Jon Dean
USC Gould School of Law

Jon Dean is a co-instructor for LAW 874, which will be taught during the Spring 2023 semester. Dean is a capital partner at McDermott Will & Emery LLP where he serves as the Practice Group Leader for the litigation group in Los Angeles as well as the Los Angeles Pro Bono Committee chair. Dean is a former prosecutor and has served as trial and appellate counsel on both civil and criminal cases. Dean focuses his practice on complex commercial litigation matters, including patent and trade secrets cases, antitrust actions, class actions, securities matters, unfair competition cases, employment actions, OSHA cases and healthcare matters. Dean has achieved several noteworthy results throughout his career. For instance, at the trial level, Dean served as counsel for the leading maker of office headsets in a $600 million+ antitrust action between direct competitors; the jury deliberated for barely an hour before returning a complete defense verdict in favor of his client. At the appellate level, Dean supervised a team of McDermott attorneys on a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. After the team’s petition for a writ of certiorari was granted, the McDermott team won vacatur and remand. Dean has also argued before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and supervised cases before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Dean has been recognized as one of the top litigators in the country. He has been named to the Legal 500 US from 2020 to 2022, The Best Lawyers in America, Healthcare Law from 2021 to 2023, Benchmark Litigation from 2009 to 2020, and Chambers USA, Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations in 2021.

Dean also previously served as a law clerk for the Hon. A. Andrew Hauk, former chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and worked for the Hon. Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. While in law school, Dean won U.C. Berkeley’s James Patterson McBaine Moot Court Competition (former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia presiding). In college, Dean was a member of the UCLA debate team that won two cross-examination debate association national championships.

Dean received his BA from the University of California, Los Angeles, and his JD from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

Bloomberg Tax
January 18, 2023
Re: Michael Simkovic

Michael Simkovic recently discussed how many crypto firms are working to reorganize after the economic market downturns. “Cryptocurrency firms basically have to answer the question, ‘What is the value that they provide that existing financial institutions cannot provide just as well,’” Simkovic said.

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Robin Craig
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"Climate Adaptation in the United States," 9 Frontiers in Marine Science, Special Topic: Ocean Governance and Climate Adaptation: Comparing Responses, Charting Future Courses (2022). 

Scott Altman
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"Why Parents' Interests Matter," 133 Ethics 271 (Forthcoming 2023).

Jonathan Barnett
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"The China Innovation Challenge," Center for Strategic & International Studies, Washington, D.C., December 9, 2022.