Meet Jim Farley
As a practicing attorney for over thirty years, and an executive with broad commercial experience, I have learned the importance of careful strategic planning. From a diverse base of involvement in the public and private sectors, I have gained an appreciation of the value of comprehensive legal planning as a predicate to nearly all successful enterprise, problem prevention and minimization. I am honored to be A-V rated by Martindale-Hubbell -- the highest rating by my peers from the time-honored legal referral source.
During my more than three decades of law practice and business management, I have advised business owners, financial institutions, real estate investors and developers, property management firms, and professionals of many licensed disciplines on the choice and organization of appropriate legal structures. I provide legal counseling on business transactional strategies, management modalities, employment matters, structuring of project financing, secured transactions, and strategic ventures. I have documented a wide variety of transactions in all of these areas of the law.
Over the years, I have focused much of my practice on the acquisition, formation, operation and disposition of business entities. I have represented sole proprietorships, limited liability companies, limited liability partnerships, general and limited partnerships, joint ventures, associations and corporations in a wide range of business sectors, including nonprofit organizations. My practice has emphasized tax planning and analysis. I also provide estate planning services to many of my business clients.
Beginning my practice as an associate in the Financing and Tax Division of Atlantic Richfield Company, I gained extensive experience handling significant income, sales, excise and employment tax issues. As managing partner of major law firms for more than eight years, as a principal shareholder and General Counsel of a corporation that owned and operated an off-shore manufacturing facility in Mexico (a "maquiladora"), and as the Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel of a food-related retail enterprise in San Diego County employing over 250 people, I provide a practical hands-on perspective to day-to-day business operations.
I have enjoyed my substantial involvement and experience in the organization, development and management of nonprofit organizations. From my early youth, I have been actively engaged in community service. I support the notion that graduation from public high schools should include a required element of community service. I am a 1991 graduate of LEAD San Diego, a national program for development of community leaders. I served on the Board of Directors of the San Diego Hebrew Homes, a Section 501(c)(3) organization for twelve years. I was the President of this Board of Directors from July 1993 through June 1995. I served as the President of The Board of Trustees of the Quail Botanical Gardens Foundation for four years, 1998 through 2002, and continue to serve as one of a number of community advocates committed to the vision that Quail Botanical Gardens should be widely recognized and profoundly regarded as a highly prized and integral component of community life in the Southern California region ... rather than a place where people grow plants, a place where plants grow people. I am also currently a member of the Board of Directors of San Diego North Convention and Visitor's Bureau and serve as Corporate Secretary.
In 2006, I was elected to the Scripps Memorial Hospital Encinitas Community Advisory Board.
In 2007, I became a Founding Member of Endow Carlsbad, an affiliate of the San Diego Foundation, a Section 501(c)(3) organization. Through Endow Carlsbad, community leaders throughout Carlsbad are partnering with The San Diego Foundation. to create and sustain a local foundation to serve solely the community of Carlsbad and to Endow Carlsbad. Endow Carlsbad is a community-specific effort to focus on endowment building for Carlsbad now and for generations to come. It is part of The San Diego Foundation's region-wide initiative Endow San Diego to inform and inspire San Diegans regarding the benefits of endowment. I actively serve Endow Carlsbad as a member of its Grants and Membership Committees and, in February 2008, I was elected to serve on its Board of Directors.
In November 2007, I was elected to the Board of Directors of the Leichtag Family Foundation, an independent private foundation (having served as its General Counsel since 1995), and was appointed to serve as its President and Chief Executive Officer.
For six years I served as a member Budget Review Committee for the San Dieguito Union High School District. I have provided pro-bono legal services to the Torrey Pines High School Foundation, the Mustang Education Foundation, and the La Costa Canyon High School Foundation in organizing these entities and obtaining their respective tax exemptions as Section 501(c)(3) organizations.
I was born in Hollywood, California, April 17, 1949. I am a graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles (A.B. 1971), where I was a member of Blue Key; California Western School of Law (J.D. 1974), where I was a member of Phi Delta Phi; and New York University (LL.M in Taxation, 1975). I attended Stanford University as a college freshman, before transferring to UCLA. I was admitted to the California Bar in 1975.
As a law student I was the recipient of the American Jurisprudence Awards on Estate and Gift Taxation and Conflict of Laws. I am currently a Member the State Bar of California Sections on Taxation, Business, Estate Planning, and Real Estate.
Judy Golum Farley and I have been married since June 12, 1971. We have lived in Carlsbad, California since 1978. Our son, Ben, is a graduate of California State University at San Marcos and now is the Manager of the 24 Hour Fitness Sport Club in Sunrise, California. On July 3, 2003, our daughter, Azriela, a fourth-generation UCLA Bruin, married Daniel Jankovic, a Houstonian and graduate of cross-town-rival, USC. On September 4, 2004, Daniel and Azriela gave birth to their daughter, Hana Aliya, our first grandchild. Following in her mother's and grandmother's footsteps, Azriela now teaches in Los Angeles.
I am an avid gardener and enjoy my associations as a card-carrying member of the Benefactor Society of Quail Botanical Gardens Foundation, a Life Member of the San Diego Horticultural Society, the Cactus and Succulent Society of America, and the San Diego Cactus and Succulent Society.
