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San Francisco litigator Jon Streeter
elected State Bar president

Jon Streeter, a partner at Keker & Van Nest in San Francisco, was elected the 87th president of the State Bar last month and will take office in September. He defeated Angela Davis of Los Angeles and Michael Tenenbaum of Thousand Oaks after Los Angeles attorney James Aguirre, who had declared his candidacy, withdrew.

Jon StreeterStreeter will succeed another San Francisco litigator, Bill Hebert of Calvo Fisher & Jacob LLP.

Chair of the board of governors’ Stakeholders Committee and leader of a project to get more legal help for veterans, Streeter, 54, was elected on a platform focusing on discipline, governance and communications. Stabilizing and rebuilding the Office of Chief Trial Counsel, which recently lost its top prosecutor and four other veteran prosecutors, is a top priority, Streeter said. He wants to find a new chief trial counsel and hold that person accountable as well as ensure success of that department.

“I will work hard to reestablish a sense of unity and restore the effectiveness and integrity of the discipline system,” Streeter said after the vote was announced. He called the discipline system dysfunctional and said, “It is about the backlog, the backlog, the backlog. Finding the right person instead of micromanaging our relationship with that person” is key.

He also said the board of governors has become divided in the past year over questions of governance and “it’s got to be a year of reconciliation. To be effective, we must work together.” In remarks prior to the vote, Streeter expressed concern about SB 163, the bar’s fee bill, which is pending in the legislature. In addition to authorizing next year’s bar dues, the measure revises bar governance with a compromise approach that includes elements of two sets of recommendations sent to lawmakers by a special task force. Streeter called the bill “flawed” and said he wants to eliminate the task force. “It created a board within a board” and if left in place, will “be corrosive going forward,” he said.

Nonetheless, “we are where we are,” Streeter said, and a few refinements to the bill will “bring us back to a workable footing.”

Streeter and Davis favored the task force's “majority” report, which left the bar board with 23 members, as it has now, but would have changed the selection process. The fee bill will reduce the board from 23 to 19 and includes seven appointed lawyers.

Streeter said he “stands for principle,” and offered himself as a leader who listens carefully to others. “I think I try to find consensus but only after giving everyone in the room a fair hearing.”

A graduate of Stanford University and Boalt Hall School of Law at UC-Berkeley, Streeter litigates complex business cases in trial and appellate courts. His specialty areas include intellectual property, antitrust, securities, real estate, mortgage banking, executive compensation, energy regulation and insurance coverage.

A former president of the Bar Association of San Francisco, Streeter is married to Dorine Streeter, executive vice president of a San Francisco real estate investment firm. The couple have two daughters, Lindsey, 21, and Hillary, 19.