Paul Derby: From High School Debater to Trial Master

The origins of Paul Derby’s multifaceted practice came before he worked at his first firm, O’Melveny & Myers, before he joined Mike Hennigan’s team at what is now McKool Smith, and before he formed his current firm, Skiermont Derby, where he is managing partner. His work stems from the high school and college debate stages.

“I spent time with a lot of debate folks and naturally gravitated to not just law, but trial law,” Derby says. “Having taught debate, trial work seemed like an area I would end up in. It hasn't disappointed along the way.”

That trial-first mindset forms the throughline for Derby’s thriving generalist practice. With a passion for learning new areas of law, Derby has litigated successful, high-profile cases across numerous areas and on both sides of the V; complex business disputes, real estate, entertainment, professional negligence and employment litigation make up just a few. He has represented entities ranging from Sodexo to Sally Beauty, The Walt Disney Co. to Rabobank, the third-largest Dutch bank. In the latter case, which dominated a couple years of his career, Derby’s firm successfully settled a major fraud action related to the collapse of Enron.

After his time at two major firms, Derby decided it was time to hang out his shingle. In 2016, he found himself looking for a new partner, and his time in debate would shape his career yet again.  

In college, Derby met Paul Skiermont as an opponent on the debate stage and as a fellow debate instructor during the summers. The two remained close friends throughout the years. During that time, Skiermont developed a dedicated IP and patent practice, and had also struck out on his own. The two had dreamed about building a firm together for years and realized that a merger was mutually beneficial. With a devoted IP practice stemming out of Skiermont’s Dallas office (and now into L.A.) combined with Derby’s L.A. generalist practice, the firm and its partners balance each other seamlessly – and bring the spirit of the debate stage to every case.

Lawdragon: If debate is what brought you to the law, what brought you to debate?

Paul Derby: It was an elective my freshman year in high school. I fell in love with it, and I've been doing it ever since.

LD: What made you fall in love with it?

PD: It was highly competitive, but a little more my speed being on the academic side rather than the athletics side. I also ended up at a high school that had a very good program, which helps in that you can segue into doing it not just competitively, but successfully. I just ended up at the right place at the right time.

LD: Tell me about some of your early cases once you started getting into the real world of trial work.

PD: I had this huge Winnie the Pooh case at O’Melveny.

LD: That sounds interesting. Tell me about that.

PD: I was one of the lawyers most responsible for the case day to day. It was a $400M case where we were representing Disney. The widow who owned the rights to Winnie the Pooh had sued for hundreds of millions of dollars. It turns out the plaintiffs’ team had engaged in some pretty outrageous conduct – breaking into buildings at Disney, stealing files, rifling through trash dumpsters on the main Disney campus.

LD: Wow. Tell me more about the plaintiffs.

PD: Stephen Schlesinger was an older guy who’d bought the rights to Winnie the Pooh. He passed and his wife had the rights. They had a daughter, and the daughter's husband, or ex-husband, was a pretty nefarious guy who did break-ins. So, we just started pulling the thread, and eventually I did these interviews in a medium-security prison in Central California with a former FBI guy there with me and kind of broke open the case. I was deposed by the legendary Bert Fields. Ultimately, after I left, the case resulted in a complete dismissal.

LD: What was the next phase of your career?

PD: I went over to Mike Hennigan's group at what's now McKool Smith. They advertised themselves as trial lawyer generalists, and I like the idea of learning new areas. That’s what I’m always doing. I had to learn the automobile insurance industry a bit for a recent case and I’m having to learn behind the scenes of healthcare providers for another series of cases that I'm handling. It's sort of like the patent guys at our firm having to learn a new technology except I learn by new areas of industry.

Just be bold. It'll work itself out.

Then, I left about a decade ago to start out on my own, because Mike Hennigan was such a trial presence, his was a big shadow and he will be deeply missed. It's hard to ever first chair something in his group. So, I'm now the guy probably stealing more opportunity than I should, as opposed to having it stolen.

LD: Did you have any mentors early on in your career?

PD: I had three main ones. Jim Colbert at O'Melveny was my first. Great lawyer, great presence. He was in theater and his brother is Stephen Colbert, the TV host.

LD: Oh, wow.

PD: Then, my primary mentor was Mike Hennigan, as well as a couple of other partners at the same law firm, including Kirk Dillman and Mike Swartz.

LD: Tell me about joining up with your longtime friend, Paul Skiermont, to form Skiermont Derby.

PD: We thought it would be great to work together for the longest time. Then, even though we weren't in the same city, we bumped into each other a couple of times while in different cities and it was like, "Well, our practices are national. Who cares?" The firm works conceptually. We got over that “different cities” hump seven, eight years ago.

LD: Tell me about the differences between your practice in L.A. and Mr. Skiermont’s in Dallas.

PD: We have a significant patent or IP presence out here in L.A. even though that group is centered in Dallas, but the non-hard-IP group is predominantly centered out here. We do some misappropriation of likeness cases – that’s in vogue out here in L.A. But otherwise, it's mostly just civil trial work – so business disputes, employment litigation, real estate work and securities. We're pretty good in business valuation – so, Section 2000 claims in California, buyouts, earnouts, things like that. I used to do a lot of business finance law at what's now McKool L.A. when I made partner there.

LD: Wow, so a really varied practice for you. What advice would you give to early-career lawyers looking to chart the same kind of path you have?

PD: Just be bold. It'll work itself out.

LD: And how would you describe your style as a lawyer?

PD: Detailed. Persistent. Reasonable. We are very thorough – we find things that maybe some other people don't.

Writing is critical. I think we win and lose a lot before we ever get to open our mouths. So, writing is such an essential part of the profession. It's the gatekeeper to working here.

LD: What do you find most fulfilling about your practice?

PD: I like helping people who probably would not have had the opportunity to hire a firm like us. We always have some cases that I call almost quasi-pro bono. They're not for free, and they're not for people who would totally lack lawyers if it wasn't for us, but they're people who are in a tough spot, really need help, and might not end up in a spot to win without us. Those cases when you do right by an individual who's had something very wrong done to them – those cases feel really good. Those are the cases I tend to talk about with my girls. Those are the cases that I don't know that I could ever stop doing. I don’t think I would like the job as much as I do if it was all just big corporate clients. That's not to say we don't do that. It's interesting, and I wouldn't want to lack that either. They tend to be more sophisticated lawyers, and it tends to be more high-level, smarter and more complicated litigation. That is attractive as well. But when I talk to my kids about cases, it's usually plaintiffs’-side, single-plaintiff cases where our impact is more direct.

LD: What cases can you tell me about that really had that personal connection?

PD: We recently settled a case involving a founder of a company in San Diego. That one really hit home because the client’s distress claim really hit me as a dad. I struggle sometimes with not spending as much time with my kids as I would like, which would be basically all the time. But that’s the struggle of running a firm. 

I like helping people who probably would not have had the opportunity to hire a firm like us.

LD: What was the case?

PD: Our client had effectively been the sales department at this company; they founded it like 18 years earlier. During those years she had spent a lot of the time on the road. She was the only employee who was always on the road, missing her kids. Ultimately, the other founders, this husband-and-wife couple, got rid of her on terms that weren't appropriate, and we alleged wrongful termination.

What killed me was when she told her story about how it really hit her, she said she had given up all that time with her kids, and right after her kids had gotten out of the house, she'd been fired. So, the thing that she'd traded all that parenting time for was then taken from her as well. She had felt that constant struggle – “Do I work? Do I do the kids?” – and now both had been taken from her. It was tough, and the way she described it was very much something I could understand.

LD: That's heartbreaking.

PD: We have a lot of cases like that. We just had one where the wife had been widowed, and there were awful allegations being made against the deceased husband. They were putting this poor woman in the middle of a shakedown to try to squeeze some of that money that she got as a result of his passing. It was really awful, and we got it settled on great terms for her. Her entire mindset changed the day we got it settled. She's in the middle of her third battle with cancer, and we gave her peace of mind. That was the most valuable thing we gave her: the ability to really just focus on family.

LD: That's wonderful. You mentioned that these are the cases you tell your girls about – how old are they?

PD: 18, 16, and 14.

LD: Those are great ages.

PD: They're pretty cool. I love them a lot.