In 2005 Baute & Tidus LLP celebrated its tenth year as one of Los Angeles’ premier small firms. The firm was founded in 1995 by Mark Baute, who in 1998 was recognized as one of the top twenty lawyers in California under 40 years of age by the Los Angeles Daily Journal.
From the beginning, Baute & Tidus LLP has had an uncompromising commitment to providing the highest quality legal services to our clients with the responsiveness and flexibility that only a small firm can provide. Our lawyers graduated from law schools like Harvard, Michigan, U.C. Berkeley/Boalt Hall and U.C.L.A. Before joining Baute & Tidus LLP, our lawyers practiced at Jones, Day Reavis & Pogue, Cooley Godward LLP, Latham & Watkins, Loeb and Loeb, and Munger, Tolles & Olson. We have authored legal treatises, served as expert witnesses, and have appeared before courts at all levels across the country, including the United States Supreme Court.
But our resumes tell only part of the story of Baute & Tidus LLP. The lawyers who have joined our firm are a self-selected group. Having enjoyed considerable success in the “traditional” practice of law, our attorneys have re-thought the delivery of legal services to clients and created a very different law firm with an emphasis on results, not billable hours. We understand that the legal profession is a service business, and that entrepreneurial clients need creative and pragmatic solutions to their legal problems. We recognize that success in litigation, and repeat business, is a function of finding the most efficient path to a successful resolution, and that a client can “win” a case on paper and lose in the real world context of its business.
By demanding of the lawyers who join us not only first tier legal ability but also business judgment, the firm has created a markedly different place for lawyers and clients to interact with one another. Our business model consciously downplays the quantity of billed hours in evaluating the success of the firm and its individual lawyers, substituting actual results achieved as the measure of success. Confident of our ability to achieve results for our clients, the firm regularly enters into incentivized fee agreements, including pure contingent and modified contingent fee agreements, on behalf of both plaintiffs and defendants.
Our focus on results rather than numbers, and our willingness to link our financial success with that of our clients, has allowed Baute & Tidus LLP to take on cases normally reserved for larger, institutional firms. We count among our clients, Symantec Corporation, Columbia Pictures, Inc., Hughes Electronics, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Isuzu Motors of America, Guess, Inc., New Century Financial, and other Fortune 1000 companies.
A Commitment to the Community
At Baute & Tidus LLP we feel strongly that we are people first, and lawyers second. The firm’s lawyers regularly offer their services on a pro bono basis to community organizations such as Public Counsel and the Cancer Legal Resource Center. Baute & Tidus LLP attorneys have filed amicus briefs on behalf of civil rights organizations with the United States Supreme Court, pressed under the First Amendment for press and public access to sealed transcripts of legal proceedings, and have tutored adults in an adult literacy program ran by the Los Angeles Public Library. The firm two years ago began a program of adopting a school in a disadvantaged area of Los Angeles and providing the children with presents for the Holidays.
The firm’s community work is not purely altruistic. We believe that personal satisfaction, economic success and the effective representation of clients are linked to one another, and the best results in all these areas are achieved when there is a fundamental balance between the practice of law, time with your family and being part of the larger civic community.
