JEFFREY LEE COSTELL is the Managing Attorney, Chief Executive Officer and founder of the Firm. Prior to the formation of the Firm, Jeff practiced as a business/commercial litigator and bankruptcy lawyer in the Los Angeles office of New York-based Finley, Kumble Wagner, and later in the Los Angeles office of the Chicago-based Keck, Mahin & Cate, both large, national law firms which had offices throughout the United States.
Aside from his law firm experience in private practice, Jeff also has broad practical business experience as in-house counsel in various corporations, having served as Vice-President of the Southern California and the San Diego divisions of the publicly-traded KB Home Corp. and having served as General Counsel and Director of Acquisitions for the Arba Group, a shopping center development company and, later, for GH Palmer Associates, the largest private multi-family developer in Los Angeles County and now a long standing client of the Firm. As general counsel in the business sector, Jeff was responsible for a wide variety of the legal, corporate and operational aspects of the businesses of the companies where he worked, as well as for the oversight of outside attorneys on litigation matters, giving him broad experience in directing, monitoring and providing legal work in an efficient and cost-effective manner.
Jeff graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Syracuse University of New York, in 1976, with Bachelor of Arts degrees in English Language and Literature, Comparative Religion and French Language and Literature. He later obtained his Juris Doctorate degree, cum laude, from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington D.C., in 1980, after serving as an Editor of the prestigious Georgetown Law Journal.
Jeff is a licensed member of the State of California, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles County and San Fernando Valley Bar Associations and is admitted to practice law in all state and federal courts in California, as well as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of the United States. He is also a licensed real estate broker in the State of California.
Jeff’s philanthropic activities center primarily on serving on the board of and providing pro bono legal services to the nonprofit known as The Kevin Cordasco Foundation (Something Yellow) which supports education and medical research regarding childhood cancer and provides medical expense subsidies to children who have been stricken with cancer and their families.
Born and raised in New York, Jeff has lived in the greater Los Angeles area since 1980.