Counselor on Major Transactions Advises Clients and New Attorneys on Surviving the Tough Real Estate Market
Greenberg Glusker today announced that real estate Partner Ryan M.T. Iwasaka will receive the 2010 Outstanding Young Lawyer Award from the Los Angeles County Bar Association, Real Property Section. Iwasaka, 38, counsels developers, publicly traded companies, family corporations, and individuals in major real estate transactions across California and the western United States. His clients include Costco Wholesale Corporation and the owners of the Oakland Athletics baseball team.
“Ryan continues to strengthen his presence in the real estate community as a professional to respect and watch. His adaptability and agility in today’s real estate market and his leadership through its challenges are creating new opportunities for our clients,” said Greenberg Glusker’s Managing Partner Norman H. Levine. ”We congratulate Ryan on this recognition.”
Iwasaka is among five local attorneys who will receive the Outstanding Young Lawyer accolade at LACBA’s 12th annual Real Property Installation and Awards Dinner on June 9, 2010 at the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades.
A member of the Firm’s Real Estate Group, Iwasaka steers major transactions across all categories of real property assets, including industrial facilities, golf courses, restaurants and hotels, office buildings, regional malls, local retail complexes and multi-family residential developments. He has counseled Costco in numerous acquisitions and development projects in the Western United States, represented the owners of the Oakland A’s in their efforts to acquire land for a new stadium, and advised developers of luxury homes in California and Nevada in the acquisition, sale and financing of hundreds of acres of land.
Iwasaka is active in recruitment at the Firm and mentoring young attorneys. He urges new lawyers to weather the current storm in real estate and build upon the skills they acquire in dealing with the difficult environment. He notes, “Today, clients are requiring more sophisticated counsel than they did when the market was hot and profits seemed easier to achieve." People active in the market today have more realistic expectations and a more reasoned approach to deals, which Iwasaka believes are hopeful signs of a slow but steady improvement in the region’s real property market.
A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Claremont McKenna College, where he received a bachelor’s degree magna cum laude, Iwasaka was named a Rhodes Scholar in 1994. He earned a J.D. from Yale Law School and an M.A. in political science from Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Iwasaka served as a law clerk to the Honorable Kim McLane Wardlaw of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and currently serves on the board of governors of the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies. He has been named one of the Southern California Rising Stars 2007-2009 by Super Lawyers magazine.