Shartsis Friese LLP

Shartsis Friese LLP is one of San Francisco’s leading law firms. Shartsis Friese is known for its trial and litigation capabilities and is regularly called upon to handle some of the most exciting cases in state and federal court in California. The firm also serves as outside general counsel to some of the region’s leading mid-cap companies, while maintaining premier practices in areas such as hedge funds and investment advisors, securities enforcement defense, real estate, intellectual property, family wealth planning, venture capital and trusts & estates litigation.

Small Firm Service/Entrepreneurial Approach
Shartsis Friese was founded in San Francisco in 1975. The firm’s practice model, which is based on a partner/non-partner attorney ratio of 1:1, emphasizes close client contact and efficient case management. Many Shartsis Friese lawyers are regarded as leaders in their areas of expertise, and choose to practice at the firm because of the challenging, but collegial small firm environment and the emphasis placed on transparency in both management and compensation issues. The firm rewards hard work, but also encourages entrepreneurship and creativity at every level of practice.

Trial Lawyers and Litigation Strategists
Our experienced trial lawyers bring a history of success, cost-effective case management and business-oriented problem solving through litigation and strategic commercial counseling. We litigate virtually all aspects of business disputes, having represented both privately and publicly owned American and foreign businesses in litigation in cases involving local, national and international disputes. We have litigated disputes involving amounts in excess of a billion dollars and tried cases involving amounts in excess of $100 million. Regardless of the size of the dispute, we bring the same result-oriented commitment to all of our clients.

Business and Legal Advisors
The firm’s niche serving mid-sized public and private companies is based on deep experience counseling corporate executives on their most important legal and business matters. Shartsis Friese partners have been key business advisors to leading San Francisco Bay Area executives for almost 40 years. Based on our lawyers’ expertise in areas such as corporate law, mergers and acquisitions, tax and intellectual property, the firm is able to provide strong and strategic legal support to our clients, helping them to grow and prosper. Shartsis Friese offers an attractive alternative to the megafirm approach to corporate law - our clients are served by a small team of partners and associates who know their business and are dedicated to helping them achieve their business goals. And when a dispute arises, our litigation lawyers are there to step in to defend our clients’ interests and work smartly and aggressively towards a positive outcome.

Practice Leaders
In addition to its core business and litigation law capabilities, Shartsis Friese is home to several practice areas that are widely viewed as national leaders. The firm’s hedge fund and investment advisor practice is the largest practice of its kind on the West Coast and was recently ranked as one of the top two hedge fund practices in the country by a comprehensive survey of hedge fund managers. The family wealth planning group represents a wide range of U.S. and international individuals and families with varying life situations and life-stage needs and provides sophisticated planning to not only reduce the tax burden but also to address specialized concerns.  The firm’s trusts & estates litigation team handles some of the biggest and most important trust cases in the U.S., often with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake. Our real estate group represents some of the region’s most dynamic companies in the acquisition and development of major facilities. The firm’s securities enforcement defense group, which includes two former Securities & Exchange Commission lawyers, has been actively involved in the defense of some of the highest profile civil and criminal corporate investigations on the West Coast.

Our firm has an “AV” (top) rating from the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory and the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers.