Katz Out of Bag

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Though they’d both been lawyers for at least 30 years, Ira B. Katz and Ira N. Katz first met three years ago over lunch – though they didn’t eat together.

Ira B., a 60-year-old business bankruptcy litigator with Gershuni & Katz in Los Angeles, arrived with a friend and fellow attorney for a meal at the South Beverly Grill.

“I told the host that I had a reservation for two people at noon under Ira Katz,” he told the Business Journal. “He responded that someone else named Ira Katz had already been seated under my reservation.”

It turns out Ira N., a solo personal injury attorney in Beverly Hills, had also made a reservation at the exact same time.

“Someone at the restaurant had seen two Ira Katz reservations for noon on that day and canceled one of them,” Ira B. said, noting the two shared a laugh over the mix-up.

That’s not the first time someone had confused the attorneys.

“I once received an invitation to a wonderful-sounding holiday party put on by the personal injury bar,” the bankruptcy lawyer said. “For a second, my wife and I considered going.”

Doubled-Up Day Jobs

Jen Betts has two types of customers – companies and patients.

Betts is president of Pivotal Public Relations near Beverly Hills, and when she isn’t helping her clients get press coverage, she’s working in Covina as a nurse practitioner once a week at Family Practice Medical Services Inc., owned by her father, Dr. Randolph Betts.

Betts, 37, went to college for nursing but always had a desire to work in communications. So, she does both.

“I was always doing part-time nursing or public relations,” she said. “I was working either nursing three days a week and doing public relations two days a week or vice versa.”

Her firm has grown so her nursing schedule has dropped to once a week. But Betts said she still tries to pick up an extra day when she can.

“I love it,” she said. “I don’t think I’m going to ever stop.”

Staff reporters Omar Shamout and Subrina Hudson contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].

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