BERLINER - Key Persons
As a member of Berliner Cohen's Tax Group, Mr. Valenti counsels individuals, corporations, partnerships, and limited liability companies in a variety of matters, ranging from qualified small business stock to mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Valenti has a particular expertise in providing federal and state income, property and documentary transfer tax advice in connection with real property transactions. Those transactions include purchase and sale transactions, IRC Section 1031 exchanges, and partnership and limited liability company formations, dissolutions, and restructurings.
Mr. Valenti also has significant experience in representing individuals and businesses before the Internal Revenue Service, Franchise Tax Board, State Board of Equalization and Employment Development Department on a wide range of tax matters. He frequently represents clients with foreign reporting issues, including assisting them with entering into and opting out of the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program, entering into the Streamlined Filing Compliance Program, and resolving issues related to late-filed foreign informational forms, including FinCEN Form 114 (FBAR), Form 8938, Form 5471, Form 8865, and Form 926.
Mr. Valenti was selected as a Northern California Super Lawyers "Rising Star" in Tax from 2009-2015.
Personal
Born in Dallas, Texas
Married with two children
Interests include mountain biking, hiking and snowboarding
Mr. Law is a trial attorney specializing in complex civil litigation. His prior practice includes class actions, complex personal injury, real estate litigation, property damage, and other commercial and general liability matters. Representing businesses and individuals, his experience includes multidistrict litigation in federal courts as well as coordinated and consolidated litigation in state courts.
A Bay Area native, he is a member of the California Minority Counsel Program, the Asian American Bar Association, the Bar Association of San Francisco, and the Association of Defense Counsel of Northern California, among others. Mr. Law has been recognized by Super Lawyers as a Northern California Rising Star.
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In his personal time, Mr. Law is a volunteer youth basketball coach and law student mentor.
Aleshia White is a senior attorney who defends clients in all aspects of labor and employment law and litigation. Her diverse practice includes litigating cases involving employment discrimination, harassment, and retaliation, wage-and-hour claims, unfair business practices, whistleblower claims, and wrongful discharge. She also handles executive compensation disputes and agreements. She represents employers in both state and federal court as well as before state and federal agencies.
Ms. White assists employers in identifying and avoiding employment-related problems before they occur and advises clients regarding preventative employment law practices, including drafting employment policies, reviewing and drafting employee handbooks, drafting onboarding and severance agreements and assisting in investigations of workplace conduct.
Ms. White also trains companies in the areas of sexual harassment prevention and diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in the workplace. She received a certificate in diversity, equity and inclusion in the workforce from Cornell University.
Mr. Faber has over forty years of experience in representing private and public clients in a wide range of land use, environmental, and public law matters, and in real estate, environmental, and eminent domain litigation. From 2005 through 2016, Mr. Faber was recognized as a Northern California Super Lawyer in Land Use/Zoning, State, Local and Municipal, and Real Estate.
Mr. Wohlford's legal practice is centered around facilitating complex transactions and providing pragmatic tax planning advice.
Blaine Cox was born and raised in Modesto and has deep ties to the agricultural community. His practice focuses on all aspects of business and real estate litigation, as well as probate and trust litigation. He also represents corporations and businesses as general counsel, including corporate compliance, property transactions, and commercial transactions.
Mr. Cox received his B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Nebraska, and his J.D. from Santa Clara University, where he received the B.T. Collins Scholarship for leadership and public service.
Between college and law school Mr. Cox was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Infantry Branch of the California Army National Guard. After graduating from law school he served as an Infantry Rifle Company Commander and as a forward deployed Operations Officer in support of Operation Inherent Resolve in the Middle East. He also served as a liaison at the United States Embassy in Amman, Jordan.
Personal
Enjoys the outdoors, and particularly enjoys spending time at Lake Tahoe with his family
Mr. Hebert has over 20 years of experience as a Real Estate Attorney in the San Francisco Bay Area.
His practice areas include:
Real estate transactions, including acquisitions and dispositions, leasing, subleasing, financing, property management, landlord-tenant issues, title review, and insurance matters
Real estate loans and business financing
Entity formation and governance
Business transactions, contracts, and construction documents
Trust administration, probate, and accountings
Gifting and property tax reassessment exclusion planning
Mr. Hebert has successfully handled a wide range of real estate transactions, including purchases and sales, title matters, leasing, subleasing, property management, construction contracts, financing, workouts, family gifting, and other real estate related transactions.
His practice focuses on all aspects of entity formation, dissolution, governance, compliance, contracts, asset sales, conversions, mergers, acquisitions, relocations, and other business matters. He also handles trust administration and probate needs, including preparing trust accountings and real property management.
In his years of experience, Mr. Hebert has represented a variety of real estate clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies, real estate portfolio holding companies, large private real estate businesses, retailers and high-tech companies engaged in national leasing programs, developers, builders, and contractors, to small investors, business owners, family operations, trustees and other fiduciaries, and other real property owners.
Responsiveness to clients is important to Mr. Shetler. He takes his clients' calls directly and strives to respond quickly. Mr. Shetler's trust and estate practice is focused on tax and estate administration issues. He works with corporate fiduciaries as well as families and individuals in establishing and carrying out plans to preserve and build legacies for generations.
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Married with two children
Interests include golf, tennis, snow sports, and ocean sports
For over 30 years, Mr. Spence has provided his clients with innovative planning strategies for protecting and optimizing family wealth, through tax, estate, trust, business and philanthropic planning. He brings this extensive experience to bear not only in traditional estate planning contexts, but also in the context of tax and wealth planning in advance of major liquidity and business funding events and in preparation for immigration or emigration.
Mr. Spence's clients are domestic and international individuals, families, businesses, charitable organizations and corporate fiduciaries. In his long career, he has advised some of the largest, and most complex estates in the world. They engage him for his innovative, outside-the-box thinking, but he is just as comfortable advising Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and helping family businesses become multi-generational.
Mr. Wick's practice includes litigating and resolving matters in construction, business, and real estate litigation. As a litigation attorney, Mr. Wick has represented clients regarding construction defects, nonpayment on public and private works projects, breaches of commercial leases, and internal business disputes. Prior to his time with as an attorney with Berliner Cohen, LLP, Mr. Wick interned for Legal Services for Seniors of Monterey County where he assisted low-income senior citizens on various matters. During law school, Mr. Wick was a law clerk for Berliner Cohen, LLP's litigation department.
Mr. Picone is a seasoned trial attorney. He represents individuals and businesses in civil and criminal litigation at the state and federal levels, with a focus on white-collar criminal defense, financial fraud, healthcare fraud, complex commercial, and tax litigation, regulatory investigations, and environmental crimes. Mr. Picone has conducted forty-seven jury trials to verdict.
Prior to joining Berliner Cohen, Mr. Picone worked as a lead felony prosecutor.
Ms. Long maintains a diverse litigation practice in employment, hospitality, business litigation and real estate. Ms. Long is the Chair of the Employment Law Practice Group and Hospitality Practice Group.
Ms. Long's employment and hospitality litigation practice includes handling wage and hour claims, claims of employment discrimination, wrongful termination, and breach of employment contract cases. She has experience with class action litigation, and FLSA and EEOC investigations. In addition to her litigation practice, Ms. Long counsels clients on all aspects of employment, including complaints made to and investigations initiated by the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, Labor Commissioner, and the EEOC on matters relating to employment including compensation issues, mandatory leaves of absence, reasonable accommodations, and reductions-in-force for individuals, companies and local government. Ms. Long regularly speaks on employment and hospitality issues of interest.
In the real estate and business litigation areas, Ms. Long has represented parties in a variety of matters, including commercial and residential sales disputes, partnership disagreements and dissolutions, partition actions, commercial landlord/tenant suits, easement and boundary claims, and CC&R.
Ms. Sweatt is in the business litigation group at Berliner Cohen. As a litigation attorney, she has had several jury and bench trial successes involving complex business transactions, trade secrets, real estate, and related matters. Prior to joining Berliner Cohen, she worked as a litigation associate for law firms in the Silicon Valley and Sacramento. During law school Ms. Sweatt was a law clerk in the Sacramento and Placer Counties District Attorney's Offices, the California Attorney General's Office and a legal intern in the California Governor's Office of Legal Affairs.
Outside the legal arena, Ms. Sweatt was a software and management consultant for Entergi and business development manager for Regus in Sacramento, California, and a software consultant for Bi-Tech Software, Inc. in Chico, California.
From 2011 through 2015, Ms. Sweatt was recognized as a Northern California Super Lawyers "Rising Star" in Business Litigation. She was spotlighted by Super Lawyers in their "Top Women Attorneys in Northern California" in the December 2014 issue of San Francisco magazine. As well, Ms. Sweatt was listed in Silicon Valley Business Journal's 100 Women of Influence in 2015.
Eric Capron joined Berliner Cohen LLP in August 2021. His practice focuses on estate planning, business succession, real property matters, business transactional work and agricultural law tailored to business owners and family farmers. Eric values long term client relationships and strives to understand his clients' businesses in order to better serve them.
He believes that cooperation with a client's tax, financial and insurance advisors is important when implementing long term planning for family wealth and the future of the family business.
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Eric's service and volunteer projects include Modesto Chamber of Commerce - Leadership Modesto, Central Valley Professional Exchange and Del Rio Property Owners Association Board.
Mr. Lopez is a partner in the firm's real estate group. He maintains a purely transactional real estate practice serving a wide range of clients, with an emphasis on commercial leasing and acquisitions and dispositions.
Mr. Lopez has extensive experience representing institutional landlords and publicly-traded tenants in the preparation, review and negotiation of commercial leases, subleases, license agreements and related documentation. He also represents property owners in connection with the structuring, negotiation and documentation of the acquisition, disposition and development of commercial real property.
Ingrid S. Buenrostro joined Berliner Cohen in 2019. Ms. Buenrostro currently supports the Business Litigation Department Attorneys and the Estate Practice Attorneys in the Merced Office. Ms. Buenrostro worked as an interpreter at the Merced County Superior Court before obtaining her A.A. Degree in Paralegal Studies from Merced College. Ms. Buenrostro graduated in 1999 from Merced College.
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Ms. Buenrostro has been living in the Central Valley for over 40 years
Ms. Buenrostro is married and has two children
Interests include traveling and spending time at the beach
Job Titles:
- Managing Partner
- Management
Mr. Cashman represents a wide variety of families and individuals in estate planning matters, including wills, living trusts, insurance trusts, complex trusts, educational trusts, charitable trusts, family partnerships, foundations and probate and estate administration matters. From 2008 through 2016, Mr. Cashman was recognized as a Northern California Super Lawyer in Estate Planning and Probate.
Personal
Born in Elmhurst, Illinois
Married with two children
Interests include swimming, cycling, triathlon, cooking, architecture, gardening and singing
Job Titles:
- Director of Operations and Human Resources
Job Titles:
- CCLS, Paralegal / Legal Assistant
Job Titles:
- Partner
- Operations Partner & Firm Counsel
Job Titles:
- Controller
- Administration Staff
Job Titles:
- Authority Reach Youth Scholarship, Chair of Selection Committee
Job Titles:
- Law Review Vol. 60 Editor