Peter Franck

Bio

Qualifications

• Member of the California Bar
• J.D. from the Columbia University School of Law
• B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley

Background

Peter Franck was born in London, England, where his parents had resettled after leaving Germany following Hitler’s ascension to power. The Franck family then moved to Berkeley, California, where Peter attended John Muir Grammar School and Willard Junior High School. They later relocated to Australia, where he attended Sydney Boy’s High School.

Peter returned to U.C. Berkeley to pursue his Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology and went on to Columbia Law School for his law degree. He undertook graduate work on constitutional rights at the University of California at Berkeley’s Boalt Law School. He was admitted to the State Bar of California and began private practice in Berkeley.

Early in his legal career, Mr. Franck served as a legal advisor to Mario Savio and student members of the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley http://www.fsm-a.org . As the attorney for the Vietnam Day Committee, Mr. Franck was actively involved in efforts to secure the rights of demonstrators to protest against the Vietnam War http://www.museumca.org/picturethis/5_4.html.  His commitment to legal activism has led to affiliations with the ACLU, the Council For Justice, and the National Lawyers Guild. For more information on Peter Franck’s public interest legal work, please click here.

Mr. Franck’s expanding Berkeley practice came to specialize in intellectual property and entertainment law through his representation of such pioneering San Francisco Bay Area musical groups such as Country Joe and the Fish and Joy of Cooking (the first all-women 1960’s rock band). Working with bands, independent record labels, and other emerging artists of the time gave him the opportunity to participate in the vital and often path-breaking growth of the culture.

Peter Franck is a member of the California Lawyers for the Arts, was a founding member of BAGELS (Bay Area “Gastronomical” Entertainment Lawyers Society), and a member of the Intellectual Property section of the California State Bar, among others.

In 1981, after practicing for many years in the East Bay, Mr. Franck moved his practice to the offices of the boutique Intellectual Property firm of Owen, Wickersham and Erickson (www.owe.com) in San Francisco. In 1996, he joined the intellectual property section of the respected San Francisco firm of Hansen, Bridgett, Marcus, Rudy and Vlahos (http://www.hansonbridgett.com) as “Of Counsel.”

Since 1999, Mr. Franck has maintained offices in Marin and Oakland as counsel to a wide variety of creative artists and management and production companies.  He is a member of the firm, Lee & Lawless.