Nina Blaire Ries

Nina B. Ries has extensive experience in business and real estate, both as a litigator and as a transactional attorney. She has litigated a variety of complex matters and countless cases involving breaches of a variety of contracts, partnership disputes, business torts, 17200 claims, real estate disputes, employment matters (including sexual harassment), class action defense and intellectual property (including trademark, trade secret and unfair competition) on behalf of entrepreneurs, small businesses and Fortune 500 companies. She credits her ability to anticipate the opposing party's arguments, strategy and actions to her experience both prosecuting and defending cases. Indeed, she is just as likely to sit at the defendant's table as she is at the plaintiff's.

Ms. Ries's experience as a litigator also benefits her clients in transactional matters. Because of her experience identifying weaknesses in documents, analyzing the parties' vulnerabilities, and crafting innovative ways to exploit those weaknesses during litigation, Ms. Ries readily applies this analysis to mitigate her clients' risk upfront, to protect clients in the event a deal later falls apart. The firm serves as outside General Counsel to a number of growing companies, and provides a wide range of legal services, including advice and counsel on business and real estate matters, the negotiation and structuring of deals, due diligence, and the drafting and negotiation of operating and partnership agreements, purchase and sale and related documents, employment contracts, disclosures, warranties, waivers, releases and more.

Ms. Ries has served on a number of Boards, including the Executive Board of the Los Angeles County Bar Association Barristers (2004-2009), the Editorial Board of Los Angeles Lawyer Magazine (2002-2003), and has also served as a member of the Board of a nonprofit corporation (2006-2010), the Executive Board of the USC Gould School of Law Young Alumni Committee (2004-2012; co-chair 2011-2012). Ms. Ries helped to found the USC Gould School of Law Alumni Association, and serves as President of the organization. In 2012, she was presented with the Widney House Alumni Award for her work with the Law Alumni Association. Most recently, Ms. Ries was named to the USC Alumni Association Board of Governors. She has been admitted to both state and federal courts in California and is a member of the Los Angeles County Bar Association, the Los Angeles County Bar Association Barristers, the State Bar of California and the American Bar Association.

Ms. Ries is a Southern California native. She attended college at the University of California at Irvine, where she triple-majored in Political Science (with honors), Philosophy and Sociology and was a member of the Alpha Chi Omega sorority. She attended law school at the University of Southern California, where she earned honors in several classes, including Contracts, Real Property and Remedies. She is active with her sorority's alumnae association (including as President of the Pasadena alumnae chapter and as an adviser to the House Corporation Boards at USC and UCLA) and within the Trojan family. In her leisure time, Ms. Ries enjoys attending sporting events, traveling and pursuing water-based sports, including snorkeling, kayaking and whitewater rafting.