Downtown StandoutBy Anne Ramzy
For Bay Area lawyer Drexel Bradshaw tough cases and extreme adventure sports are sometimes all in a days work. This past May Bradshaw sailed his 36 foot Catalina sailboat solo from SF to Honolulu, Hawaii in just over 13 days. Enduring strong winds that pushed his boat to nearly 12 knots, and waves that constantly kept the boat in a fishtailing motion, Bradshaw racks up the adventure as "probably one of the greatest experiences of my life." All the while Bradshaw was handling a case- by satellite phone. "We had a class action pending," explains Bradshaw. "We're representing a thousand people... but we won the motion, so that was a good thing." For Bradshaw, volunteerism is just as important, if not more, than his adventure pursuits. "We've been very fortunate in this business and so we try to give back to the community in that way, " says Bradshaw. An estimated 10% of his caseload is pro bono work, most of which comes through the volunteer legal services program with the Bar Association of San Francisco and also through the AIDS Legal Referral Panel. Much of this work centers on wrongful eviction cases. "We've kind of worked out a system that I call the Bradshaw One-Two Punch," explains Bradshaw. "You file the eviction, but we're going to defend it, just like it's the biggest court case in all the land, and we're going to simultaneously sue you for wrongful eviction... We certainly represent landlords, but we try to kind of stick with the ideals and goals of the way the people of SF typically feel. It's not all greed motivated." |
