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William P. Keane, Partner
William P. Keane is a litigation partner with Farella Braun + Martel LLP with extensive jury-trial experience obtained in over twenty-three years of civil and criminal practice. He is the chair of the firm's White Collar Crime and Internal Corporate Investigations Group. Mr. Keane practices complex civil and criminal litigation with an emphasis in white collar criminal defense, intellectual property, and commercial litigation. Mr. Keane has recently defended federal criminal and enforcement actions involving allegations of accounting and insider-trading fraud, trade-secret theft, and antitrust violations and, on the civil side, has recently litigated patent-royalty and software-licensing disputes, among other intellectual property and business litigation matters.
Mr. Keane's most recent trial defense was in the federal criminal prosecution of world-class track coach Trevor Graham for three false-statement charges arising out of the BALCO performance-enhancing drug investigation. USA v. Graham, U.S.D.C., N.D. of Cal., No. CR 06-0725 SI. Mr. Keane successfully obtained a hung jury on two of the three charges, including the primary count arising out of the government's unproven allegations that Mr. Graham directed several of his athletes to obtain performance-enhancing drugs. Mr. Graham was convicted on a third count, but Mr. Keane successfully argued for probation and home detention rather than the imprisonment urged by the government.
Prior to joining the firm in 1997, Mr. Keane was an Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Silicon Valley Office in San Jose for over six years, where he specialized in white collar criminal prosecutions. In his criminal defense practice, Mr. Keane has represented clients facing a broad range of criminal and civil-enforcement investigations and cases. Mr. Keane has extensive experience in defending clients in securities-fraud matters being investigated and charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Attorney's Office. Mr. Keane has also represented clients in criminal cases involving antitrust and environmental-law violations, mail, wire and computer fraud, false claims, and export and money laundering violations. Mr. Keane has also led a number of corporate internal investigations, including on accounting, fraud and pharmaceutical-industry matters.
Mr. Keane's civil practice involves representation of clients in a variety of complex business and commercial litigation matters, including false claims and complex contract disputes, and intellectual property matters involving patent royalties, trade-secret misappropriation, software licensing, and trademark and copyright. Mr. Keane has clients in the software, biotech, Internet and information-technology industries.
Mr. Keane is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. Law & Politics has also recognized him for a number of years running as one of the San Francisco Bay Area's top litigators on the Northern California Super lawyers list. Mr. Keane is frequently quoted as an expert by numerous news outlets, including the N.Y. Times, the Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, USA Today, Bloomberg News, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, and the legal dailies The Recorder and The Daily Journal. Mr. Keane has taught Federal Criminal Law and Legal Writing as an adjunct professor at U.C. Hastings and is a frequent lecturer on white collar defense and commercial litigation strategies and legal-ethics issues. Mr. Keane also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Tony Patiño Fellowship, a non-profit corporation that awards law-school scholarships at U.C. Hastings, the University of Chicago, and Columbia University. He currently serves as a court-appointed Lawyer Representative to the Northern District of California Judicial Conference and also has been appointed by the same court to three terms as Criminal Justice Act counsel for indigent defendants. Mr. Keane also served as the technical legal and courtroom advisor to the director and writer of the independent movie "The Skeptic," released in 2009.