Pre-political Life
Riordan, an Irish-American, was born in Flushing, New York and raised in New Rochelle in Westchester County, New York. He attended Princeton University, earning a degree in philosophy. He played on the rugby team while attending college. He then served in the Korean War, and earned his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 1956. Shortly thereafter he received an inheritance from his father. He invested the money in four firms — Control Data Corporation, Litton Industries, Haloid (predecessor of Xerox), and Syntex — and within a few years had profited from his investment of $80,000 (the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $612,000 in 2010 dollars).
He moved to Los Angeles to begin work as an attorney for the downtown law firm of O’Melveny & Myers in 1956, leaving in 1959 to become a partner of Nossaman LLP. Among his successes were the first company to produce low-cost cassette tapes.
In 1975, he and Carl McKinzie co-founded Riordan & McKinzie, a small law firm in Los Angeles. The firm later merged with Bingham McCutchen in July 2003.
Read more about this topic: Richard Riordan
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