Kalpana Srinivasan

Kalpana Srinivasan, a trial lawyer in Los Angeles, is a managing partner at Susman Godfrey. Her cases have involved home-valuation software, Wi-Fi patents and the rights to older sound recordings. In the HouseCanary litigation against Amrock, she shared lead responsibility for both trials of the real estate analytics company’s trade secret and fraud claims. Caltech’s patent suit against Samsung put her on the plaintiff’s side as lead counsel; in Finjan’s suit against cybersecurity provider Bitdefender, she worked for the defense. Both patent cases resolved before trial.

Music copyright litigation took Srinivasan to the Ninth Circuit in 2021, when she argued an appeal arising from the Sirius XM cases. She had served as co-lead counsel for Flo & Eddie and a class of owners of recordings made before 1972. Her experience with class actions also extends to teaching a course at UCLA Law School.

Srinivasan joined Susman Godfrey in 2005 following a clerkship with Ninth Circuit Judge Raymond C. Fisher. Earlier, she was an Associated Press reporter in Washington, D.C., covering national media and telecommunications policy. The firm elected her managing partner in 2020—the first woman in that role and the first to reach it through the firm’s associate ranks.

Outside her litigation work, she sits on the advisory forum of Stanford Law School’s Rhode Center on the Legal Profession. She previously served on the California State Bar’s Judicial Nominees Evaluation Commission.