LOS ANGELES

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TUESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2015

Trial by Fire

TRANSACTIONS

Throughout his career, Gafcons Paul Najar has learned how to

wring opportunity out of crisis.

AN DIEGO Through crisis,

there is often great opportunity.
That is the mantra Paul Najar,
general counsel of San Diego-based
construction consulting firm Gafcon
Inc., adopted after many years of dealing with unwelcome surprises. He said
he found that the best way to handle
adversity is to look for a creative approach to get through it.
Najar, who just celebrated his threeyear anniversary at Gafcon, got his first
taste of adversity working in-house at
California Federal Bank now Citibank just after graduating from UC
Davis School of Law. Joining the bank
at the tail end of the savings and loan
crisis, Najar was tasked with traveling
all over the nation to resolve financial
fraud lawsuits and reporting his the
results to the federal government, a
tremendous undertaking for a young
attorney.
For a two- to three-year lawyer
to do be doing that all by myself was
something, he said. What I learned,
and what has served me well through
my career, is that through crisis theres
great opportunity. If you are willing to
put yourself out there you can grow in
your career.
Najars mantra was given new meaning when he took over as the attorney
for UC Irvine in 1992. The university
was undergoing significant public and
legal scrutiny over one of the largest
medical scandals in U.S. history
the UCI fertility center crisis. Female
patients of world-renowned fertility
doctors had their eggs and embryos
misappropriated, resulting in massive
insurance fraud and more than 100
malpractice suits.
Most of Najars time at the school
was spent helping to lead an investigation into the matter with a team of doctors, accountants and legal professors.
It was an incredibly stressful undertaking, no one had ever encountered
anything like it, he recalled.
In his current position as the sole
attorney for Gafcon, Najar is facing
another challenge: how to best rebut
allegations that his company misspent
millions of dollars in its efforts to help
create the Orange County Great Park,
and was not properly vetted for the
project in the first place.
Gafcon one of many construction
companies associated with dozens of
audits from the city of Irvine regarding
the Great Park, which was never developed in light of the recession is
fighting back. Besides filing a complaint about the auditing process with
the California Board of Accountancy,
the company put together a documentary to contest the allegations, Najars
way of finding opportunity amidst a
hailstorm.
It was a lot of work, but we thought
it was the most effective way to get our
point across, he said.

Paul Najar

General Counsel
Gafcon Inc.
San Diego
Number of lawyers in legal department: 1

Daily Journal staff writer Alexandra

Schwappach recently met with Najar in
his San Diego office decorated with
a South African motif in recognition of
the companys founders, who hail from
Cape Town to discuss the status of
the dispute over the Great Park, the
firms ongoing projects, and Najars
plans to take the company international. Here is an edited transcript of their
conversation.
Daily Journal: How did the trouble
with the Great Park start, and how
did you decide that a documentary
was the best way to address it?
Najar: It was a complicated project.
We were part of the team that won an
international competition to get the
project. We undertook our work, we
did it on time, and on budget. It was a
tremendous thing. [In response to the
allegations,] we realized that we didnt
have enough of a public presence to tell
our story. We found out that we could
tell our story through a documentary
and actually take the words of the people accusing us and use those words to
defend ourselves. We took the 31 allegations against us and proved them false,
without even saying a word ourselves,
just using public documents and City
Council meetings.
Lawyers must think out of the boxed
and a look for opportunities to tell their
story another way. If I had written a
brief contesting the allegations, no one
would have read that. People absorb
information differently than they did
10 years ago. The legal profession has
an opportunity to use technology to
better explain circumstances, especially
in a crisis.
DJ: Has the issue with the Great
Park affected your business at all?
Najar: We have a very good reputation with our clients. Weve always been
a firm that has done great work. I think
our clients have never been concerned
about us. The difficulty becomes having to explain the story to new clients,
because professional reputation is so
critical. So we have to get out there
and do our best to communicate that
were very proud of who we are and
what we do.
DJ: How did your experience
dealing with crisis at other companies
help prepare you for the position
youre in now?
Najar: One of the primary lessons
Ive learned is it that its so important to
be prepared in advance, before a crisis
happens. If you just assume that you
can just sit back and wait for it, you are
mistaken. Every company should have

Tom Kurtz / Special to the Daily Journal

a crisis preparation plan. Its important

to understand the roles that everyone
would play, where are the particular
issues that are most sensitive, and if
you have people who can come in at a
moments notice, like a PR agency or
a law firm. The second step is really to
get your point out there as early as you
can. If youre defensive and you wait,
youve already lost.
DJ: Has there been any litigation
regarding the Great Park? And what
are some of the typical litigation matters that Gafcon deals with?
Najar: Theres no litigation at this
time [with the Great Park.] The Great
Park audit is really a political dispute
between factions on the Irvine City
Council. The construction is known
for having a lot of litigation. We are
fortunate that in the last few years
weve only had a couple of small cases.
Unfortunately, in the construction world
sometimes the motto is sue everybody
and then figure it out later. Sometimes
companies in the construction industry
get swept up into lawsuits where the
plaintiff sued everyone irrespective of
their involvement.
DJ: What firms do you work with
most often and what do you use
them for?
Najar: Our employment work is
done by Rod Betts of Paul Plevin, a San
Diego-based firm. They are absolutely
the best in their field. I worked with
them back in my University of California days and I brought them in when
I came here. We also use Stradling in
Newport Beach. They help us with corporate matters and also theyre helping
us with the Great Park. Ive worked
with the main partner Mike Brown for
more than 15 years. I look for great
lawyers and worry about the firms
later. Another lawyer we work with
in San Diego is Mitch Dubick from
Higgs Fletcher. The last one is Brian
Stewart from firm in Pasadena called
Collins Collins, Muir and Stewart,
a 50-person law firm that represents
many companies in the architectural
and construction industries.
DJ: What projects has your firm
been involved in lately?
Najar: Right now we are working
with AECOM on a large opportunity
to help build infrastructure in South
Africa, where we also plan to open an
office later this year. The opportunity is
to build a large dry port, and that may
be the beginning of other infrastructure
projects in Africa that well work on

with AECOM, and thats very exciting.

One of the other projects we are
working on right now is helping one
our largest clients, San Diego Unified
School District. They recently passed
another $1 billion school bond measure
and we are helping them build new
schools, retrofit schools that need to
be upgraded, and helping them with
sustainability targets. We help them
with the strategies associated with
making the 21st century classroom,
which is something we are working
on with a lot of clients. Most of our
clients are educational clients. We represent San Diego School District, San
Diego Community College, and were
working with AECOM with one of the
largest districts in the United States, Los
Angeles Community College District.
With that we are working on making
sure the community colleges are built
on time and within budget. Educational
clients are one our specialties.
DJ: Are there any industries or
entities you want to branch into or
partner with that you havent yet?
Najar: For a while during the recession there wasnt a lot of private
construction going on, and now were
seeing a lot more construction in the
private sector. So that is very exciting
for us because we have a lot of history
with the private sector but there just
wasnt work for a long time, so we
are now looking to expand more into
private projects.
We are also looking into doing more
government projects. There are cities
now that have more funding for various
capital improvements, whether its a
new city hall or new convention center
or new large scale activities like water
projects and transit. Theres a lot of
work that needs to be done on improving infrastructure of our cities.
DJ: What do you see for the company in the next five years?
Najar: We are looking to expand
geographically in the U.S., in Florida,
Texas, and in Colorado. We have an
office in L.A. and we are looking to
expand and also have explored Northern
California opportunities. I think we will
grow into the private and government
sectors. I think well continue to have
a good education practice. Partnering
with other companies is something we
do exceptionally well. We work with
much larger companies who appreciate
our personal touch with a client, which
is the competitive advantage that small
firms have.

Reprinted with permission from the Daily Journal. 2015 Daily Journal Corporation. All rights reserved. Reprinted by ReprintPros 949-702-5390.