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Adam J. Bass is an American business executive. He serves as President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Operating Officer of Buchalter Law. He was named one of the "Top 500 Most Influential People in L.A." by the L.A. Business Journal in 2021. [1] [2]
He assisted his firm in opening an office, "The Silicon Slopes," in the Salt Lake City area. In November, Buchalter established the Kaufman Appellate Fellowship Program. [3] This program provides recent law school graduates interested in judicial clerkships or the appellate field with appellate advocacy experience at an early stage in their work lives.
Bass earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees at USD. [4] He graduated from University of San Diego School of Law.
He worked in the office of the Vice Chairman of ACC Capital Holdings, of which Ameriquest was a subsidiary. During an investigation into Ameriquest's mortgage activities, Georgia Senator Vincent Ford accused Bass and Ameriquest of "victimizing poor minorities". [5] Bass defended the firm during the ensuing shut-down negotiations. [6]
Bass joined Buchalter Law in 1993 and led the company beginning in 2013. [7]
He chairs Buchalter's family office and wealth management practice group and co-chairs its social media influencers industry group. His practice includes representation of companies of all sizes and financial institutions in transactional and litigation matters. Bass handles general business matters, including corporate, loan workouts, creditors’ rights, real property, labor relations, public contracting and regulatory compliance.
He is an arbitrator for the Los Angeles Superior Court, the L. A. County Bar Association’s Provisional Remedies Section, and works in the Dispute Resolution Section of the Bar Association. Bass serves on the boards of the California Chamber of Commerce and the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice. He is a member of the USD School of Law Board of Visitors and the board of trustees of the Buckley School. Bass is active in the California Bar’s Real Property Law Section and the California Receivers Forum.
Bass admitted to using Rick Singer to assist his daughter in the college admissions process. Bass's admission came in response to questions from Buckley School about why admissions officers at Tulane University believed his white, non-tennis-playing daughter to be a Black tennis star. While the revelation indirectly led to federal charges that made up the Varsity Blues scandal, Bass was not charged by prosecutors. [8]
Admission to the bar in the United States is the granting of permission by a particular court system to a lawyer to practice law in the jurisdiction. Each U.S. state and jurisdiction has its own court system and sets its own rules and standards for bar admission. In most cases, a person is admitted or called to the bar of the highest court in the jurisdiction and is thereby authorized to practice law in the jurisdiction. Federal courts, although often overlapping in admission standards with states, set their own requirements.
The Buckley School is a college preparatory day school for students in grades kindergarten through 12. Founded in 1933 by Isabelle Buckley, the school is located in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley portion of Los Angeles, California, in the United States. Buckley is one of the oldest co-educational day schools in the Los Angeles area.
The University of San Diego School of Law is the law school of the University of San Diego, a private Roman Catholic research university in San Diego, California. Founded in 1954, the law school has held ABA approval since 1961. It joined the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) in 1966.
The State Bar of California is an administrative division of the Supreme Court of California which licenses attorneys and regulates the practice of law in California. It is responsible for managing the admission of lawyers to the practice of law, investigating complaints of professional misconduct, prescribing appropriate discipline, accepting attorney-member fees, and financially distributing sums paid through attorney trust accounts to fund nonprofit legal entities. It is directly responsible to the Supreme Court of California; however, its trustees are now appointed by the Supreme Court, the California Legislature, and Governor of California. All attorney admissions are issued as recommendations of the State Bar, which are then routinely ratified by the Supreme Court. Attorney discipline is handled by the State Bar Office of Chief Trial Counsel, which acts as prosecutor before the State Bar Court of California. The State Bar has been cited for its corrupt practices during the 21st century, and is subject to reforms issued by its governing body, the California Supreme Court.
ACC Capital Holdings (ACCCH) was a national mortgage lender based in Orange, California. The company is the largest privately held retail mortgage lender in the United States and the largest subprime lender by volume. ACCCH was founded by Roland Arnall.
Ameriquest was one of the largest United States sub-prime mortgage lenders until its dissolution in September 2007. Among the first mortgage companies employing computers to solicit prospective borrowers and hasten the loan application process, Ameriquest was accused of predatory lending practices by United States banking regulators. The company was notable for its promotion of the stated income loan, whereby potential borrowers were allowed to claim income without verification of employment. The proliferation of lending to customers with marginal creditworthiness proved to be not only a key factor leading to the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis, but also a catalyst to Ameriquest's own demise.
Roland E. Arnall was an American businessman and diplomat. As the owner of ACC Capital Holdings, he became a billionaire with Ameriquest Mortgage. Additionally he funded, financed and was the visionary and co-founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and from 2006 until shortly before his death he was the United States Ambassador to the Netherlands.
Sidley Austin LLP is an American multinational law firm with approximately 2,300 lawyers in 21 offices worldwide. It was established in 1866 and its headquarters is at One South Dearborn in Chicago's Loop. Among its alumni are former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama.
The Trevor Law Group was a three-member Beverly Hills law firm notable in California and nationally for their heavy-handed tort law abuse. In 2002, it was alleged that they engaged in a form of extortion by threatening to sue thousands of businesses for violating a now defunct provision of the Business & Professions Code, then offering to "settle" for a few thousand dollars apiece. The investigation was the largest in the history of the State Bar of California, and three principals of the firm were recommended for disbarment. They eventually gave up being lawyers.
The University of La Verne College of Law is the law school of the University of La Verne, a private university in Ontario, California. It was founded in 1970 and is approved by the State Bar of California.

California Southern Law School (CSLS) was a private part-time evening law school in Riverside, California. It admitted its last entering class in Fall 2016 and closed after the Spring 2020 semester. It is registered with the California State Bar Committee of Bar Examiners (CBE), but is not accredited by the CBE or approved by the American Bar Association. As a registered law school, CSLS graduates may take the California Bar Examination and upon passing the Bar, they are authorized to practice law in California.
Stephen Gerard Larson is a former United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California and a partner in the Los Angeles law firm of Larson LLP, which he co-founded in 2016 as Larson O'Brien LLP. He consistently ranks among the top litigators in the U.S., having been recognized by The Best Lawyers in America© for his work in Commercial Litigation and Criminal Defense: White-Collar since 2015.
Michael Hudson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American investigative journalist. He is currently head of investigations at the Guardian US.

Jerome Nemer was an American athlete and attorney. He played college basketball at the University of Southern California (USC) where he became the first Jew to captain a major athletic team at that school. After basketball, Nemer practiced law in the Los Angeles area and was a partner in the firm Buchalter, Nemer, Fields and Younger.

Paul Jeffrey Watford is an American lawyer who served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 2012 to 2023. In 2016, The New York Times identified Watford as a potential Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia. Watford resigned his judgeship in 2023 and became a partner at the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.
Thomas Francis Zuber is an American attorney, entrepreneur, and inventor. He is the creator and CEO of LawLoop.com, a cloud computing portal for lawyers, and a Co-Founder and Partner of Zuber Lawler & Del Duca, a bi-coastal law firm headquartered in Los Angeles, California, with additional offices in Chicago, Illinois, New York, New York, Phoenix, Arizona and Silicon Valley, California. He is also known for directing, co-writing, and producing the independent motion picture Little Athens, which was an Official Selection of the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival.
The Judiciary of California or the Judicial Branch of California is defined under the California Constitution as holding the judicial power of the state of California which is vested in the Supreme Court, the Courts of Appeal and the Superior Courts. The judiciary has a hierarchical structure with the California Supreme Court at the top, California Courts of Appeal as the primary appellate courts, and the California Superior Courts as the primary trial courts.
Louis Harry Burke was an American lawyer who served as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California from November 20, 1964, to November 30, 1974.

Jeffrey Isaac Ehrlich is an American lawyer and author, known for handling landmark appeals in the United States Supreme Court and the California Supreme Court. He is co-author of the influential Thomson Reuters treatise on insurance litigation, and editor-in-chief of Advocate, the most widely circulated trial-bar magazine in the United States. He and his son, Clinton Ehrlich, are also known for exonerating Sgt. Raymond Lee Jennings, an Iraq War veteran who served 11 years of a life sentence for murdering teenager Michelle O'Keefe.
In 2019, a scandal arose over a criminal conspiracy to influence undergraduate admissions decisions at several top American universities. The investigation into the conspiracy was code named Operation Varsity Blues. The investigation and related charges were made public on March 12, 2019, by United States federal prosecutors. At least 53 people have been charged as part of the conspiracy, a number of whom pleaded guilty or agreed to plead guilty. Thirty-three parents of college applicants were accused of paying more than $25 million between 2011 and 2018 to William Rick Singer, organizer of the scheme, who used part of the money to fraudulently inflate entrance exam test scores and bribe college officials. Of the 32 parents named in a Federal Bureau of Investigation affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Boston, more than half had apparently paid bribes to have their children enrolled at the University of Southern California (USC).