Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stephen Neal (lawyer)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. Lots of comments and some useful research but nobody taking any hard positions in the past six days suggests that we're not on the road to consensus.  A  Train talk 07:54, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Stephen Neal (lawyer)

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insufficient sources for notability.the various "superlawyer" awards are basically trivial.  DGG ( talk ) 09:06, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete does not meet notability requirements for lawyers.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:20, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 01:27, 2 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment He's certainly not notable based on his career as a lawyer. I don't know what the guidelines are for notability of members of boards of directors;  and  suggest he might be notable. power~enwiki ( π,  ν ) 20:19, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep. I'll try to dig up some sources to better justify this, but Neal is an extremely high-profile attorney, as CEO of Cooley and as a prominent and successful white-collar crime litigator. He first came to my attention probably some twenty years ago in coverage of his successful appellate work for Charles Keating Jr.. Again, I'll update this later with some sources if I can find them, but I wanted to put a heads-up in here now.
 * I definitely agree with the nom on one point, though: those "superlawyers" mentions are always bullshit. The NLJ "top 100," though, is probably significant. TJRC (talk) 00:23, 5 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Tentative keep a CEO of a law firm with nearly $1bln in revenues; I hope the improvements promised above do come through. There's some coverage of Neal in Backfire: Carly Fiorina's High-Stakes Battle for the Soul of Hewlett-Packard. K.e.coffman (talk) 01:22, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment - Per the firm’s website, he isn’t even the CEO, not since 2008 at least. Shelbystripes (talk) 15:15, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 12:52, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Tentative delete - Being the lead attorney on a couple of possibly notable cases doesn’t make you notable. Being included in these top X lists also doesn’t make you notable (especially Super Lawyers where the criteria is “top 5 percent” statewide). I don’t think being on the board of a couple companies makes you notable either, large companies have large boards with an array of competent but not always notable (in the WP sense) people, and being a single member of a board doesn’t mean you did anything notable on it. He’s not CEO of Cooley (see above). However, others here have claimed there’s more sources that would establish his notability otherwise, and if those are produced, I would change my vote to keep. Shelbystripes (talk) 15:22, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. --Animalparty! (talk) 03:06, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. --Animalparty! (talk) 03:06, 9 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment (I've already !voted, above). Lexis-Nexis has a substantial story on him at . On the "CEO" claim; that should be corrected in the article, and I'll do that (I've not previously edited it). He's Chairman, not CEO, per the Cooley site, but Chairman is at least as prominent a position as CEO. TJRC (talk) 22:28, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * update: It appears he was CEO at the time that text was added. He became CEO in 2001 (and chairman at the same time? unclear) but stepped down from CEO position while remaining chairman, a position he still holds, in 2008. I've updated it accordingly, with references.
 * If the article is retained, it needs a bit of cleanup. I'm not sure I want to put that work into it if it's on the way to deletion, though. I may make additional edits relating to notability and accuracy, but no real clean-up for now. TJRC (talk) 23:27, 9 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Another comment. Apologies if I'm talking too much here. Trying to nail down Neal's starting time as Cooley chairman, I was surprised to find that he's not merely a board member at Levi Strauss as the article had said; he's actually chairman of the board. I'm not always convinced that mere board membership conveys notability, but I think chairman of the board of a prominent company like Levi Strauss a pretty big deal (although, devil's advocate, Levi Strauss is a non-public company). In addition, he's chairman of the board of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and chairman of the board of trustees for the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I'd only heard of him as an attorney, so these were aspects I had been unaware of. I've updated the article with this. I think these points make him pretty clearly notable. TJRC (talk) 00:32, 10 October 2017 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.