CORPORATE PRACTICE

In business matters, local businesses as well as foreign enterprises regularly turn to Teraoka & Partners LLP for counsel and representation. The firm provides advice with respect to virtually all aspects of the operation of a business enterprise, including incorporations, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, limited liability companies, employment matters, distributorship agreements, sales representation agreements, product endorsement agreements, high tech representation, collections, product licensing agreements, product liability evaluation, U.C.C. and warranty provisions and claims, confidentiality agreements, equipment leasing and project financing, general securities compliance, intellectual property protection, investment advisers and broker-dealers, debt restructuring, public utilities regulation and private lending. The firm’s services range from acting as corporate counsel for a corporate client on all business matters such as preparing form distributorship agreements or negotiating its leases, to advising a client as to specific matters, such as updating its employment policy manual or obtaining its specific operating licenses with various state and federal regulatory agencies.

Mr. Teraoka’s interest in business started over 30 years ago in undergraduate studies in economics at University of California at Berkeley and UCLA While in law school, he interned with a prestigious Beverly Hills entertainment law firm where he worked on matters for motion picture celebrities and primarily worked in the corporate and corporate securities departments of the law firm. He interned with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Western Regional Headquarters in Los Angeles, where his practice concentrated on real estate syndication regulation. His career in San Francisco started in 1974 with a corporate law firm doing general corporate and state and federal securities work, registration for real estate investment trusts and Form 8-K and Form 10-K reporting. During the economic recession in the mid-70s, Mr. Teraoka obtained his experience in business litigation matters as well as in some real estate matters.

Mr. Teraoka serves primarily as a corporate and business advisor, and he also brings an added perspective from his significant amount of business litigation experience gained over the years including both court and jury trial experience. He has recently acted as lead trial counsel in both plaintiff and defense cases.

He has taken those early years of experience and combined them with his interest in international business transactions, particularly between Japan and California, and now provides high-level corporate and business counseling to private and publicly held businesses, both domestic as well as multi-national enterprises.

In 1995, Mr. Teraoka was appointed by California Senator Hilda L. Solis as part of an 11 person state-wide business advisory committee to the California Senate Sub-Committee on Asia Trade and Commerce. Mr. Teraoka has since served the Committee and has testified before the Sub-Committee on California-Japan business matters.

Ms. Catherine Gormley provides corporate, business and labor counseling. She was associated for seven years with the San Francisco law firm of McCutchen, Doyle, Brown and Enerson’s corporate group where she underwent rigorous training and gained valuable high quality experience that has provided a solid foundation for the advice she provides to ongoing business clients of the firm. Now in her sixteenth year of practice, Ms. Gormley has expanded her experience and expertise to business employment / labor matters advising on the latest developments in labor law issues and internal company compliance matters.

Various members of the firm are in regular contact with overseas clientele, particularly in Japan, and have developed relations with various foreign attorneys to seek advice or for use in referral matters.