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Kirby & Kirby LLP

501 West Broadway, Suite 1720

San Diego, CA 92101

619-487-1500

www.kirbyandkirbylaw.com

How Kirby & Kirby LLP Became Southern California’s Go-To Litigation Firm for Referred Cases

When the dispute is serious enough that a local lawyer realizes a serious need for a good litigator for referral, an organization with a proven track record of trust, competence and litigation success, many firms immediately turn to Kirby & Kirby, LLP. “We’re a great referral source for clients with a commercial or real estate litigation issue. Oftentimes, firms with a transactional practice end up being conflicted out as potential witnesses, so we get most of our referrals from larger firms who know we do not have a transactional side to our business. Attorneys know they can trust us in our dealings with their clients in litigation matters,” says Jason M. Kirby, Managing Partner.

About 75 percent of the firm’s business is referred by other attorneys in Southern California. For example, recently a prominent firm with a transactional conflict realized they had people in their organization who had worked on the contract documents and could not have their litigation department effectively represent their clients. Referring the matter out was the obvious solution to the problem and Kirby & Kirby was the obvious firm of choice. “That’s just kind of how we frequently get brought into cases, somebody recognizes their client has a serious litigation issue and that we are the obvious solution. We measure our success solely by what we accomplish for our clients,” Kirby says. 

Founding Partners in the firm are the father and son team of Michael L. Kirby and Jason M. Kirby. They have practiced law together for more than 20 years, representing a wide variety of clients in both plaintiff and defense cases. 

The firm’s practice areas include partnership disputes, real estate litigation, contract disputes, executive employment and/or fiduciary issues, personal injury/wrongful death, and securities and investment litigation.

The most recent example of these outstanding results is an employment arbitration handled by Michael Kirby. The firm represented a terminated senior executive in a very large public company. The case was arbitrated over 3 weeks in December 2024 and the final arbitration award was issued in April 2025. The firm’s client received a final arbitration award in his favor in excess of $13 million.

Building on a Legacy of Achievement

Michael Kirby was a founding partner of Post Kirby Noonan & Sweat, a prominent law firm in the San Diego area since 1976. During his career he has recovered more than $350 million for his clients in more than 40 jury trials. His legal expertise includes extensive experience in business, partnerships, real estate and investor disputes. 

He has been a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA) since 1994 and has served on its national board of directors. He is a master in the American Inns of Court—William B. Enright Chapter and has been listed in four separate litigation categories in Best Lawyers®, including bet-the-company litigation. He was named one of the top attorneys in California five years in a row by California Super Lawyers magazine. He was a founder of the Association of Business Trial Lawyers of San Diego, served four years as a Southern District of California Lawyer Representative to the Ninth Circuit and is a Fellow in Litigation Counsel of America.

For more than two decades Jason M. Kirby has represented hundreds of clients in litigation cases throughout California. His primary practice areas are business litigation and real estate litigation, but he has developed expertise in almost every type of civil case during his career. He is an experienced trial lawyer handling plaintiff’s and defense cases. As a plaintiff’s lawyer, he has had multiple jury verdicts in excess of a million dollars. As a defense lawyer, he has had multiple complete defense verdicts. Kirby has been selected to Best Lawyers® and Super Lawyers® by his peers for both commercial litigation and real estate litigation. 

Working in the same firm with a father who had already established an enviable record was an unusual arrangement, but one that proved to be interesting and thoroughly rewarding. Jason Kirby was determined to earn his place in Post Kirby on his own merit. “I did not want to be perceived as Mike’s son, even though I was. I first started calling him Mike at my first day at Post Kirby. For years, Post Kirby occupied an entire floor and I always made sure my office was on the opposite side of his. We expressed mutual trepidation about working next door to each other in a two-man firm, but it’s turned out to be my favorite years of practicing together as partners.”

Creating a New Legacy of Achievement

When Post Kirby, then Kirby Noonan Lance & Hoge LLP, disbanded in 2016, the Kirbys’ former firm split into five separate firms. The father and son then formed Kirby & Kirby LLP. Nine years later the same group of attorneys, paralegals and support staff are all still together. 

“When we left it was a seamless transition. It’s an interesting thing about the old firm in that everybody had their own clients and everybody worked in their own teams. The Kirby team left and we’ve stayed together,” Kirby says.

Kirby says, “My father was always one of the top guys in our old partnership. No matter how you looked at it, I was way down the totem pole. In one partnership meeting, I realized we were headed out because the old firm was coming to an end. While I had always enjoyed working with so many great trial lawyers in one firm, the truth of the matter is that once we broke off, all of the drama of a larger firm dropped away and each of us found our smaller firm to be the greatest time of our practice together as partners. We have had so much fun doing this together and there has never been any drama. We work very well together.” 

In less than a decade at Kirby & Kirby, the Firm has recovered more than $100 million for their clients. The Firm’s success stories include the recovery of more than $22 million for a group of investors who were defrauded in the Ponzi scheme orchestrated by Gina Champion-Cain. The Firm was heavily featured in her, I Did It book as told by Neil Senturia and Barbary Bry. The Firm defensed a family partnership dispute wherein the $3 million damages sought were reduced to less than $25,000. The Firm obtained a $2.1 million jury verdict in a sexual abuse case wherein a male high school student was sexually abused by his female teacher. 

That last case was one not in the firm’s normal practice areas and Kirby was concerned about dealing with a jury trial involving a number of sensitive issues. “We divided the work equally between us and attacked it together. I think that was kind of the first time I felt like I had come into my own as an attorney that could compete at Mike’s level.”

Creating a Legacy Team

Kirby & Kirby runs “lean and mean” and the team is so experienced and loyal that Kirby jokes that his title of Managing Partner is something of a misnomer. “Honestly, my management philosophy is that everybody I work with has been doing this so long and so well that my role has never been to manage them, but just give them the freedom to do what they do so well.” 

Kirby singles out the firm’s paralegals for exceptional praise. “Our paralegals are the key to our success,” says Kirby. Katherine Dillon and Susan O’Keefe Head are highly-experienced, senior paralegals that fully understand and appreciate all aspects of what it takes to achieve success through the litigation process, with substantial trial and arbitration experience. 

“We win as a team. It’s always a team effort. None of our amazing results could have been achieved singularly. Our paralegals are critical to our success because they absorb so many documents and information. They’ve all been through multiple trials with each of us and they fully understand how best to compliment what we do. They’re invaluable. I often say I’d rather have either of them on my team than a seven or eight year lawyer. Working with both of them has always made me a better lawyer,” Kirby says.