Open Door Legal Awarded the 2017-2018
Shartsis Friese LLP Public Interest Fellowship

SAN FRANCISCO (September 19, 2017):  Shartsis Friese LLP announced that Open Door Legal in San Francisco was awarded the 2017-2018 Shartsis Friese LLP Public Interest Fellowship.

At Open Door Legal, the Fellow will provide direct legal services to community members in need across a variety of practice areas, including housing, family, employment, immigration, consumer, and tort. Open Door Legal has selected Kimberly Pye to be the Shartsis Friese LLP Public Interest Fellow for the first year of the two-year fellowship term, beginning on October 1, 2017.

“Our Firm is proud to renew its commitment to the Shartsis Friese LLP Public Interest Fellowship and excited to support Open Door Legal’s important work,” said Geoffrey Haynes, Chair of the Firm’s Charitable Contributions Committee.

“As demonstrated by their impressive track record of philanthropy, Shartsis Friese really understands the importance of ensuring everyone has access to the law. We’re thrilled they have chosen to make such a substantial investment in our model,” said Adrian Tirtanadi, Executive Director of Open Door Legal.

Located in San Francisco, Open Door Legal is pioneering universal access to civil representation and working to prove that when everyone has access to the law, poverty can be dramatically reduced. As the Shartsis Friese LLP Public Interest Fellow, Ms. Pye will serve as a strategic litigation fellow and increase litigation capacity across all practice areas.

In 2004, the Firm founded the Shartsis Friese LLP Public Interest Fellowship, which for a two-year period subsidizes a staff attorney position at a selected organization providing legal services to San Francisco Bay Area community members who cannot afford legal services.  In the past, the Fellowship has been awarded to the East Bay Community Law Center, Bay Area Legal Aid, Centro Legal de la Raza, Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center, and the Family Violence Law Center.

Founded in San Francisco in 1975, Shartsis Friese LLP has over 60 lawyers. The Firm has extensive trial and business litigation experience, including securities enforcement defense, and a complex transactional practice focused on investment advisers, hedge funds, mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, securities, family wealth planning, tax, venture capital, intellectual property and real estate. Shartsis Friese lawyers and staff support numerous organizations throughout the Bay Area with their contributions of time and money, and the Firm is proud to have been listed among the Top Corporate Philanthropists in the Greater Bay Area by San Francisco Business Times each year since 2007.