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Rosing Pott & Strohbehn LLP

770 1st Avenue, Suite 200

San Diego, CA 92101

619-990-3158

www.rosinglaw.com

Founded on trust, driven by expertise, and built for the modern economy, Rosing Pott & Strohbehn is redefining what a boutique litigation firm can be.

When a company’s future, a professional’s career, or an individual’s freedom rides on a single case, the call goes to the firm with the most experienced lawyers in the room. Increasingly, in San Diego and beyond, that firm is Rosing Pott & Strohbehn.

“Clients call us when the stakes are enormous: high-dollar, high-profile, a company or a career on the line,” says Founding Partner Earll Pott. “We built a litigation boutique with the firepower to meet that moment.”

They built it fast. Formed in December 2024, RPS came out of the gate firing on all cylinders. “We launched with 17 lawyers, a substantial firm to start from scratch, and we’ve already grown to 25,” Pott says. “The work came fast, and the wins came with it. There’s real satisfaction in having built a litigation boutique that comes through when a client’s company or career is on the line.”

The firm’s practice centers on three kinds of clients. The first is professionals and the organizations that serve them: lawyers, accountants, fiduciaries, and other licensed professionals who need defense, or ethics and risk-management advice. The second is businesses, from startups to established companies, that need complex commercial litigation, intellectual property enforcement, data-privacy counsel, or outside general counsel support. And the third is individuals and companies facing high-stakes white-collar, regulatory, or investigative matters.

“The common thread in our client base isn’t industry. It’s stakes and sophistication,” Pott explains. “We made a decision to focus our skillsets on complex and challenging cases.”

A Shared Vision

Founding Partners Heather L. Rosing, Earll Pott, and Samuel B. Strohbehn have practiced together for years and were close friends long before they were business partners. That foundation, and a shared conviction about what a modern litigation boutique could be, drove them to build a firm that reflected their values.

“Understanding what we wanted the firm to be, and the specific direction we wanted to take it, was absolutely essential from the beginning,” Rosing says. “With that guiding vision in place, it was far easier to articulate what set us apart and to recruit lawyers and staff who were excited to build it with us.”

Strohbehn couldn’t agree more. “The bedrock of any new firm is a shared vision among the partners and the trust they place in one another,” he says. “Set a clear vision, partner with people you trust completely, harness your respective strengths, and bet big on yourselves. Success will follow.”

RPS’s 25 attorneys include the three founders, partners, a general counsel, and a deep bench of senior counsel, of counsel, counsel, and associates, supported by an experienced administrative and operations team. A majority of the firm’s attorneys are women, a rare achievement in the profession. Many are recognized by Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers, Martindale-Hubbell, and the Daily Journal; eleven RPS attorneys were named San Diego Super Lawyers in 2026.

Your Favorite Firm’s Favorite Attorneys

Some of the firm’s best clients are other attorneys and law firms. “We’re the firm other lawyers trust with their hardest problems,” Rosing says. “We’re your favorite firm’s favorite attorneys.”

RPS attorneys are premier professional liability, legal ethics, and complex business and intellectual property litigators who regularly represent, and litigate against, AmLaw 100 firms. They’re frequently brought in as co-counsel or local counsel on complex matters, and they’re the go-to resource when a colleague hits a conflict, an ethics question, a malpractice exposure, or a bet-the-company dispute that demands true specialists.

Rosing leads the firm’s Complex Litigation and Professional Liability Department as well as its Discipline Defense, Ethics, and Risk Management Department’, with notable victories in complex, multiparty matters involving fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and professional negligence across state court, federal court, and arbitration. 

Pott focuses on white-collar criminal defense, professional licensing litigation, professional liability defense, and complex civil business litigation in state and federal court. He has more than 50 trials to his credit, including matters involving criminal securities fraud, false claims, and political corruption, and has defended professional licenses before the medical, nursing, and psychology boards. 

Strohbehn leads the firm’s complex business and intellectual property litigation practice, handling disputes over trademarks, trade secrets, technology, data privacy, and cybersecurity in state and federal courts and before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. He has also negotiated hundreds of licenses and agreements with the largest companies in the entertainment and gaming sectors, and oversees and enforces trademark and trade-secret portfolios for dozens of clients.

Those credentials translate into results. The firm has earned significant trial victories and countless favorable confidential resolutions. “Our lawyers routinely take on, and stand beside, the largest firms in the country in complex business and intellectual property disputes,” Strohbehn says. “The common thread in our cases isn’t industry. It’s stakes and complexity, and a boutique built around senior trial lawyers is exactly what that work demands.” 

“We set out to build something deliberately different,” Pott adds. “A boutique committed to a particular kind of high-stakes litigation: focused, nimble, and powerful enough to face any opponent regardless of their resources. Our record shows we’re achieving it.”

How the Firm Runs

All three founders are active in the firm’s day-to-day management and long-term planning, alongside an office administrator who is just as involved in firm decisions. The four meet regularly to share ideas, assign responsibility, and monitor the progress of both individual cases and the firm itself, and the founders hold a “dedicated meeting every month.”

Rosing describes the management style in two words: approachable and flexible. “We’re well-organized without being bureaucratic,” she says. “We have something close to an allergy to hard-and-fast rules and protocols. Decisions get made quickly, everyone is welcome to contribute, and we maintain an open-door policy for every employee.”

That flexibility is also how a boutique competes for talent against firms with deeper pockets. RPS offers a highly attractive “bundle of goods” that brings in top-caliber applicants and creates a genuine culture of respect and excellence. “We pay competitively, and we’re committed to developing talent straight out of law school, with a summer law clerk program and a mentorship and training program for every junior attorney,” Strohbehn says. “And when our people need to work remotely to be with their families, we make that work.”

Doing the Two-Step

One matter captures both how RPS operates and how readily it works alongside other firms. Pott represented a labor union and a former union employee who had been sued civilly for defamation. They prevailed. But the case had a second step: the former employee also faced criminal charges arising from some of the same alleged conduct. A few months after the civil judgment, the employee’s criminal defense attorney suffered a health scare and could no longer continue, and Pott was asked to step in. The case went to trial last December and ended in a hung jury; the district attorney ultimately dismissed it.

Trust, Integrity, Excellence, and Fun

“We’re a boutique earning big wins for big clients, and those wins rest on four strategic ideas: trust, integrity, excellence, and fun,” Strohbehn says.

The firm works hard, and with candor and care, to earn its clients’ trust. Integrity matters doubly for lawyers who advise other attorneys and firms on ethics and professional responsibility, so RPS holds itself to the highest standards. Everyone, from staff to senior partner, is committed to absolute excellence in the practice of law. And then there’s the fourth idea, the one that makes it all work.

“Fun is an essential element of our firm,” Pott says. “We’re dear friends who genuinely enjoy practicing law together, and we built this firm to prove that a serious, high-stakes practice and loving both the work and the people you do it with don’t have to be mutually exclusive.”

Beyond those values, Pott points to five things that set the firm apart.

First is a total commitment to ethics. Rosing served as a longtime chair of the ABA’s Standing Committee on Lawyers’ Professional Liability and as an advisor on California’s wholesale revision of the Rules of Professional Conduct. The team includes six full-time ethicists and several State Bar Certified Specialists in Legal Malpractice Law. “We don’t just litigate professional-responsibility and malpractice issues,” Rosing says. “We help shape the rules.”

Second is its work at the leading edge of how law firms are owned and operated. RPS advises on Arizona’s Alternative Business Structures (ABS) framework, one of the most forward-looking developments in the profession, and an area most firms haven’t touched.

Third is the convergence of business, technology, and law. “We’re built for the modern economy, with depth in intellectual property, data privacy, cybersecurity, and the fast-emerging law around artificial intelligence,” Pott says. He recently published a law-review article on incorporating generative AI into legal practice within the Rules of Professional Conduct, and the firm’s lawyers regularly write, speak at conferences nationwide, and advise and defend other firms on their use of AI.

Fourth is a genuine commitment to the bar and to pro bono service as an integral part of the job. Rosing helped launch the 100,000-member California Lawyers Association, serving as its inaugural president.

Fifth is a rare pairing of diversity and meritocracy. Sixteen of the firm’s 25 attorneys are women. “We’re committed to diversity in hiring, and we feel strongly that women are some of the best litigators and have historically been underrepresented,” Pott says. Partner Sidra Zaheer chairs a DEI Committee that treats inclusion and merit as partners, not tradeoffs.

Banking on CB&T

When the founders left their previous firm to build a business from scratch, one with 17 attorneys out of the gate, no less, they immediately recognized the need for a banking partner that was competent, experienced, and trustworthy. California Bank & Trust fit that need perfectly and became one of the firm’s first business successes.

The partners examined CB&T’s law-firm banking practice and were drawn at once to its integrated, relationship-driven approach, which brings commercial banking, private banking, and wealth management together under one coordinated strategy. “We saw how they partner closely with law firms to deliver customized financial solutions that address firm-level operations and individual partner needs alike, aligning financial planning with business objectives to drive stronger long-term outcomes,” Pott says. “They jumped right in with sound advice and the capital resources we needed.”

Working closely with the new firm, CB&T designed and implemented a comprehensive structure of operating accounts, an IOLTA account, and a tailored line of credit to stabilize and optimize cash flow, giving RPS the liquidity and operational flexibility to scale with confidence. More recently, the firm rolled out a customized 401(k) plan for employees through CB&T’s platform, with the bank taking a forward-looking approach that aligns the firm’s retirement plan and the partners’ individual wealth strategies with its long-term business goals.

Pott credits CB&T’s Gail King and Pej Kalantar, who work hand-in-hand on the RPS account. “Working with Gail and Pej has been a highly collaborative, strategic experience,” he says. “Gail’s deep relationships within the legal community, combined with Pej’s extensive private-banking and wealth-management expertise, created a seamless onboarding process and a holistic financial strategy for the firm.”

The two take a proactive, hands-on approach rooted in partnership, responsiveness, and long-term planning, investing the time to understand the firm’s business model and each partner’s individual goals so they can anticipate needs and deliver tailored solutions. “What sets Gail and Pej apart is their ability to operate as true advisors rather than transactional bankers,” Pott says. “Their collaboration across commercial and private banking lets them spot opportunities and risks that might otherwise go unnoticed. Combined with their industry expertise, responsiveness, and commitment to customized solutions, they deliver a level of insight and service that goes well beyond a traditional banking relationship.”

In the Community

Rosing Pott & Strohbehn is active in the life of the community it serves, and pro bono service is one of the firm’s founding principles. The firm supports the Girl Scouts, including representing the organization in litigation against its longtime cookie baker. It has also contributed to amicus briefs in rule-of-law matters and proudly supported an amici curiae brief cited in Perkins Coie LLP v. U.S. Department of Justice.

The firm is equally invested in shaping the future of the practice, counseling firms large and small on the ethical and regulatory challenges posed by the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence, sharing insights at conferences and in print, and advising on Arizona’s ABS framework.

“Our work demands that we anticipate where the legal industry is heading and help our clients get there first,” Rosing says. “We expect continued strategic growth over the next five years in California and Arizona. We’ll never grow for growth’s sake, but we’re always looking for litigators and ethicists who’ll bring our values to the practice.”