Guy Kornblum & Associates :: About
Us :: Mukesh Advani
Mukesh Advani has been practicing law in California since 1985.
Mukesh is Special Counsel to our firm, where he specializes and appellate work, legal analysis, and insurance coverage and bad faith cases on behalf of plaintiffs, victims and policyholders.
His first position as a lawyer in the U.S. was with Guy Kornblum, where he worked for several years under the tutelage of one of California’s most well respected appellate counsel, The Hon. William Boone, where Mukesh honed his excellent appellate skills.
Before becoming Special Counsel to Guy Kornblum & Associates, Mukesh was engaged in private practice. He was previously associated with The Schinner Law Group with offices in San Francisco and Silicon Valley and as a partner with a San Francisco based law firm of Kelly, Herlihy, Advani and Klein with offices in Northern and Southern California, a firm Mukesh co-founded in February 1998.
In 1991, Mukesh received an A.V. rating (very high (legal ability) to preeminent) by Martindale-Hubbell, after he had been in practice for five years. Mukesh is also included in the Martindale-Hubbell’s 2005 Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers.
In his 20-year practice, Mukesh has represented major institutional and individual clients in a variety of civil litigation matters. Mukesh has been lead counsel in several dozen appellate matters, many of which are published. His most recent case of much significance includes Kraus v. Trinity Management (2000) 23 Cal.4th 116, in which he was the lead counsel for defendants in the California Supreme Court in a major Unfair Competition Law case. Mukesh was also counsel for Dr. Allen Hassan in one of his other landmark California Supreme Court cases, Hassan v. Mercy Hospital (2003) 31 Cal.4th 709. In addition, Mukesh was lead counsel in two leading products liability cases Bresnahan v. Chrysler (1998) 32 Cal.App.4th 1559 and Bresnahan v. Chrysler (1998) 65 Cal.App.4th 1159. These cases established important legal principles regarding application of consumer expectation test and failure to warn theory of recovery in products liability cases involving deployment of airbag in an automobile causing injuries.
In addition to litigation practice, Mukesh has also worked for clients on general corporate matters, including entity formations, private financings, governance of corporations and limited liability companies, incentive compensation and stock option issuance, founders' matters, employment issues and commercial contracts.
Mukesh has published articles and taught continuing legal education classes. At the American Bar Association’s Annual convention in San Francisco in 1998, Mukesh was invited to be a panelist with Judge Kenneth Starr and Justice Kathryn Werdegar of the California Supreme Court.
In addition to his success in the legal profession, Mukesh has served in several other leadership positions. He is the founder and past-president of the South Asian Bar Association, which is a group of over 300 lawyers and law students of South Asian descent, and a former member of the California Committee of Bar Examiners, which is charged with the responsibility of administering the California bar examination, accreditation of law schools, among other responsibilities. He has served as a Co-Chair of TIE Sponsorship Committee, served as a Director of the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, and served on the Ethnic Minority Relations Committee of the State Bar of California. For his work for the community, Mukesh received 1998 Minority Bar Coalition’s Award for Outstanding Service to the Community. In 2004, he received Outstanding Legal Eagle Award by India Waves Media. Most recently, Mukesh was instrumental in starting free legal clinics open to all at the India Community Center in Milpitas, California in which more than twenty attorneys volunteer their time. He is currently Chair of the Center’s Legal Clinics Committee.
