Ervin Cohen & Jessup Partners Pantea Yashar and Pooja Nair Named Women of Influence
Ervin Cohen and Jessup LLP is proud to announce that its Partners Pantea Yashar and Pooja Nair have been selected as honorees in a Los Angeles Business Journal special supplement recognizing the city’s most influential women attorneys. The “Women of Influence: Attorneys” list, published today, recognizes women lawyers “for exceptional legal skill and achievement across the full spectrum of responsibility, exemplary leadership as evidenced by the highest professional and ethical standards, and for contributions to the Los Angeles community at large,” writes the publisher.
“We are grateful to have some of our top women attorneys recognized alongside such highly respected professionals,” says Co-Managing Partner Randall Leff. “In addition to Pantea and Pooja’s commitment to clients, they are also influential leaders within the Firm.”
As a partner in the Firm’s Litigation Department, Yashar advises on, litigates, and resolves a wide range of real estate and business disputes, focusing on real property and projects in Southern California for large-scale commercial and residential landlords and developers. “From protecting their rights to negotiating resolutions to contentious challenges involving developers, property owners, commercial leaseholders, and buyers and sellers in the nation’s most expensive property markets, Yashar brings a strategic handling of complex matters,” says the feature. Among Yashar’s recent matters, she obtained a favorable settlement for a client filing a lawsuit on behalf of other owners and leaseholders against a public municipality in connection with public nuisance and negligence issues, and rigorously litigated and obtained a favorable settlement involving a residential owner against previous sellers who failed to disclose a series of construction defect issues. Yashar has experience with all property types—shopping centers, mixed-use, retail, residential, industrial, and office building, and her litigation background includes purchaser/seller and neighbor disputes, partition, easement, property line, quiet title, construction defect/breach, nuisance, and disability access issues.
As Chair of the Firm's Food, Beverage and Hospitality Practice, Nair is a go-to attorney for the food, beverage, and hospitality industries and handles partnership disputes, false advertising claims, employment disputes, and administrative law issues, including the Brown Act and California Public Records Act issues. “While she is a talented and experienced litigator, her specialty is finding creative means to ensure that legal problems have practical business solutions,” reports the publication. “Some key representative matters over the past two years include her work handling a partnership dispute on behalf of the lead investor in a restaurant, which was resolved pre-litigation with a favorable settlement for her client; and her successful work representing a restaurant group against an insurance company.” Nair regularly assists mid-market food and beverage clients in addressing false advertising complaints and demands related to product labels, advertising and reviews.
Both Yashar and Nair are Harvard Law School alumni who have been leaders in the alumni community. Yashar currently serves as the Vice-President—At Large on the Executive Board of the Harvard Law School Association; this is a position she assumed following her two-year Presidency of the Association’s Los Angeles Chapter. Yashar is also an adjunct professor at Southwestern Law School. Nair is a director of the Harvard Club of Southern California.