Early years abroad helped shape the lawyer he has become today
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Attorney Spotlight
Early years abroad helped shape the lawyer he has become today
By Brian Cox
Sacramento attorney Eric Brenneman received three important pieces of advice when he was starting out as a young lawyer that he has carried with him throughout his legal career.
One was to use your best judgment and trust it. The second was to be yourself – don’t pretend to be a lawyer with a style that is against your nature. And, lastly — the piece of advice that he bears in mind almost daily — advise clients like you’re advising your grandmother.
“I think about that all the time because your grandparents are the people who just love you unconditionally,” says Brenneman. “You never want anything bad to happen to your grandma. I take that view with clients all the time. I’m advising people as if they were the closest people to me because they deserve that level of trust and respect.”
It is an approach to his practice that arises out of Brenneman’s close relationship with his grandparents. His maternal grandmother, Helen, often cared for him when he was growing up in Antioch, Calif. And later, as a young college student at University of California at Davis, he spent summers and long weekends with Grandma Helen and Grandpa Walter because his parents and younger brother had moved to Venezuela for his father’s work as a geologist with the oil and gas company Chevron.
“My grandmother was very proud of me and she would tell me that all the time,” says Brenneman, who was among the first in his mother’s family to attend college. “And I learned lessons in hard work from my grandfather, who worked hard all day, every day.”
His paternal grandmother, Irene, would insist that her college-age grandson visit for dinner at least once a month and so he went to check in and embrace the support she offered. “It was important to make the time to do that and get to know them,” Brenneman says.
Brenneman celebrates his graduation from University of California at Davis with his father, Bob, mother, Loretta, and younger brother, Mark.
If his close relationship with his grandparents informs in part how Brenneman approaches advising clients, his experiences living abroad as a young teenager are the genesis for his ability as a lawyer to adapt quickly to changing circumstances.
When Brenneman was 11, his father received an assignment that took the family to Perth, Western Australia for four years. Brenneman describes Perth as “about as far away from civilization as you can get and still be part of it.”
He attended Scotch College, a 100-year-old all-boys’ school where he learned to play water polo and rugby. He was one of only a few Americans in the school and one of the others was his younger brother. Imbued with history and tradition, the school was divided into “houses” that competed against each other in sports all year long. Brenneman recalls marching to chapel while bagpipes played every Friday.
“I absolutely loved it there and developed some really close friendships,” he says, adding that he learned how to connect with people from diverse backgrounds, a talent that has proved of great value as a lawyer.
“Lawyering is like water polo because above the water, everything seems fine, but below the water you’re kicking like crazy,” he says. “I don’t mind the contact sports and I totally try to bring that into my legal practice. You’ve got to be willing to get into a row with people, get into a little bit of a fight, and not be afraid of a little bit of metaphorical contact.”
Brenneman earned his juris doctorate from the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law. A clerkship at the defense law firm of Matheny Sears Linkert & Jaime set Brenneman on the course of building his practice around insurance coverage and defense.
Brenneman worked under senior partner Doug Sears, who had a “booming trial attorney voice” and set a high standard for how a lawyer should litigate and conduct himself while litigating.
“I’ve been so blessed to have so many people who wanted to mentor me along the way,” says Brenneman. “I understood that if I worked hard and took advantage of opportunities, I could be the lawyer I wanted to be. You get out of it what you put into it.”
After graduating from law school in 2011, he joined the law firm of Farmer Smith & Lane, which specialized in insurance defense and insurance coverage for public entities.
Eric Brenneman’s Grandmother Helen often took care of him when he was growing up and he spent many weekends and summers with her and his Grandfather Walter when he was in law school.
Brenneman and his younger brother Mark were among the few American students at Scotch College, a 100-year-old all-boys’ school in Perth, Australia, where his family lived for four years.
“It was a great setting for me because coming out of law school all I wanted to do was go play lawyer, so to speak,” he says. “I wanted to go to court and being in a small law firm was very conducive to that.
Brenneman believes thoroughness and attention to detail are what separate the best attorneys from the rest and that uniformity and consistency build trust with clients. The best attorneys are the ones who know all the facts of their case and know all the law and what the bounds of the law are, he says.
After six years at the firm, Brenneman felt he was at the point in his career where he was ready for the next step and joined Demler Armstrong & Rowland, LLP.
Demler Armstrong & Rowland was established in 1979 in Long Beach, Calif. For more than 40 years, its primary focus has been the defense of general liability and catastrophic injury lawsuits, construction litigation, insurance coverage disputes, and insurance bad faith claims. It now has 45 attorneys and offices in the San Francisco Bay area. Brenneman and another partner opened one of the firm’s remote offices, which he jokes was referred to in the beginning as the “outpost.” “We’re now the fort,” he says with a smile, “and we’ll keep going until we’re a castle.”
Brenneman’s practice now consists of a wide variety of complex litigation, including insurance and reinsurance coverage, bad faith exposures, catastrophic personal injury, and contract disputes. He also specializes in public entity coverage and his experience spans all related exposures, including dangerous conditions of public property, landslides, pollution, property losses, officer involved shootings, wrongful incarceration, failures of social services, sexual assault and molestation, mass protests, COVID claims, and an array of public officials’ errors and omissions.
He describes the firm as forward-thinking and as a dynamic environment where cooperation and collaboration are encouraged.
“Every attorney in the firm is very capable, and when we all get together on a hard case or problem, I feel that the product that comes out of that process is even stronger,” he says.
Brenneman and his wife Larissa met around the time he was finishing law school. She was earning a doctorate in organizational psychology, which concerns how businesses think, move, and interact. The pair shared a love for Australia, where she has some family. After dating for 10 years while building their careers, they recently celebrated their one-year wedding anniversary.
“When I talk about the business of law, I get executive coaching and training from her all the time,” says Brenneman. “I can’t credit her enough with whatever success I’ve had.”
Increasingly, Brenneman has become interested in questions surrounding the management of people and how to attract and retain talent in order to reduce turn over. He enjoys mentoring younger lawyers and staff and working to build their confidence and ensure their career expectations are being met.
Brenneman lettered in swimming and water polo during high school. He was also an avid rugby player.
Attorney Eric Brenneman and his wife, Larissa, recently celebrated their one-year anniversary.
“One of the most important things I love is being able to talk with people,” he says. “As attorneys, we bill everything in six-minute increments and an hour can all of a sudden seem like the most expensive thing you could give somebody, but it’s actually the cheapest. I’ve learned to sit down and listen. Helping people grow gives me great satisfaction.”
He believes treating people the way you want to be treated and showing more understanding about the sometimes-precarious balance between people’s personal and professional lives serves to build trust and deepen loyalty.
“I think that approach helps you retain talent and ensures that everyone is going to be more productive in the long run,” he says. “My philosophy is I try to empower the people around me to be the best that they can be.”