Bruce Cornelius was introduced to receiverships early in his nearly 40 years of practice. His legal mentor, attorney Jay Graves, had decades of experience in acting as a receiver for commercial buildings and businesses when Bruce joined the firm of Graves & Allen in February 1976. Jay had just taken on the receivership of a failed loan fund, and after 10 years of administration of the fund, virtually all investors’ original investments were returned. Nearly every possible aspect of business receivership issues arose in this case, and Bruce had first-hand experience in the practical and legal solutions available to a receiver. Much of his practice has since focused on the use of receiverships as a remedy available to commercial lenders. His experience has ranged from family law to decedent's estates to complex business liquidations, illustrating the flexibility of this remedy and its value in a variety of contexts.

Born in Los Angeles in 1949, Bruce grew up in La Crescenta, California. His father worked for a small, privately held printing firm, and his mother as a bank teller. The first person in his immediate family to attend college, Bruce left southern California in the fall of 1967 for what was then a widely touted educational experiment - the new UC campus at Santa Cruz. Although he quickly discovered that the small, perpetually wet, and somewhat isolated, campus did not suit him, he credits his two quarters there with opening his mind to ideas and to people far different than those he had encountered in the largely homogeneous community of his childhood.

After two quarters at UC Santa Cruz, Bruce returned to southern California to attend UCLA, where he majored in Political Science and earned his BA in 1971. Bruce supported himself with a series of jobs in college, most notably as an assistant manager of the UA Westwood movie theater. Knowing from the age of about 8 that he wanted to be a lawyer, Bruce spent nine months after college managing the UA theater in Yuba City while waiting to enter law school. In August1972, he moved to San Francisco to attend Hastings College of the Law and to start what he believed would be a temporary residence in northern California.

As they say, "stuff happens"; however, in this case, the “stuff” was a relationship with an entrenched resident of northern California, his classmate and future wife, Janet. Bruce and Janet now reside in Clayton, California, just east of Walnut Creek. However, Bruce has never relinquished his close ties to southern California, where his extended family and many close friends reside. Advised early on that they held dual citizenship in both the north and south of the state, Bruce and Janet's two children now reside in southern California. The children of two lawyers, each child decided early on that the law was not for them but are, and always will be, the children of lawyers, quite capable of aggressively advocating a position when the need arises.

Joining Graves & Allen was another fateful turn. It was there that Bruce not only began to work with receiverships, but also with all aspects of real estate law and practice, ultimately opening his own office in Lafayette in 1996. Bruce's present practice is one of business litigation, with an emphasis on the representation of commercial lenders and private investment funds. He believes that his clients appreciate the combination of Bruce's technical knowledge coupled with his appreciation of the practical business considerations they are dealing with, and at times, the emotional context in which each of the parties is operating. Bruce has just completed his term as President of the California Receiver's Forum and remains actively involved in the operations of the Bay Area Chapter of the Receiver's Forum as a past president of that organization. He is currently enjoying his role as mentor to associate Mike Mandell, passing to this fine attorney his experience and, he hopes judgment, learned from 40 years at this job. More golf, coupled with less stress, will be his goal as he eyes the future practice of law.

Most of us have parallel lives and careers we can imagine. His family and friends know one of Bruce's other selves is surely a sportscaster, and there is no one who is better company while watching baseball, or football, or basketball, or, or, or. Still, baseball is Bruce's first love, and he scored every Dodgers radio broadcast as a boy after his father printed a ream of score cards for him. Does the announcer have a comment about a play, a strategy, or a manager's decision? Yes, we know, because Bruce just said that. Even the uninitiated can enjoy a more sophisticated appreciation of the game if they just hang around with Bruce.

An avid (if unaccomplished) golfer, Bruce is a member of the Contra Costa Golf Club, and is enjoying the club's newly revamped course designed by Robert Trent Jones, II, just re-opening after 10 months of patient anticipation. This interest also goes back to childhood, as both his father and several of his uncles caddied to earn much needed cash, learning the game in the process. Other interests range from meteorology to politics to movies. As many lawyers have discovered, having broad interests outside the law is an asset in practice. It helps the lawyer remember that the law is not a thing unto itself, but instead exists in the context of the broader world, representing a human effort to regulate, order and balance our complex human society.