PHILIP E. SMITH received his B.A. degree in Economics in 1978 from the University of Virginia, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with high distinction. He received his J.D. degree in 1981 from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he graduated in the top 12% of his class.
From 1981 to 1983, Mr. Smith was associated with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Howrey & Simon, a national law firm specializing in complex civil litigation. From 1983 to 1985, he was associated with the law firm of Dickstein, Shapiro & Morin in Washington, D.C., where he continued to specialize in complex civil litigation. In 1985, Mr. Smith joined the Orange County office of McKenna, Conner & Cuneo, which merged in 1988 with Morrison & Foerster, an international law firm and one of the ten largest law firms in the country. He became a partner of Morrison & Foerster in January 1989. In 1993, he founded the firm now known as Smith Ellison.
In his nearly thirty years of practice, Mr. Smith has engaged in general civil and business litigation practice, covering a wide variety of subject matters. His areas of experience include insurance coverage and bad faith, environmental and land use, business torts, contracts, RICO, real estate, banking, professional malpractice, antitrust and unfair business practices, wrongful termination, and complex litigation.
Representative matters that Mr. Smith has handled include: (1) representation of major national insurance companies in numerous cases involving insurance coverage for alleged environmental damage and toxic torts; (2) representation of businesses in various actions involving antitrust, unfair competition and business tort claims; (3) representation of both plaintiffs and defendants in litigation involving land use, construction defect and various real property issues; and (4) representation of a wide variety of business entities in commercial litigation matters.
Mr. Smith is a member of the Orange County Bar Association and the District of Columbia Bar Association. He is admitted to practice in both the District of Columbia and California. He was a delegate to the California State Bar Conference of Delegates in 1987, 1989, and 1990, and served as an officer of the Orange County Bar Association delegation from 1991 to 1994. He was the Chair of the Orange County Bar Association's Resolutions Committee in 1994.
