Rooker Rawlins : Attorneys at Law : C. Keith Rooker

Keith graduated from Brigham Young University in 1958 with high honors. In 1961, Keith received his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School, where he graduated with honors, was elected Order of the Coif, and was a member of the Board of Managing Editors and Major Articles Editor of the University of Chicago Law Review. He served as law clerk to Justice Roger J. Traynor of the Supreme Court of the State of California in 1961-62, preceded by an interim period associated with Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro (now Pillsbury Winthrop LLP) in San Francisco, California.

In 1962, after his judicial clerkship, Keith joined Van Cott, Bagley, Cornwall & McCarthy in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was admitted to partnership in 1966. While at the Van Cott firm, Keith represented a wide range of clients with interests in mining and natural resources activities, including oil and gas, as well as manufacturing and distribution. Initially focused primarily on the transactional interests of those clients, with associated mergers and acquisitions, public lands, mineral leasing, and exploitation activities, Keith's practice gradually evolved to include substantial litigation work, primarily in federal courts.

In 1973, Keith accepted a position as a member of the founding faculty at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University, where he served until 1981. Keith's primary teaching interests were civil procedure, constitutional law, conflicts of law, and trial practice. He was also instrumental in the organization in 1980 of the first Inn of the American Inns of Court associated with the BYU Law School.

In 1975, Keith and three other lawyers formed a new law firm in Salt Lake City called Rooker, Larsen, Kimball & Parr (now Parr Waddoups Brown Gee & Loveless). While practicing as the senior member of that firm from 1975 to 1985, he transitioned from his academic work back to the full-time practice of law, and then continued a wide range of practice, including securities, financings, mergers and acquisitions, and similar transactional work. His practice also included substantial complex commercial litigation.

In 1985, Keith moved from Salt Lake City to Southern Nevada and joined the management of one of his corporate clients, which, with its predecessors, he had represented since 1969. His initial management responsibilities focused on the planning, financing, and development of a 700-acre mixed use development in Henderson, Nevada, undertaken by a subsidiary of which he was President and CEO. At the same time, he was Executive Vice President and General Counsel, and a Director, of the parent company. As the business and management needs of the parent company evolved, he became more heavily involved in its management, ultimately becoming responsible for substantially all of the legal, financial, administrative, and business development activities of the company.

In 1997, Keith left his management position (he continues to serve as a Director of the company) to found the Firm.

Keith's litigation experience has ranged across a wide spectrum of civil disputes, including:
Trial of multiple lawsuits in the natural resources and oil and gas industries in the period from 1962 to 1985, including numerous appeals;
Trial of an antitrust lawsuit in a manufacturing industry in 1973-1975, including an appeal and ultimately a petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court;
Litigation of multiple trademark and copyright infringement disputes in the food distribution, consumer product, and hotel-casino resort industries in the 1983-2004 period;
Management to settlement of substantial breach of contract disputes in various industries during the period 1968-2004, including most recently in the hotel-casino resort industry;
Trial of multiple federal securities fraud cases, both jury and bench, including a six-month jury trial;
Management of the successful defense of a class action securities fraud case tried to a jury in 1995; and

Trial of a substantial claim by a real estate developer against a "hard money" lender in 2003
His transactional and business experience, both in the practice of law and in management, has included work in the natural resources, oil and gas, and manufacturing industries, negotiation and documentation of substantial acquisitions and divestitures, management of significant financings, and the negotiation and documentation of complex and specialized transactions. Among these transactions are:

Acquisitions and divestitures in the natural resources industries;
Counseling of a start-up oil and gas company from inception to sale;
Conception, planning, financing, development, and sale of a major mixed use real estate development including residential, commercial, and light industrial uses; and
Management of a series of public and private financings for a single firm totaling in excess of $250 million, and related transactions.

In addition to his ongoing litigation practice, Keith currently provides general transactional, corporate, and business counseling services to a number of small to medium-sized business organizations involved in such industries as real estate development, construction, manufacturing, food services, and investment activities. Keith is an active member of both the Utah and the Nevada bars and maintains his membership (inactive) in the California bar. Keith is admitted to practice before all state and federal courts in Utah and Nevada, the Ninth and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeals, and the Supreme Court of the United States.