Meet Mark LeHocky, Your New Board Member 2020

Mark LeHocky is a mediator and arbitrator with ADR Services, Inc. and has long ties to Contra Costa County. Mark previously served as general counsel to two public companies and before that, spent twenty years litigating business, intellectual property, employment claims and class actions for clients ranging from individuals and small businesses to large companies.

Mark was born in Western Pennsylvania. A few years later, his family moved to Los Angeles where he would attend UCLA, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in political science. After completing law school at UC Berkeley, Mark joined a small SF firm known for complex litigation, and his wife Joyce Blair – also an attorney –- joined the Contra Costa DA’s office. Mark later created another law firm with friends equally interested in high quality work and work life balance. By then, Mark and Joyce had moved to Orinda to raise their two daughters and have stayed there ever since.

In addition to coaching his daughters’ soccer teams, Mark served as president of the Orinda Youth Association, helping to run their youth sports programs, and more recently coached the Miramonte High School Women’s Varsity Tennis Team.
Roughly 15 years into his litigation practice, Mark was asked by the federal court in San Francisco to serve as an appointed mediator. Combining that work with his private ADR practice, Mark recently celebrated 20 years as a mediator and has repeatedly been voted a Best Lawyer in America for Mediation by Best Lawyers©.

In 2000, Dreyer’s Ice Cream, Inc. hired Mark as their general counsel, where he managed all things legal, including its merger negotiations with Nestlé, S.A. and the successful resolution of the FTC’s antitrust challenge to that merger. Then, as part of Nestlé’s senior legal team, Mark trained Nestlé international lawyers on litigation management and best ADR practices.

In 2007, Mark became general counsel to Ross Stores, Inc., headquartered in Pleasanton, where he again managed all legal matters until retiring in 2012 to focus solely on ADR work and teaching. Since then, he has taught mediation advocacy at UC Davis’ School of Law and today teaches at UC Berkeley’s Haas Graduate School of Business on the intersection of law, risk management and business decision-making.

Having just served as Chair of the CCCBA ADR Section, Mark looks forward to helping the CCCBA expand its outreach. His free time often involves tennis, bike trips (Croatia and Sicily most recently), painting and keeping up with four-legged family members.