Legal News

In Face of Probe, Judge Kozinski Hires K&E?s Mark Holscher

By Dan Slater

The fallout caused by the Judge Kozinski story in the L.A. Times has now led to another lawyer joining the fray. The Daily Journal is reporting (link unavailable) that Judge Kozinski has hired Kirkland & Ellis’s Mark Holscher to represent him in a pending judicial misconduct inquiry.

Last week, per the instructions of Chief Justice John Roberts, Chief Judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Anthony J. Scirica, named four judges, including Marjorie O. Rendell — the wife of Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell — to join him on a special committee that’s conducting an inquiry of Judge Kozinski.

Holscher (UC Berkeley, Boalt Hall) is no stranger to high-profile representations. He defended former Congressman Duke Cunningham and scientist Wen Ho Lee. (After Lee spent 278 days in solitary confinement, the charges against him were dropped, and he received a formal apology from Federal District Court Judge James Parker, who branded the government’s prosecution of the case an “abuse of power.”) And alongside Dan Petrocelli, he represented former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling.

Last year, Holscher, 44, decamped from O’Melveny & Myers for Kirkland’s L.A. office. There, he reconnected with Jeff Sinek — a law school classmate, one-time roommate and the best man at Holscher’s wedding — to launch a West Coast white-collar practice at Kirkland.

Holscher began his trial career as an AUSA for the Central District of California, where he worked from 1989 to 1995. During that time, Holscher tried Heidi Fleiss, the L.A. madam who was ultimately convicted of bank fraud and tax evasion.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 23, 2008 (boomark / email).