Rodger Cole ’95

*Partner, Fenwick & West LLP*

When the San Francisco and Los Angeles Daily Journal published their list of Top 20 Lawyers under the age of 40 in California, two 1995 Santa Clara Law alums were included on the list. Both Heidi Keefe and Rodger Cole work in IP, and both serve as mentors in their firms.

Rodger Cole ’95 earned his J.D. magna cum laude from Santa Clara Law, where he also served as executive editor of the Santa Clara Computer and Technology Law Journal. He is a partner in the litigation group at Fenwick & West in Mountain View, where he focuses on IP and commercial litigation for high tech companies, including trade secret misappropriation, copyright infringement, and trademark infringement, as well as licensing, technology transfers, and related commercial disputes. He has also successfully defended his clients in consumer class actions. He was named a Northern California "Super Lawyer” in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008.

While in college at the University of Redlands, Cole was the 1991 National Debate Tournament Champion and 1990 National Debate Tournament Runner-Up. In a 2001 poll of inter-collegiate debate coaches, Cole and his debate partner were voted the second best debate team in college in the 1990s.

Cole also makes time to mentor junior lawyers. In 2008, for the third straight year, Cole was voted by his colleagues as the Best of Fenwick for Outstanding Contributions to Mentoring/Training. "It is a more seasoned lawyer’s job to mentor more junior lawyers and teach them the trade,” he says. "Mentoring is tremendously rewarding, and ironically teaching a junior lawyer to do your job frees a more senior lawyer to take on new and different challenges.”

Of his time at Santa Clara Law, Cole said, "Law school can never truly prepare you for a legal career, but studying at Santa Clara in the heart of Silicon Valley awakens a law student to the possibilities in the world and the very exciting companies to advise.”