About

Grant Riley is a sophisticated, proactive, and aggressive attorney with 35 years of in-depth experience litigating complex real estate, banking, entertainment, partnership and personal injury disputes. Grant has been rated AV Preeminent® by Martindale-Hubbell (its highest rating) for 15 years straight and is a graduate of the University of California at Davis (B.A. 1979) and Southwestern University (J.D. 1984) where he graduated cum laude and was a staff editor of the Southwestern Law Review. Grant has been voted a “Super Lawyer” 10 years running by the Los Angeles legal community as published in Los Angeles Magazine.

Prior to forming Riley Law Group PC, Grant was a partner at Christensen White Miller Fink & Jacobs, a name partner of Weinhart & Riley, a name partner of Liner Yankelevitz Sunshine Weinhart Riley & Regenstreif and the managing partner of Frandzel Robins Bloom & Csato.

Philip Shakhnis is a thoughtful, meticulous and assertive attorney with over 20 years of experience representing tenants. Philip has represented hundreds of tenants forced to live in slum conditions. Philip has also helped tenants poisoned by carbon monoxide leaks, exposed to mold and whose children have been lead poisoned. Philip is at the forefront of representing tenants wrongfully evicted from properties protected by local rent control ordinances.

More recently, Philip spent five years in a general plaintiff’s civil litigation firm handling a wide variety of cases involving lead poisoning, defective products, auto accidents, aviation accidents, employment cases involving discrimination and retaliation and class actions. Philip’s work resulted in a $10,000,000 settlement on behalf of a child poisoned by lead-based paint in his home which is one of the largest child lead poisoning settlements in the country.

Prior to law school, Philip worked as an environmental consultant and also spent a year in Israel on a fellowship, where he worked at the Israel Union for Environmental Defense. While in Israel, Mr. Shakhnis also assisted in the formation of EcoPeace (now Friends of the Earth Middle East), a consortium of environmental groups from Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.

Philip is admitted to practice before the California State Courts, as well as the United States District Court Central District of California.

In his off time, Philip enjoys the beach, hiking and reading a good novel.

Tara Mitcheltree is an attorney with 15 years of experience. She is an alum of Brooklyn Law School in Brooklyn, NY. She has practiced in New York and Los Angeles in a variety of practice areas, including business litigation, insurance, and reinsurance and employment. She clerked for the late Hon. Arthur Alarcon on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals between 2008 and 2012, where she reviewed appeals of cases in a wide variety of subject matters in circuit courts across the country.

Tara loves her work at Riley Law Group representing tenants and helping them to obtain and keep safe and healthy housing. She represents families whose children are made sick by the conditions in their homes or poisoned by the lead-based paint in their homes. She handles cases in a variety of practice areas for the firm, protecting tenants from landlords who refuse to repair and maintain their rental properties, harass their tenants and retaliate against tenants who stand up for their rights.

Prior to law school, Tara worked as a paralegal in trademark litigation firms in New York City. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a BA in languages and literature. She speaks Spanish and French and is conversant Italian.

Tara is admitted to practice in the state courts in California and New York as well as in the federal courts in the Central District of California and the United States Court of Appeals for 4th, 6th, 9th, 10th, and 11th Circuits.