NewsKyle Kawakami Named Managing Partner of Irell’s Newport Beach Office
Irell & Manella LLP has selected Kyle Kawakami as the new managing partner of the firm’s Newport Beach office. Kyle will continue to practice full-time as a member of Irell’s Transactions practice group. He has long been involved with firm management, most recently chairing the Diversity Committee and the Newport Beach Hiring Committee. Effective as of January 1, Kawakami succeeded Michael Ermer, who served in the role for two terms, the maximum length allowed under the firm’s term limit rules.
Kyle’s practice includes general corporate matters, transactions, real estate and taxation. He has counseled clients in multiple industries — from high tech to agriculture — on the formation and maintenance of corporations, limited liability companies and partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, private placements, venture capital financings and other general commercial transactions.
Kyle also has extensive experience in a wide array of corporate transactions, including stock and asset acquisitions and divestitures, purchases and sales of interests in limited liability companies and partnerships, mergers of public and privately held companies, secured and unsecured financings, joint venture transactions and venture capital transactions.
For more than two decades, Kyle has served as general commercial counsel for a consortium of businesses (including several Fortune 500 companies) that constructed a groundwater treatment facility at a San Fernando Valley Superfund site. He provides legal advice on general business matters faced by this group, from maintenance of the group’s business entity to negotiating and drafting contracts, leading negotiations with governmental agencies on matters relating to the water treatment facility and tax planning.
Additionally, Kyle has represented clients in the purchase and sale of real property, the formation of real estate development partnerships and limited liability companies, and the preparation of construction contracts, architect agreements and real estate leases.
Kyle joined Irell’s Newport Beach office in 1987 after completing a clerkship with the Honorable Richard A. Gadbois, Jr. in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. He earned his J.D., with distinction, from Stanford Law School in 1986 and his B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of California, San Diego in 1981.