People

William Berry Senior Counsel

San Francisco

William also has substantial experience with the employee benefit aspects of sales and acquisitions of businesses (including bankruptcy transactions), the restructuring of defined benefit pension plans, the defense of ERISA class action litigation, and public pension plan matters.

His clients include a wide range of large and medium-sized corporations, as well as individual and public clients. He also provides tax and retirement planning advice to many of Orrick's corporate clients.

William has been a frequent lecturer on employee benefits and related individual tax and fiduciary topics for the American Law Institute-American Bar Association; California Continuing Education of the Bar; the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans; the Practicing Law Institute; the Western Pension & Benefits Conference; various Bay Area Estate Planning Councils; and other organizations.

William became a senior counsel in 2013 after having been an Orrick partner since 1999.  Before joining Orrick, William was a partner at the law firm of Pillsbury Winthrop LLP in San Francisco.

Geoffroy Berthon Partner

Paris

Geoffroy advises on public contracts, particularly in the context of concessions and PPPs. He has been involved in projects relating to the financing, construction and operation of the Stade Vélodrome in Marseille; the Sud Europe Atlantique high-speed line; the Athletes' Village for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games; the Grand Paris Express and the offshore extension of the Principality of Monaco. He has also worked on several French highway (A412, A69, RCEA, A88, A41, A150), port (Calais, Cannes) and airport projects (Nice, Lyon, Beauvais).

In the renewables field, he acts alongside the French government (Ministry of Energy Transition) in calls for tenders for the construction of offshore wind farms, including floating wind turbines, and advises operators in the realization of biomass and geothermal projects, as well as investors in the context of "M&A" operations concerning wind and solar assets and methanization. He also has experience in hydroelectricity matters. He advises both sponsors and lenders and works regularly with public entities and governments. He also advises on the drafting and negotiation of corporate PPAs, acting for both energy producers and buyers.

Geoffroy Berthon is recognized by clients as "talented, dynamic and brilliant lawyer. He is a hard worker. His calm manner and attentiveness reassure as a client" (Legal 500) and as a Leading Partner by Legal 500 (EMEA 2025) in public law and energy.

Geoffroy holds a doctorate in public law, was a lecturer in public contract law at Sciences Po, and frequently published in both English and French.

Josh Beser Partner

New York

Josh is a member of Orrick’s Technology Companies Group, representing high-growth technology companies and their investors in a range of corporate matters, including corporate and securities law, corporate formations, venture and growth capital financings, mergers and acquisitions, public offerings, and secondary offerings. Josh brings a unique perspective to working with founders and company leadership at venture-backed companies as they scale, often serving as the company’s primary outside counsel from early-stage financing through exit. He is especially skilled serving as outside general counsel to companies as they reach growth inflection points, often ranging from Series Seed to Series C and beyond, where business and legal issues tend to multiply and the experience of outside counsel with deep operating experience is particularly valuable. He is an integral part of the firm’s presence in New York and its commitment to tech & venture ecosystem in the region.

Josh’s clients include Misfits Market, Skims, Studs, Away, Crossbeam and Topline Pro. In addition, Josh regularly works with early-stage investors and venture studios such as TMV and 25madison.

Josh is a leader in the startup ecosystem in New York, as a founding member of TechGC in New York City, a mentor to growth-stage general counsels in collaboration with First Round Capital’s Fast Track program and since 2012, as a mentor to early-stage founders through ERA.

Before joining Orrick, Josh was a partner in the New York office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. Prior to WSGR, Josh served as general counsel at Away, a direct-to-consumer travel brand twice named as one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Companies” and as one of Time’s “50 Most Genius Companies,” among other honors. At Away, Josh was a member of the executive team, served as corporate secretary, and built and led teams in a wide range of operational functions, including information security, real estate, and global trade. Josh built and implemented Away’s legal strategy and infrastructure at scale and led Away’s legal team through substantial revenue and headcount growth, international sales, operations and retail expansion, Series C and Series D financings, growth-stage debt financing, liquidity transactions, global intellectual property development and brand protection programs, public company readiness, and executive transitions.

Ari Bessendorf Partner

Singapore

Ari’s practice cuts across sectors, including conventional power, renewable energy (solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric), infrastructure, oil & gas and mining throughout the United States and Asia. His combination of project development and finance experience allows him to advise clients on bankability considerations for development matters.

Clients commend him for being “meticulous on the finer details”, and “a firm but calming and amiable presence at the negotiating table.” They add that “he gained our trust” and has “a cost-effective approach and a drive to successfully close deals.”

Chiara Bettinzoli Associate

Milan

Chiara assists the team in advising companies and individuals in investigations in relation to white-collar crimes (such as anti-money laundering, financial crimes, corporate crimes, bankruptcy crimes, tax crimes, environmental crimes, occupational health and safety crimes).

Chiara participates in carrying out internal investigations aimed at strengthening the internal control systems of leading national and international companies.

Chiara also collaborates on an ongoing basis in advising major companies and corporate groups in managing potential compliance risks, in particular in relation to the Organisational, Management and Control Models adopted pursuant to Legislative Decree no. 231/2001.

Chiara has been appointed as member of Supervisory Body (Organismi di Vigilanza) of Italian companies.
Since November 2024, Chiara is a PhD student at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan (PhD in business, labour, institutions and criminal justice).

Since 2023, Chiara has been teaching assistant in Business and Corporate Criminal Law at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan.

Chiara graduated with honours from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan following a study period spent at the University of California - Berkeley.

Chiara is fluent in English, French and Spanish

Upnit K. Bhatti Senior Associate

Washington, D.C.

Upnit has served as litigation, trial, and appellate counsel for pharmaceutical, chemical, technology, cosmetics, and manufacturing companies. As a member of trial teams, she works on complex commercial matters to develop creative legal strategies for trial and subsequent appeals. As embedded counsel, Upnit takes the lead in drafting dispositive motions and pre- and post-trial filings and ensures that appellate issues are preserved. She has presented oral argument in state and federal courts and has co-authored countless briefs before state and federal trial and appellate courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States. In addition, Upnit maintains an active pro bono practice.

Prior to joining Orrick, Upnit focused on products liability and complex litigation work at Arnold & Porter LLP and a mid-size firm in Upstate New York. This included representing a consumer products company in the defense of thousands of personal injury cases in state and federal courts. She was the primary drafter of several motions and appellate briefs. She was also deeply involved in the firms’ pro bono practices and first chaired a trial dealing with First and Eighth Amendment claims.

Outside of the firm, Upnit serves on the Board of Directors of the DC Women’s Bar Association and serves as its Advocacy Committee Co-Chair. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of her law school’s Alumni Association.

Upnit previously clerked for the Honorable Theodore A. McKee of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and interned for the Honorable Thérèse Wiley Dancks of the Northern District of New York. In law school, Upnit served as the Managing Editor of the Syracuse Law Review, and was an arguing member of the American Bar Association’s National Appellate Team. She received the Moot Court Honor Society’s Executive Director Award and the Syracuse Law Review Distinguished Leadership Award.

Peter Bicks Partner

New York

In recognition of Peter’s career trial work, he was inducted into the American College of Trial Lawyers in 2015. Juries have compared him favorably to Johnnie Cochran and F. Lee Bailey. Clients laud Peter, telling Chambers USA 2020-2022, “He’s a standout trial lawyer and an outstanding advocate overall. He appreciates the client’s needs and advocates for them everywhere.” Another client notes, “He is brilliant in the courtroom under the most intense pressure,” “a master of seeing the full chessboard.” That praise is echoed by sources saying, Peter is “one of these lawyers that really turns big cases; he’s a real trial lawyer,” and calling him “one of the most gifted trial lawyers that I have ever seen.” Clients go on to applaud his trial experience and strategic approach saying, “Peter really knows his way round a courtroom. He's a great trial tactician.” “He is an outstanding advocate who appreciates the client's needs and reputational questions involved.” A peer in the trial bar told Law360, “What is most impressive is his ability as a true Field General – calmly directing his team’s efforts.”

With precedent-setting trial wins in intellectual property, commercial and products liability litigation, Peter has amassed honors from annual top rankings in Chambers USA, Legal 500, and Benchmark Litigation, to awards for excellence, such as New York “Litigation Star,” “Law360 MVP,” “Litigator of the Week,” and “Top 100 Trial Lawyers in America.”

It is Peter’s versatility that sets him apart. He brings a combination of deft courtroom skills, strategic acuity and team leadership. In July 2023, a leading company in the biotech agricultural space, Corteva Agriscience, retained Peter as lead trial counsel in a high profile intellectual property lawsuit Corteva filed against Inari Agriculture, Inc. and Inari Agriculture NV to protect its highly valuable patent protected genetically modified seeds. As noted in the complaint, the lawsuit "…seeks to prevent Inari from continuing its brazen efforts to steal Corteva's groundbreaking work." Specifically, the lawsuit alleges that Inari deliberately used a third-party agent to obtain protected Corteva seeds, illegally exported the seeds out of the United States, made slight genetic modifications of the biotech traits and is seeking U.S. patents for those modified traits. The case is pending in the U.S. District Court, Delaware and is in discovery. In May 2022, when faced with a headlining trial over control of the leading international model and talent company, Elite Worldwide Group, the company and its Chairman tapped Peter as lead trial counsel to parachute in just 45 days before trial. Our complete trial win for the client earned Peter and the team Litigators of the Week Runner-Up honors from the American Lawyer. Louis Dreyfus Company turned to Peter recently as lead trial counsel once they saw that a massive, high stakes trial was on the horizon with over $1 billion at stake amid class action claims alleging manipulation of the cotton futures market. DISH Network brought Peter in shortly before trial when the FTC and various state attorneys general sought $700 billion in damages and penalties for alleged telemarketing violations. He achieved an astounding trial victory for DISH limiting recovery to less than one percent of the exposure. For Johnson & Johnson, Peter has been part of a small group of market-leading outside counsel overseeing the defense of more than 15,000 talc-related cases, including product liability trials, consumer class actions, and cases brought under California’s Prop 65; handling multiple trials, SEC, DOJ, and AG investigations; and representing senior executives in major depositions, at trial, and before Congress.

Peter served as co-head of the firm's Global Litigation practice and is a former member of Orrick’s Board and Management Committee. Before joining Orrick, Peter was a partner at Donovan Leisure. He captained his college tennis team to a national ranking, has successfully competed in major national sailboat competitions, and serves on the Board of the Harlem Junior Tennis and Education Program. With his wife Linda, he has three children: Avery, Isabelle and Phoebe.

Richard Bierschbach Associated Law Professor

New York

Richard has substantial experience advising clients across a wide range of cases, with particular focus on matters involving novel or complex constitutional, statutory, administrative, or other public-law issues, appeals, and legal and strategic counseling. A former law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and to Judge A. Raymond Randolph on the D.C. Circuit, Richard served both as a Bristow Fellow in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Solicitor General and as an Attorney-Adviser in its Office of Legal Counsel. During that time, he regularly counseled federal government attorneys on appellate and legal strategy issues and provided written and oral advice to the White House, the Attorney General and other executive branch offices on a broad spectrum of constitutional, statutory, and regulatory questions. He also practiced as an appellate litigator in the New York office of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering from 2001-03 and, more recently, as of counsel in the New York office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Before his appointment as Dean, he was a tenured professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where he was Vice Dean from 2015-16.

Richard teaches and writes in the areas of administrative law, criminal justice, and corporations. His published work has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Michigan Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and the University of Minnesota Law Review, among other journals. He twice—in 2013 and 2015—received the Best Professor Award from Cardozo’s graduating class. He has been quoted on legal developments by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC News, Slate, and other media.

Emily Bills Managing Associate

San Francisco

Emily has a broad range of experience in real estate financing transactions. With a wide-ranging knowledge of commercial real estate matters and their complexities, Emily advises clients on financings, joint ventures, acquisitions, developments and dispositions. She also has experience drafting and advising on lease agreements.

Lisa Bixby Senior Associate

Los Angeles

Lisa focuses on appellate litigation. Her practice spans a wide range of subject areas, from complex commercial litigation to white collar criminal defense. She has authored dozens of appellate briefs—winning results in federal and state courts of appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court—and has successfully argued before the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Sixth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits. Lisa’s practice also extends to trial work, with an emphasis on dispositive motions, preserving appellate issues, and developing creative legal strategies.

Lisa maintains an active pro bono practice, with a particular focus on criminal law and civil rights.

Before joining Orrick, Lisa served as a law clerk to Judge Richard A. Paez of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She also worked as an appellate attorney at the MacArthur Justice Center, where she litigated cutting-edge constitutional and statutory issues in federal and state appellate courts on behalf of incarcerated people and victims of police misconduct.

Solène Blandin Senior Associate

Paris

Solène assists French and international clients on all aspects of French employment law both in contentious and non-contentious matters.

Her area of expertise covers collective aspects of employment law (professional elections, relationships with the employee representatives, collective agreements, working time, reorganisations, mass redundancies, post-acquisition integrations, internal investigations, background checks and monitoring) and individual aspects (drafting employment documentation, dismissals, negotiation and settlement agreements, bonus schemes and restrictive covenants).

Solène has been a French-qualified lawyer (Avocat à la Cour) since February 2018. Prior to joining Orrick, she was an associate for 7 years within a global UK law firm's employment team.

In addition, she holds a Master’s Degree in Employment law from the University of Paris II Panthéon- Assas. Solène is also an alumna of the Oxford University (Diploma of Legal Studies - 2014).

Greg Blonde Partner

Portland

Greg primarily focuses on health care/senior living finance, airport transactions and traditional municipal bond work for cities, counties and special districts.

Greg has completed conduit bond transactions for the most active healthcare borrowers in the Pacific Northwest, including Legacy Health, Oregon Health & Science University, Salem Health, Asante, Samaritan Health Services, St. Charles Health System, Columbia Memorial Hospital and PeaceHealth. He also regularly works on financings for many nonprofit senior living providers, including Pacific Retirement Services, Transforming Age, Terwilliger Plaza, Rose Villa, Mary's Woods, Dallas Retirement Village and Capital Manor, and has worked on senior living bond transactions in Oregon, Washington, California, Texas, Wisconsin, Nebraska and Florida. Greg also maintains an active traditional municipal finance practice, serving as bond counsel for public bodies and municipalities such as The Port of Portland, the City of Lake Oswego and the City of West Linn.

Since 2011, Greg has provided pro bono legal services to Iraqi refugees through the International Refugee Assistance Project.  Greg is also a past member of the Board of Directors of Youth, Rights & Justice, a nonprofit law firm that serves underprivileged children (primarily foster children) in the Portland area.