Asim Bhansali
abhansali@kblfirm.com
Asim Bhansali has spent over 25 years as a courtroom trial lawyer handling the disputes that matter most to his clients, including Fortune 100 companies, small and medium-sized public and private companies, and individuals. Asim’s experience includes patent, antitrust, trade-secret, class-action, and commercial-dispute cases.
Since co-founding KBL in 2018, Asim has led teams that have won arbitration awards and jury verdicts in high-stakes cases. In a week-long theft of trade secret and breach of contract arbitration, KBL won across the board for its client, including a willful infringement finding. In a recent jury trial in state court, KBL won a verdict for its client in a several weeks-long professional negligence case against an accounting firm. Most recently, Asim was trial counsel on a multi-firm team defending a major technology company in a multi-week patent trial, which was resolved prior to verdict.
Prior to KBL, Asim tried patent, trade-secret, antitrust, and civil rights cases and also obtained significant pre-and post-trial wins for clients. He was retained to help a major internet content delivery company navigate proceedings on remand after appeal where it was facing $100 million of damages; his strategic advocacy allowed the company to avoid tens of millions of dollars in exposure and continue operating. He has obtained dismissals and summary judgments for clients in numerous patent cases, including a case asserting Bell Labs patents that is one of the leading decisions on the exhaustion doctrine under US patent law.
Beyond his zeal for courtroom advocacy, Asim litigates and tries matters because he relishes the detailed knowledge that comes with developing a case strategy, whether it’s about how machine learning or GPS works, what actually happens when you swipe your credit card, why a doctor might prescribe a particular medication, or how to make information travel faster over the Internet. In each instance, he strives to use the knowledge he has gained about his clients and their business to provide more effective representation in the case at hand and in future cases. While Asim’s practice has focused principally on commercial matters, he has brought this same philosophy to pro bono work, where his work has included civil rights, reproductive rights, and asylum cases.
Asim’s formative legal experience was serving as a law clerk to the Hon. Ferdinand Fernandez of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit right after graduating cum laude from the University of Texas School of Law, where he was an executive editor for the Texas Law Review. Courtroom advocacy is his passion, and he first became a partner at a full-service, commercial trial and litigation firm when he was 27 years old. Asim’s interest in litigation practice has led him to serve in various bar leadership roles: these include terms as president of the Northern District of California chapter of the Federal Bar Association, as a lawyer representative of the Northern District of California, as a member of the Ninth Circuit’s Trial Improvement Committee, and ongoing service as a board member and chief financial officer of the Northern District of California Practice Program.
Outside the legal profession, Asim has served in leadership roles on the Boards of the French American International School of San Francisco and the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Center. In his leisure time, Asim tries to make his accent more understandable in several languages: in addition to being bilingual in English and Gujarati since speaking his first words, Asim speaks fluent German and proficient French and Spanish.
Education, Clerkships, Honors:
J.D. with honors, Order of the Coif, Chancellors, University of Texas School of Law
B.B.A., Accounting, with high honors, University of Texas at Austin
Law Clerk to the Hon. Ferdinand Fernandez, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit
Daily Journal Top 40 under 40 (2009)
Best Lawyers in America: Intellectual Property and Patent (2010 - present) and Lawyer of the Year-Patent Litigation in San Francisco (2021)