Despite, or perhaps because of, these varied opportunities to live in many diverse and far-flung locations all over the United States and overseas, after graduating magna cum laude from Boston College, Shawn realized that she had left her heart in San Francisco. So, for law school, she returned to the City to attend Hastings College of the Law, where she wrote for the Journal of Communications and Entertainment Law, and somehow managed to avoid ever taking a class on either bankruptcy or receivership law. Ironically, these are the two places in the legal world where she has for over 25 years primarily made her “home.”

Writing in a law journal about legal issues in the entertainment arena was a logical extension of Shawn’s foray as a teenager into that world, where she worked for a number of months acting in a movie that became a major motion picture released for national theater circulation. Now she puts those skills to work in the courtroom, and the boardroom, where she finds the “real world” of client representation, negotiation, and legal strategy formulation every bit as fascinating as the lure of “lights, camera, action!” Representing fiduciaries, such as receivers (both equity and non-equity), trustees, assignees for the benefit of creditors, and referees is especially of interest to Shawn, for she embraces the opportunity to provide guidance about the wide variety of practical problems and often thorny legal situations these fiduciaries encounter in just “doing their jobs.” She has provided this fiduciary representation in state, federal and bankruptcy courts, as well as in related out of court proceedings. Shawn also regularly represents financial institutions and technology companies in litigation and bankruptcy matters.

Shawn is a devotee of that old maxim, “if you want something done, ask a busy person.” She has for many years devoted considerable time and effort to local community and civic matters in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2005, after many years of volunteer and community service, she ran for, and was elected to, the School Board in Hillsborough, California - routinely one of the highest performing public school districts in the State of California. She became president of the Hillsborough School Board in 2009. In 2012, she ran for the Hillsborough City Council, and has been on that City’s Council since December, 2012. She also has served on numerous civic, community and professional boards, including serving on the board of directors of her law firm, Buchalter Nemer, since 2013.

Currently, Shawn is the Managing Shareholder of Buchalter’s San Francisco office, and a Co-Chair of Buchalter’s Insolvency Practice Group. She was elected in 2014 to the International Board of Directors of IWIRC, the International Women’s Insolvency and Restructuring Confederation, as a Director at Large, and chaired the Northern California Chapter of that organization. Shawn has served as an officer and on the executive board of the Bay Area Chapter of the California Receiver’s Forum, the Board of Directors of the Bay Area Bankruptcy Forum (“BABF”), BABF’s Program and Finance committees and the organizing committee of the California Bankruptcy Forum’s Fifth Annual Conference. She was appointed to a three year term as a Lawyer Representative to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference, and served on the Northern District of California’s Local Rules Committee, which addressed both the district and bankruptcy courts’ local rules. She is a trained mediator and has acted as a Resolution Advocate on the Bankruptcy Dispute Resolution Panel in the Northern District of California since that panel’s creation. She served as both Chair and Vice-Chair of the Bar Association of San Francisco’s Commercial Law and Bankruptcy section, and is a frequent lecturer and author, including on receivership topics. She co-wrote the chapter in the CEB (Continuing Education of the Bar) California Business Law Practitioner volume, titled, “An Introduction to California Receivership Law.” She also serves with pride on the UC Berkeley Cal Parents’ Board, and on the Advisory Board of the Bay Area Women and Children’s Center, a resource center serving the needs of no income and low income women, children and families in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood.

Shawn has been selected as one of Northern California’s Super Lawyers every year for the past ten years, is a 2014 San Francisco Top Rated Lawyer, and was placed on Martindale Hubbell’s Bar Register of Preeminent Women Lawyers. She also is proud to have been the city of Hillsborough’s 2010 Citizen of the Year. Shawn and her husband, Philip’s, two sons, now 21 and 24, are Shawn’s greatest sources of pride. Playing tennis, snow skiing, traveling, watching the Cal Men’s Lacrosse team play, hiking in the mountains, stand-up paddle boarding on Lake Tahoe or in Hawaii, and just being with friends and family are Shawn’s favorite ways to spend time beyond the law.

*Robert P. Mosier is a Southern California receiver and trustee and principal of Mosier & Company, Inc., a firm that has specialized in managing and turning around troubled companies for more than 25 years.