Keller Anderle Scolnick (KAS) is pleased to announce that it has been recognized as one of Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal‘s “Top Boutiques” of 2026. This special issue honors California’s highest performing boutique law firms across all practice areas.
The Daily Journal recognizes the firm’s expertise in and focus on trials and civil litigation, noting the team of 17 attorneys has won verdicts in the hundreds of millions and defeated claims worth billions for plaintiffs and defendants in intellectual property, trade secrets, false advertising, class action, and white-collar matters.
As a boutique firm, the team often goes up against firms many times its size. Technology has narrowed the gap.
“The traditional disadvantage for boutique firms has always been fewer associates to handle massive discovery productions,” Chase Scolnick, KAS Partner, tells the Daily Journal. “AI levels the discovery playing field, however. What’s left is trial skill, and that’s our game.”
KAS is “built around trial work,” which is why Partner Benjamin Barron joined the firm after 15 years as a federal prosecutor, and is currently representing the founder of a hydroponics supply business, his business partner and the two manufacturing companies they ran after selling the business in 2018 in Route Four LLC v. Burkhart et al. In the case seeking $70 million in lost profits and additional punitive damages, Barron’s deposition and cross-examination led to the exclusion of two experts before trial. The jury phase has yet to conclude.
As federal enforcement priorities continue to shift, civil RICO, fraud, and qui tam suits are more common than grand juries.
“The trend is a reduction in traditional white-collar criminal matters, and for a firm built only on that work it would be a problem,” Barron tells The Daily Journal. “For a firm with our range, and with a team of outstanding trial lawyers in both the criminal and civil arenas, it’s an asset: the same conduct is still being litigated, just in a different forum, and we’re one of the few boutiques that can handle it in either one.”
To read the firm’s full profile in the Daily Journal‘s “Top Boutiques” issue, click here (subscription required).