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, 2023, 2024, and 2025.

Recent engagements include:

• Represented two individual former employees of a Fortune 100 vehicle manufacturer in a four-year dispute, alleging that the clients and their new employer misappropriated trade secrets.
• Successfully representing a consumer goods brand in an arbitration regarding a global trademark dispute. The arbitration consolidated cases from three different continents, requiring litigating under three different sets of laws.  After a four-day evidentiary hearing, the Arbitrator issued a final decision in Brad’s clients’ favor, granting critical declaratory relief regarding the clients’ worldwide right to conduct business, denying the opposing parties’ counterclaims in their entirety, and awarding Brad’s clients over a million dollars in attorneys’ fees and costs as the prevailing party.
• Represented multiple social media and technology companies to defend and manage compliance with document and 30(B)(6) deposition subpoenas and trial subpoenas served in in a Federal Trade Commission regulatory action and related consumer class action.
• Represent a group of investors in ongoing litigation alleging that investment managers fraudulently misappropriated millions of dollars.
• Counseling a pre-IPO technology startup regarding a founders’ dispute, ultimately resulting in no lawsuit being filed and the purported co-founder taking nothing.
• 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 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 a diverse array of backgrounds.

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 Emanuel was spent in or preparing for jury trials in state and federal courts across the country.

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.