THÉRÈSE C. TUTTLE

Therese Tuttle represents California consumer cooperatives, agricultural cooperatives and worker cooperatives. She also advises clients on business formation and estate planning matters.   

In 2000, she founded Tuttle & Van Knonynenburg, LLP, a firm focused on cooperative and agricultural law, with her law partner Frank Van Konynenburg; in 2001 the firm successfully defended the 400 members of Tri Valley Growers, a processing cooperative, from claims of creditors in the cooperative’s bankruptcy. Prior to founding the firm, she worked for California Farmers Union and served as Director of Cooperative and Economic Development for National Farmer’s Union, managing cooperative project requests from 23 state-based member organizations. In 2013, she drafted amendments to California’s cooperative law that enabled preferred-share financing and capitalization of cooperatives.  She has spoken on this topic at annual meetings of the California Center for Cooperative Development and has been awarded USDA’s “Great Cooperator” Award. She serves on the non-profits committee of the California State Bar Association.

IAIN MACDONALD

Iain Macdonald has practiced bankruptcy law for over 40 years, primarily in the courts of the Northern and Eastern Districts of California. He attended the University of San Francisco School of Law and has taught bankruptcy and commercial law at the Law School since 1984. He practiced with the well-regarded firm of Goldberg Stinnett & Macdonald from 1977 to 1993, when he opened his own office, and then partnered with Reno F.R. Fernandez III to form Macdonald Fernandez LLP.

Mr. Macdonald has contributed extensively of his time in both organizing and participating in CLE (Continuing Legal Education) programs and received an Award of Merit from the Board of Directors of the Bar Association of San Francisco for his work in this area. He organized, with former partner Lawrence Goldberg in 1986, the Bankruptcy Recent Developments Program which has become a mainstay of the Bar Association’s CLE for more than thirty years; he has spoken, alongside judges of the various bankruptcy courts, in programs presented to Bar Association of San Francisco, State Bar of California, National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, California Bankruptcy Forum, and several other such organizations. 

PAOLA EISNER

Paola provides transactional legal services to cooperatives and other mission-aligned businesses. Her practice includes the conversion of traditional business forms to cooperative ownership. Paola offers her services in English and Spanish.

Paola is licensed to practice law in California and graduated from Harvard Law School in 2019. Prior to joining Tuttle Law Group, Paola worked in environmental law and advocacy at local, state, national, and international levels; served as a law clerk at the East Bay Community Law Center’s Community Economic Justice clinic; and volunteered for the Sustainable Economies Law Center. Her practical experience with cooperatives ranges from working as a bike mechanic at Velócity Bicycle Cooperative to assisting in the development of fish farm cooperatives with Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon. She has published an academic paper on reclaiming the commons.