Rajesh “Ray” Mandlekar, a former partner of a national law firm, is an attorney with over twenty-five years of experience handling complex, high-stakes lawsuits.  Upon graduation from law school, Mr. Mandlekar represented the plaintiffs in multiple employment class action cases in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego.  In 2001, he joined a world-class shareholder litigation firm where he represented pension funds and individuals in high-profile financial fraud cases in California, New York, New Jersey, Colorado and Texas courts.  Most of these cases involved complex subject matter such as accounting fraud, structured finance and the use of financial derivatives.  Many involved claims for billions of dollars.

For example, Mr. Mandlekar represented the University of California in a lawsuit over its investment in Enron—one of the largest and most complicated corporate frauds in American history.  The suit primarily targeted the the Wall Street banks accused of structuring financial transactions to manipulate Enron’s accounting.  As part of this effort, Mr. Mandlekar conducted investigatory interviews of Enron’s former CFO while he was in custody of the U.S. Marshals Service awaiting sentencing.    

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Mr. Mandlekar represented Hong Kong purchasers of a Cayman Islands structured bond offering in their effort to recover collateral of $1.5 billion in In re Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.—the largest bankruptcy in American history—in the Southern District of New York.  He also represented New Hampshire’s state pension fund as plaintiff in the class action jury trial of In re AT&T Corp. Securities Litigation, which resulted in a settlement of $100 million after the plaintiffs presented their case-in-chief.

In California, Mr. Mandlekar represented the world’s largest plastic pipe manufacturer in a dispute with its attorneys, one of the biggest law firms in the world.  An argument he introduced into the case was ultimately adopted by the California Supreme Court.  

Most recently, Mr. Mandlekar took the lead role in representing Reggie Brown in his high-profile lawsuit against Snap Inc.—the multi-billion-dollar company behind the premier “Snapchat” application.  Mr. Brown’s lawsuit was a partnership dispute over the predecessor to Snap.  The lawsuit settled on mutually agreeable terms.  The case was one of the most publicized and notable tech-founder disputes since that involving Facebook.

As a young lawyer, Mr. Mandlekar was honored to have trained under some of the Bar’s most venerable elders:   The late Roger M. Adelman—the Department of Justice attorney who prosecuted John Hinckley, Jr., for his attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981; and William S. Lerach—the nation’s leading securities litigation attorney who, starting in the mid-1970’s, pioneered use of the class action device to obtain recoveries for defrauded shareholders.     

Mr. Mandlekar currently serves on the Board of the South Asian Bar Association of Southern California. He is a Chicago native who lives in Newport Beach, California.