Laurie Shigekuni |

Laurie Shigekuni & Associates

Laurie Shigekuni | Laurie Shigekuni & Associates

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Firm Summary

Laurie Shigekuni graduated from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 1989 and has been an active member of the California Bar since that time. In 1983, she received her undergraduate B.A. degrees from the University of California, Santa Cruz with honors in Sociology, while also majoring in Biology. After spending six years in the area of civil litigation at a legal services organization in Oakland, Ms. Shigekuni started her own practice. She has focused in the area of wills, trusts, estate planning, probate, and trust administration since 1996, serving a diverse clientele in Northern and Southern California.

Ms. Shigekuni has represented individual clients as well as groups of clients in both state and federal courts on a range of civil matters. She has trained law students and other attorneys in matters ranging from housing rights to earthquake recovery, and she has counseled hundreds of people about their legal rights. As a legal services attorney, she created a trilingual clinic that provided legal services in Cantonese, Mandarin, and Vietnamese to the Asian American community of Oakland’s Chinatown area, and she brought a lawsuit that improved the Oakland Housing Authority’s responses to maintenance complaints by primarily African American tenants.

Her concern about access to the justice system for underrepresented people includes an interest in expanding awareness of, and access to, family wealth preservation mechanisms such as trusts, in minority communities where many older residents are homeowners but few receive expert legal or financial advice. She is working on efforts to help low-income homeowners manage interactions among mortgage debt, public benefits, and family gifts or inheritances in ways that preserve the family home for the next generation.

Ms. Shigekuni is a member of California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform and of the Estate Planning Section of the California Lawyers Association. Her Christian convictions about economic justice inform the firm’s approach to serving underrepresented individuals.