wrongful death cases in the United States, which included 12,000 cases (some of them class actions representing hundreds of individual plaintiffs).

Ms. Brooks is a master storyteller, and paints pictures with words to explain the complex technologies that she handles to judges and juries in a way that is both understandable and compelling, and will be remembered throughout the trial. In 2016, Law360 named her an “Icon of IP” for her “skill at trying complicated patent cases without getting bogged down in the technical weeds” and said she is a “jury whisperer.”

Ms. Brooks is highly skilled at cases that rest in large part on expert analysis, testing, and testimony. Using the firm’s science and technology-intensive expertise, she crafts novel, outside the box legal strategies. Her ability to present and challenge expert testimony in court has been a decisive factor in courtroom victories. For example, in one case the trial judge noted that the opposing expert’s “credibility was eviscerated on cross-examination” by Ms. Brooks.

While she tries cases nationally, she is also very active in her local community and played a significant role in drafting the original and the subsequent amendments to local patent rules for the Southern District of California.

Because of Ms. Brooks’ well-known litigation success as well as her commitment to her community, she is consistently selected for national and local industry honors. Ms. Brooks was named an “Intellectual Property (IP) Trailblazer” by the National Law Journal (2016), one of the “Top 250 Women in IP” by Managing Intellectual Property (2016-2018), and a “Trial Ace” by Law360 (2015). In addition to being named a “Litigator of the Year” by American Lawyer in 2014, Ms. Brooks was recognized by clients and peers as one of Benchmark’s 2014 & 2017 “Top 250 Women in Litigation,” named “Star Attorney” in the IP section of the 2014 LMG Life Sciences North America, and named to the 2014 BTI Client Service All-Star list for being “a step ahead of the competition” and providing exceptional client service. In 2012 and 2013, Ms. Brooks was named an “Intellectual Property MVP” by Law360, and was selected as “Attorney of the Year” by The Recorder in 2010.

Ms. Brooks was the recipient of YWCA of San Diego’s “TWIN (Tribute to Women in Industry) Award” and San Diego Business Journal‘s “Women Who Mean Business Award”. In 2012, she was selected as a “Top Female Trial Attorney” by Law360 and as a “Woman Who Impacts San Diego” by SD Metro, which recognizes outstanding professionals who are making significant contributions to the community, and have name recognition in their professional community because of their success. In 2014, Ms. Brooks was also named one of San Diego’s “Best Attorneys” by The San Diego Metro, a “Top Woman Attorney” and one of the “Best of the Bar” by The San Diego Business Journal, and a “VIP Emeritus Top Attorney” by the San Diego Daily Transcript for having received the peer-nominated “Top Attorney” honor for four or more years. In 2016, she was named one of the “Top IP Lawyers in California” by the Daily Journal.