People

Ekaterina Popoff Senior Associate

New York

Ekaterina (Katya) Popoff is experienced in closing complex deals, acting for issuers and underwriters both in the U.S. and abroad in structured securities offerings across a broad range of asset classes including residential mortgages, credit cards, oil and gas assets and commercial loans, and structures, including public and private offerings, repos, CLOs and cost recovery bonds. Drawing on her background as an entrepreneur, she approaches her work with a pragmatic and solution-focused mindset, ensuring that clients receive efficient and practical solutions.

Katya is a passionate and dedicated mentor to junior associates, ensuring that her colleagues receive support and guidance to help them advance their skills and gain confidence. Her other areas of interest include designing, creating and refining deal management systems on complex deals, including learning new strategies, implementing workflows for the associate team to follow and refining approaches from prior deals.

Before joining Orrick, Katya practiced in structured finance at a leading national firm in Canada. Prior to that she founded a specialty tea producer and wholesaler that sold packaged tea blends into the U.S., Canadian and international markets. Under her leadership, the business won numerous awards for taste, packaging design and marketing. She is an avid reader and has recently rekindled her interest in cycling as a means to explore the outdoors and discover new places.

Scott Porter Senior Corporate Counsel

San Francisco

Scott was an associate at the firm from 1998 until 2006 and has experience in mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, securities law and general corporate matters.

Prior to joining Orrick, he was an associate at Pillsbury Madison & Sutro LLP from 1997 to 1998.

Gerald Porter Senior Associate

Los Angeles; Santa Monica

Jerry specializes in high-stakes patent disputes, excelling at distilling complex technical issues into clear, persuasive arguments. He is experienced across all stages of litigation, including pre-suit investigations, motion practice, fact and expert discovery, taking and defending depositions, arguing in federal court, pre-trial filings, trial, post-trial briefing, and appeals. He also has significant experience in patent prosecution before the Patent Office and in inter partes review proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.

Using his engineering background, Jerry engages effectively with technical professionals and swiftly grasps new technologies. He provides tailored solutions for clients in diverse industries, including semiconductors, medical devices, biotechnology, cryptocurrency, cybersecurity, and audio and telecommunications.

Jerry also advises clients on managing and protecting their intellectual property portfolios, helping them navigate current challenges while anticipating future risks in a rapidly evolving tech landscape.

Leveraging both his technical and legal expertise, Jerry crafts innovative strategies to protect intellectual property and resolve disputes efficiently, always with a focus on achieving favorable outcomes. 

Meredith Post Chief Growth & Integration Officer

Silicon Valley

Merrie supports candidates through each stage in the recruiting conversation. She also ensures that every lateral partner who joins Orrick has a committed sponsor and an actionable plan for business and social integration.

Merrie brings to this work a deep understanding of the legal market, and in particular, the lateral partner recruiting market, compensation and integration. Over the course of her career, she has helped hundreds of partners make successful moves. She previously led Hudson Gate Legal, a search firm, where she focused on partner-level searches. Prior to that, she served as Director of Attorney Development at Cadwalader. She began her career as a corporate associate at Debevoise.

When she’s not talking to top legal talent, Merrie can be found on a spin bike, visiting a great spa, taking a hip hop class, traveling and spending quality time with her husband Jason and sons Charlie and Alex.

George Pothoulakis Partner

Boston

George is specialized in all areas of general corporate/securities law and in a wide variety of transactions (ex. venture financings, secondary offerings, redomestications, M&A and public offerings). His practice spans the entire corporate lifecycle, from inception to exit/liquidity, and includes the representation of companies and investors from various industries (ex. life sciences, health tech, energy tech, A.I, machine learning, robotics and blockchain). 

In addition to his extensive experience in private practice, George previously served as the lead lawyer of Boehringer Ingelheim's U.S.-based venture fund, where he oversaw and supported all legal aspects of the venture fund's investment activities in the United States and Canada.  During his time there, George also supported the venture fund's parent pharma company as lead counsel in several global financing and M&A transactions.

Darren Pouliot Senior Associate

London

Darren is a dual-qualified American lawyer and solicitor-advocate of England and Wales. He has an established record of working closely with clients across the finance, commodities, energy, life sciences and technology industries on all stages of disputes.

He represents clients in international arbitral proceedings under the major arbitral institutions' rules, as well as in American federal and state courts. He also holds Higher Rights of Audience with the Senior Courts of England & Wales. Darren maintains an active pro bono practice with a focus on criminal, habeas, and constitutional cases on appeal.

Darren also has direct in-house experience, having undertaken secondment to the fast-paced litigation department of one of the world's largest investment banks. He worked closely with the in-house team to assess litigation risk, advise stakeholders, and manage ongoing global litigations. He now frequently works with clients to develop their dispute resolution terms, processes, and trainings for other in-house functions.

Prior to joining Orrick, Darren earned his Juris Doctorate from Columbia Law School where he led the Columbia Business Law Review as its Editor-in-Chief and extensively studied federal constitutional, administrative, and criminal law. While there, he was a judicial intern in multiple levels of the U.S. federal judiciary, including the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, the Southern District of New York, and the District of New Jersey.

Marissa Prieto Senior Associate

Seattle

Her experience includes representing borrowers, sponsors, investors and lenders in a variety of financing and equity arrangements, including project and portfolio M&A, development financing, equity investments and joint ventures with wind, solar and other alternative energy projects.

Mark S. Puzella Partner

Boston

As a trial lawyer, Mark excels at handling accelerated, complex cases. For example, as lead counsel for New Balance, Mark won a swift six-month International Trade Commission (ITC) investigation concerning claims of trade dress infringement. And, as lead plaintiff counsel for Explorica in a trademark case, he won a jury verdict just ten weeks after filing the complaint. During that short span, the parties engaged in complete discovery, including taking and defending numerous fact and expert depositions. Clients routinely ask him to take over matters at the close of discovery, prior to trial, or on remand, which presents unique challenges and time constraints.

He is also skilled at explaining complex concepts and technology to judges and juries in a persuasive, intelligible style. For example, in the high-profile Supreme Court case ABC v. Aereo, he led the trial and appellate team’s presentation of the key technology. That presentation was the basis of the trial court’s denial of a preliminary injunction, and the Second Circuit’s affirmance of that decision.

Mark draws upon his litigation experience to help clients anticipate and avoid legal issues related to new technologies and brands. Mark has advised numerous technology and media companies on the creation, use, and delivery of content and helped clients assess whether their products will withstand investor and competitor scrutiny. He also has significant experience advising on branding and re-branding projects, including private brand or store brand clearance and risk assessments.

Mark’s exceptional record has earned him praise as a problem solver from client and peer surveys. Most recently, Chambers USA described him as "extremely skilled and effective." World Trademark Review 1000 has called him “intelligent, thoughtful and client-oriented” and “incredibly impressive.” The Legal 500 has described him as a “smart, creative” trial lawyer who “anticipates everything.” And in 2016, IP Law360 named two of his cases among the top ten trademark decisions of the year.

Jeff Quilici Of Counsel

Austin

Experience matters.  Lawyers must help generalist judges and lay juries quickly grasp intricate topics in unfamiliar areas.  Jeff has written software, managed engineers, run a business, and helped judges at all levels decide cases and draft opinions.  He uses this diverse background to translate complex technical, commercial, and legal concepts into simple and persuasive language that courts, juries, and clients can comprehend.

Jeff's practice focuses on appeals of all stripes, intellectual property litigation, and complex commercial litigation. He has represented clients in industries ranging from computer hardware and software, to cellular telephony, oil and gas, real estate, construction, and many others. In the process, he has assisted clients on matters involving alleged breach of contract, negligence, patent infringement, and trade secrets, as well as in federal appeals on a variety of issues.  Jeff also has represented clients before the International Trade Commission in product exclusion investigations, and before the Patent and Trademark Office in the prosecution of patent applications and inter partes review proceedings. 

Prior to joining Orrick, Jeff served as a law clerk for Justice Neil M. Gorsuch on the U.S. Supreme Court and, several years earlier, for then-Judge Gorsuch on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.  Between his clerkships, Jeff worked as an associate at two major national law firms, where he engaged in a mixture of commercial litigation, patent litigation, patent prosecution, and appeals. Before law school, Jeff designed and wrote software in Silicon Valley, managed engineering teams at a high-technology startup company that later went public, and founded his own real estate investment and brokerage practice.

Jeff Quinn-Cane Partner

Seattle

With an emphasis on project development and tax-driven finance, Jeff advises developers, sponsors, lenders, investors and utilities across the renewable energy spectrum. He has extensive experience guiding clients on complex tax equity transactions to finance and develop utility-scale solar and wind, distributed solar, geothermal, fuel cell, biomass and other projects that promote a low carbon energy transition.

Previously, Jeff spent four years working as a litigation consultant, an experience that equipped him with a deep understanding of the factors that lead to litigation and effective ways to prevent it.

Harris U. Quraishi Managing Associate

New York

Harris advises public and private companies and private equity funds through a range of domestic and cross-border transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, dispositions, carveouts, equity investments and other general corporate matters.

Prior to joining Orrick, Harris was an associate in the New York office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

Alexander Radisich Senior Associate

Los Angeles

Alex represents issuers, sponsors, underwriters, investors, borrowers and lenders in connection with securitizations, warehouse financings, and asset acquisitions and sales. Alex has experience working with a wide range of asset classes, including agency and non-agency forward and reverse residential mortgage loans, residential transition loans, residential solar loans, tax liens, whole businesses, lease receivables, and non-performing loans.