Austin’s practice focuses primarily on estate planning, wealth transfer planning, estate and gift tax planning, trust administration, and probate. He also has extensive experience in the formation, operation, and transfer of interests in corporations, partnerships, and limited liability companies.

Austin and his wife, Stephanie, reside in Santa Clara.

Education:

• Georgetown University Law Center, LL.M. in Taxation, with distinction, 2007
• University of California, Davis School of Law, J.D., 2006
• Order of the Barristers
• State Moot Court Competition Team
• University of California, Santa Barbara, B.A., with high honors, 2002

Lisa joined the Firm in 1994 and became a partner in 1999. She received her B.S.C. and J.D. degrees from Santa Clara University and served as an Associate Editor for the Santa Clara University Law Review. She received her Master of Laws in Taxation (LL.M.) from Golden Gate University in 1993.

Lisa specializes in wealth transfer planning, family business succession planning, closely held business planning, tax planning, tax litigation, charitable planning, estate and gift tax controversies, trust administration and probate. She has extensive experience in structuring wills, revocable living trusts, life insurance trusts, children’s and grandchildren’s trusts, defective grantor trusts, generation-skipping trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts, charitable trusts, private foundations, qualified personal residence trusts, and family limited partnerships.

Lisa has represented several taxpayers with respect to income, estate and gift tax audits as well as controversies before the U.S. Tax Court in both federal and State tax matters.

Lisa has published various legal treatises and has presented one of her papers before the United States Senate Finance Committee and Treasury Department in Washington D.C. regarding the proposed Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax Regulations. Lisa is a frequent speaker in her community as well as the legal community on various estate and tax planning matters.

Lisa is a member of the California State Bar Association, Santa Clara County Bar Association, American Bar Association and the Santa Clara Estate Planning Council. She has served on the Santa Clara County Bar Association’s Section on Taxation, Estate Planning and Young Tax Lawyers. She is a life member of the Kingston’s National Registry of Who’s Who published in the 2002 Edition. She consistantly ranks as a Northern California’s Super Lawyer in her field.

Lisa lives in Almaden with her husband, Paul, son Joey, and daughter Nicole.

Jason has been involved with businesses and technology companies for nearly 20 years. Prior to practicing law, he managed purchasing and accounting departments and designed software database applications for the manufacturing flow of an RF/microwave electronics company located in the Silicon Valley.

Since graduating from law school in 1998, Jason has represented hundreds of business clients in a variety of areas, from technology transactions to employment matters. He has handled dozens of venture capital financings and has been involved in over 100 mergers, acquisitions and shareholder buyouts. Jason is also experienced in counseling public companies on SEC, stock exchange and Sarbanes Oxley compliance matters. He has advised businesses in the software, RF/microwave, ecommerce, alternative and renewable energy, semiconductor and a variety of other manufacturing and service industries. His practice focuses on the following areas:

• Business Formations and Corporate Counseling
  Jason represents startup companies, LLCs and partnerships, and advises businesses in a variety of general corporate matters, including the structuring of new entities, board and shareholder meetings, founders agreements, buy-sell agreements, tax matters, commercial transactions, and partnership agreements. He also advises nonprofit organizations in formation and general business matters.
• Mergers, Acquisitions and Shareholder Buyouts
  A key part of his practice is counseling buyers and sellers in mergers, acquisitions and shareholder buyout transactions. Representation includes all aspects of an M&A transaction; including overall structuring of transactions; negotiation and drafting of NDAs, term sheets and definitive agreements; analysis of antitrust issues; and handling of all due diligence matters.
• Technology Transactions
  Jason represents businesses in a variety of technology matters. He advises on the protection of intellectual property including trademarks, trade secrets and copyrights, and he negotiates and prepares agreements for the licensing and development of software, semiconductor, RF/microwave electronics and other technologies. He files and prosecutes federal trademark applications on behalf of clients. He has also counseled companies on Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) and government contracts, as well as export control matters including the application of Export Administration Regulations (EAR) and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).
• Financing and Venture Capital Transactions
  Jason represents businesses and investors in financing and venture capital transactions, including offerings of common stock, preferred stock and convertible debt. His experience includes Regulation D, Regulation S and blue sky offerings, as well as California fairness hearings.
• Employment Matters and Equity Plans
  He counsels companies and employees in general employment law matters, including employment, independent contractor and proprietary information agreements, and the structuring of equity compensation and stock option plans.

Prior Legal Experience

Jason received his early legal training practicing corporate and securities law in the Palo Alto office of Pillsbury Winthrop, LLP, an international law firm. His prior experience also includes working in-house at PeopleSoft, Inc. advising on corporate and securities matters and on the unsolicited tender offer by Oracle Corporation. While in law school, he interned at the Securities and Exchange Commission in San Francisco.

Education and Professional Memberships

Jason received his law degree, With Distinction, from University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law, and a B.S. degree in Business Administration and Corporate Finance from California State University, Sacramento. He was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1998 and is a member of the Bar’s Business, Employment, and Intellectual Property Law Sections. He is also a member of The Federalist Society (and a member of its Corporate Practice Group and its Federalism and Separation of Powers Practice Group), the American Bar Association (and a member of its Business Law Section), and the American Finance Association.

Clarence (“Bud”) J. Ferrari, Jr., a founding partner of Ferrari Ottoboni Caputo & Wunderling LLP, specializes in business and tax planning with an emphasis on wealth transfer and business planning for individuals, families, and closely-held companies. He has extensive experience in a wide range of business transactions and structuring sophisticated estate plans including generation-skipping transfers, grantor retained annuity trusts, charitable trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, life insurance trusts, and family limited partnerships.

Bud also represents taxpayers with respect to income, estate, and gift tax controversies in both federal and state tax matters. A few of the landmark tax cases in which he successfully represented the taxpayer include:

• Morris, et al v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 70 TC 959 (1978) (valuation of stock pursuant to a qualified stock option plan);
• Estate of Evelyn Landsdale Wildman, Deceased v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 58 T.C.M. (CCH) 1006 (1989) (estate tax valuation of undivided interests in row crop ranch land);
• Ridgemark Corporation v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, United States Tax Court, Docket No. 6106-93; T.C.M. 1996-419 (1996) (non-recognition treatment on sale of undeveloped land)

Bud received his LL.B. and J.D. from Stanford University. He is a Certified Specialist in Taxation, a Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel and a member of the American Bar Association Sections of Taxation & Real Property, Probate and Trust.

Bud has served as a member of the Board of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and was a founder and Chairman of the Board of the Silicon Valley Bank. He previously served from 1963 to 1975 on the faculty at Santa Clara University School of Law as an adjunct professor of Taxation.

With twenty-five years in private practice, Daniel S. Gonzales is a skilled and effective counselor and advocate.  For the past fifteen years, Mr. Gonzales’s focus has been on real estate and business law on behalf of public agencies, private institutions, and commercial enterprises in their transactional matters.

Mr. Gonzales represents developers, landowners and investors in the development and commercial use of real property.  He has extensive experience in negotiating and writing long-term ground leases, commercial, retail, industrial, office, and shopping center leases, and secured financing agreements for commercial, industrial, and multi-family residential real estate, shopping centers and office buildings, as well as representing both buyers and sellers of such holdings in the negotiation, documentation, due diligence and closing of their purchase, sale and exchange transactions.  His expertise also includes planning and structuring corporations, general and limited partnerships, and limited liability companies for use in real estate projects, disposition and development agreements, co-ownership arrangements, escrow and title matters, boundary disputes, financing workouts, brokerage issues, construction and architectural contracts, mechanic’s liens, landlord/tenant issues, zoning, entitlement and subdivision matters, land use and environmental issues (including, inter alia, CEQA and CERCLA), water law, easements and real property tax assessment appeals.  A substantial amount of Mr. Gonzales’s practice has included representation of California community college districts in the commercial development of their surplus lands, including analysis of the financial and legal implications of such projects, together with advice and counsel on related public agency law matters (including Brown Act issues, conflict of interest issues, Civic Center Act issues, Public Records Act issues, public financing issues, and public contracting issues).

A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Stanford Law School, Mr. Gonzales is a Notre Dame Scholar, a National Merit Scholar, and a National Hispanic Scholar, and was Managing Editor of the Stanford Journal of International Law and President of the Stanford International Law Society.  Mr. Gonzales is admitted to practice before all of the courts of the State of California, the U.S. District Courts for the Northern and Eastern Districts of California, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and the U.S. Tax Court.  Mr. Gonzales has also been selected for inclusion in Who’s Who in American Law and Who’s Who in America, and holds a Martindale-Hubbell rating.

In the community, Mr. Gonzales has served for many years on the corporate boards of YMCA of Silicon Valley and Senior Housing Solutions, Inc., an elder housing nonprofit, where he was elected to several terms as board president.  He also served as a volunteer mediator as a member of the City of Menlo Park Community Mediation Service for nearly ten years, and chaired that agency for several years as well.

Mr. Gonzales is a longtime member of the Santa Clara County Bar Association, and has served in a number of leadership roles, including chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the Minority Access (now Diversity) Committee and member of the Long Range Planning Committee and Quality of Life Task Force.  He is currently a member of its Fair Election Practices Commission, which is charged with resolving judicial election campaign complaints.

For relaxation, Mr. Gonzales is an avid amateur musician, playing rock, blues and jazz guitar and keyboards; at the 35^th Anniversary of the Summer of Love concert held at Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco, California, he performed onstage with the ‘60s hit musical group the Beau Brummels.

Ryan W. Lockhart joined the Firm’s Tax, Trust and Estate Group in January 2011. Ryan focuses his practice in estate planning, wealth transfer planning, estate and gift tax planning, tax controversy, trust administration and probate. He is also gaining experience in corporate transactional work including the formation, operation and transfer of interests in closely held corporations, partnerships and limited liability companies.

Ryan is currently enrolled in the LL.M in Taxation program at Golden Gate University School of Law in San Francisco. He is a member of the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Young Tax Lawyers of the California State Bar Taxation Section. Ryan is also a member of the Silicon Valley Bar Association, the Contra Costa County Bar Association and the American Bar Association.

Ryan currently resides with his wife and son in Danville.

Curriculum Vita

Education

• Graduate of Golden Gate University School of Law, with Honors, May 2010.
  • Member of Jesse Carter Society for Academic Excellence.
  • Dean’s List: Spring 2007 through Spring 2010.
  • Graduate of University of Phoenix, Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice Administration, with Honors, June 2007.

R. Donald McNeil, through his corporation, is of counsel to the firm. Don’s practice emphasizes Estate Planning as well as Trust and Estate Administration, and he has extensive experience advising business clients and establishing, modifying, and dissolving business entities.

Don is a certified specialist in Estate, Trust and Probate law. He is a former lecturer at law at Santa Clara University and Lincoln Law Schools. He is a speaker at continuing education courses and is a past president of the Santa Clara County Estate Planning Council. He is a past president of the Santa Clara University Alumni Association.

Don has served as general counsel for a number of non-profit corporations, including Bellarmine College Preparatory, and is a former president and is a long time director of Eastfield Ming Quong, a family and child services non-profit corporation with offices in a number of California counties. Eastfield Ming Quong is the largest mental health provider of its kind in Northern California and has expanded into Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties in Southern California.

Don is a graduate of Santa Clara University where he won that University’s Nobili award. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and a member of the California State Bar.

Don and his wife Therese live in Monte Sereno, California. They have four adult sons.

A partner in the Firm’s Trust & Estate Group, Joseph W. Mell, Jr. joined the firm in 1981 after practicing law for twenty-three (23) years in Redwood City. Joe has extensive experience in the areas of estate planning, wealth transfer, probate and trust administration.

Joe received his undergraduate (AB 1954) and law degree (LL.B 1957) from Stanford University.  He is a member of the California Bar Association and the Santa Clara Bar Association.

Joe lives with his wife, Jeanette in Palo Alto.

John M. Ottoboni, a former partner and one of the founders of the firm, became Of Counsel to the firm on January 1, 2007. At that time, John became General Counsel of Santa Clara University. John is admitted to practice in all courts of California as well as certain federal district courts located in the State of California, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal (Ninth Circuit), U.S. Court of Claims, and the U.S. Supreme Court.  John is a member of the American College of Trial Lawyers.

John received his undergraduate degree in 1969 from Santa Clara University (magna cum laude).  He received his law degree in 1972 from Boalt Hall School of Law (University of California at Berkeley).

John and his wife, Nancy, the parents of five children and grandparents of seven grandchildren, live in Monte Sereno.