Brad Estes is an experienced litigator, representing plaintiffs and defendants across a wide variety of industries at every stage of complex commercial litigation, including business tort, contract, fraud, regulatory, trade secret, trademark, employee mobility, and competition disputes.

Brad has a proven track record of counseling senior leadership, orienting his litigation approach to the strategic needs of the business and emphasizing tenacity, creativity, and pragmatism. He prides himself on his subject matter adaptability and ability to dive deep into the facts of a case at any stage. Brad’s practice has been uniquely trial-focused, providing insight at every stage of the case of the ultimate risks and rewards his clients face. He is also experienced at performing pre-litigation investigations to identify claims, mitigate liability, and resolve disputes at an early stage. He has been recognized as a Northern California Rising Star by Super Lawyers in 2021, 2022, and 2023.

Recent engagements include:

• Representing two individual former employees of a Fortune 100 vehicle manufacturer in an ongoing, three-year dispute alleging the clients and their new employer misappropriated trade secrets.
• Counseling a pre-IPO technology startup regarding a founders’ dispute, ultimately resulting in no lawsuit being filed and the purported co-founder taking nothing.
• Represented multiple social media companies to defend and manage compliance with document and 30(B)(6) deposition subpoenas served in a Federal Trade Commission regulatory action and related consumer class action.
• Representing a polo club in an arbitration regarding a global trademark dispute involving the international sales of apparel and other related consumer goods. The arbitration consolidated cases from three different continents, requiring litigating under three different sets of laws.
• Successfully represented an international engineering company against an electric vehicle startup in a contested two-week arbitration. Following years of litigation, the arbitrator awarded Brad’s client $28 million in damages, and rejected counterclaims valued at over $40 million.

Brad also founded and runs Lewis & Llewellyn’s annual Equity Fellowship, which is designed to promote access to the legal profession by providing hands-on litigation experience, law school preparation, and general professional development to high-achieving young adults from groups historically underrepresented in the legal profession.

Before joining Lewis & Llewellyn, Brad clerked for the Honorable Lawrence J. O’Neill of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California. Prior to clerking, Brad practiced at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP in San Francisco, California, representing a range of clients from Fortune 500 companies to privately held corporations, including pharmaceutical, consumer product, professional, and technology companies. The vast majority of Brad’s time at Quinn Emanual was spent in or preparing for jury trials in state and federal courts across the country.

In law school, Brad sought out opportunities that provided a broad range of litigation experiences. Brad served as Chief Symposium Editor for The Review of Litigation. Brad also competed in and won one of his law school’s intramural moot court competitions. Finally, Brad investigated and litigated cases as a student attorney in the Civil Rights Litigation and Actual Innocence clinics.

Outside the office, you will most likely find Brad rabidly supporting University of Michigan athletics. Brad is also a dedicated mentor for young professional and alumni mentoring programs.