Lawrence S. Siracusa
Larry Siracusa is a founding partner of Witherspoon & Siracusa, LLP. Mr. Siracusa has been practicing law since 1987. He gained his initial legal experience as an associate at the New York City law firm Chadbourne & Parke, where he practiced until 1993. After leaving Chadbourne, he began work with the well-known professor and probate lawyer, Gerald S Witherspoon in San Francisco. Shortly thereafter Mr. Siracusa and Mr. Witherspoon co-founded Witherspoon & Siracusa, LLP.
Mr. Siracusa has extensive experience handling complex and contested trust administrations, conservatorships and probate estates. As the attorney representing conservators, he is often on the front line in protecting the elderly and disabled in the context of both financial and physical abuse cases. He frequently represents clients who have been appointed as the neutral stakeholder of probate estates or trusts pending resolution of will or trust contests. He is also an experienced estate planning lawyer. He is often appointed by the San Francisco Superior Court to represent minors in guardianship proceedings and elders and incapacitated adults in connection with conservatorship proceedings. Mr. Siracusa is on the San Francisco Probate Court’s pro bono conservatorship/guardianship mediation panel and also serves as mediator in private matters.
Mr. Siracusa is a graduate of Fordham University School of Law Class of 1986. He graduated with honors from the University of Florida in 1982 with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. He is admitted to practice law in California and New York. He is conversational in Italian.
lsiracusa@witsir.com
Andrew K. Schultz
Andrew K. Schultz is a partner with Witherspoon & Siracusa, LLP. He first joined the firm as a paralegal and discovered his interest in elder law. He left to attend law school, but continued to clerk for the firm in the summer, and then returned to the firm as an attorney after completing law school in 2001.
Mr. Schultz’s practice includes all aspects of conservatorship matters, including civil recovery in cases of elder financial abuse and elder abuse restraining orders, and he is a member of the San Francisco Probate Court’s panel of attorneys appointed by the Court to represent conservatees and proposed conservatees. His practice also includes both court-supervised and private trust administration, estate administration and estate planning. He represents a number of Bay Area professional fiduciaries.
Mr. Schultz graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from Brown University. He attended the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where he was the research assistant for Dean Edward C. Halbach, Jr., serving as the reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement Third of the Law of Trusts project, and where he was awarded the American Jurisprudence Award for Alternative Dispute Resolution: Process and Policy.
aschultz@witsir.com
Avid Alavi
Avid Eli Alavi is a partner with Witherspoon & Siracusa, LLP. She has been with Witherspoon & Siracusa, LLP since June 2007. As is the case with all the attorneys at the firm, her areas of concentration include conservatorships, trust and probate administration and estate planning. Ms. Alavi graduated with honors from the University of California at Davis in 1997 with Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Rhetoric and Communication. She received her Juris Doctor with honors in 2001 from Golden Gate University with a specialization certificate in Intellectual property and International Law.
Prior to joining Witherspoon & Siracusa, LLP, Ms. Alavi was an associate with firms handling litigation matters including landlord tenant matters, commercial and estate litigation and toxic tort litigation. She also handled transactional matters including real estate, estate planning, probate and trust administration, elder law, business formation and contracts.
Ms. Alavi has been admitted to practice in the State of California since December of 2001. She is fluent in Farsi.
aalavi@witsir.com
Gerald S. Witherspoon
Retired founding partner
Gerald S. Witherspoon was awarded his B.A. summa cum laude from Haverford College. Following graduate studies at Princeton and the Sorbonne, he received his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School. After serving as a Law Clerk in the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York City, Mr. Witherspoon began his legal career with the firm now known as Jones Day.
Taking a ten-year hiatus from the practice of law, he served as Commissioner of Taxes for the State of Vermont, and President of Goddard College in Vermont. In 1975 he returned to the law, joining the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (formerly known as Boalt Hall). Mr. Witherspoon taught full-time for ten years and part-time for another twenty, teaching mostly the popular but demanding course “Estates and Trusts.”
During that same period Mr. Witherspoon started his own law firm, laying the groundwork for the firm which was to become Witherspoon & Siracusa, LLP. Mr. Witherspoon’s dream was to establish a firm to provide legal services in the area of probate to people of all income levels and ages. Although now retired, Mr. Witherspoon regards the ongoing firm of Witherspoon & Siracusa LLP as the embodiment of that dream.