Laura’s practice is focused on assisting business clients with a wide range of legal needs, from addressing formation issues in the start-up phase through developing and implementing an exit strategy. Her expertise includes general corporate counseling, mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance and ownership transition. She is results oriented in her approach to solving legal problems and enjoys finding creative, practical solutions to client needs. Laura is the firm’s delegate to Mackrell International (www.mackrell.net), a global network of law firms (see MBV Resource Center for more information).
Several of Laura’s clients are architects and engineers, with whom she works closely to identify, assess and resolve legal issues, including employment, contract and ownership transition issues. Laura and her partner, Bill Mandel, have over 40 years of combined experience working with A/E clients. The duo has handled transactions ranging in size from $1 million to $250 million in enterprise value. Bill and Laura are the authors of ‘Merger, Merger Everywhere‘, the feature article in the Winter/Spring 2012 issue of the ACEC CA trade magazine, Engineering and Surveying Business Review.
She is a graduate of Emory University (B.A., Russian Studies, Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude) and the University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall) School of Law (J.D. 1987), where she was a member of the California Law Review. She served on the Board of Directors for the Architectural Foundation of San Francisco and was a contributor to “Architect’s Essentials of Ownership Transition”. Prior to joining MBV Law LLP, Laura was a corporate associate with Brobeck, Phleger, & Harrison in San Francisco and was founder of Howard & Howard, a firm that specialized in business counseling and employment law. She enjoys singing in a community choir, genealogy research and spending time with her husband, Keith and daughters, Katie and Beth.
