Professional Bio:

Shawn Christianson focuses her practice on insolvency, receiverships and complex litigation. She represents financial institutions, secured and unsecured creditors, technology companies, and fiduciaries, including receivers, referees, assignees for the benefit of creditors and bankruptcy trustees. Her practice spans the state, federal and bankruptcy courts, as well as out of court proceedings and mediation. Ms. Christianson has served multiple terms as an At Large Director on IWIRC's International Board of Directors. She is also a former Co-Chair of the Northern California Network of IWIRC, the International Women's Insolvency and Restructuring Confederation.She was a member of the San Francisco based organizing committee for the annual IWIRC Leadership Conference when it was held in San Francisco. Shawn has served on several professional boards and committees, including for the California Receiver's Forum, the Bay Area Chapter of the California Receiver's Forum, where she also served as Vice President, the Board of Directors of the Bay Area Bankruptcy Forum ("BABF"), BABF's Program and Finance Committees and the organizing committee of the California Bankruptcy Forum's Fifth Annual Conference. She was appointed to a three-year term as a Lawyer Representative to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference and served on the Northern District of California's Local Rules Committee which addressed both the District and Bankruptcy Court's Local Rules. She is a trained mediator and has acted as a Resolution Advocate on the Bankruptcy Dispute Resolution Panel in the Northern District of California since that Panel's creation. She served as both Chair and Vice-Chair of the Bar Association of San Francisco's Commercial Law and Bankruptcy section, and was a founding member of the Barrister Club's Speakers Bureau. She is a frequent lecturer, and presented as a panelist at "Loyola II" on the topic of Receiverships in the New Millennium, and at “Loyola III” on Financing the Receivership Estate.

Ms. Christianson is an active participant in numerous community and civic organizations, including having been elected in November 2005 to the Hillsborough City School District's Board of Trustees, and serving as President of that Board in 2009.  From 2018-2020, she was the Mayor of the Town of Hillsborough, California, following two years of service as its Vice Mayor from 2016-2018 and she  served on its  City Council from 2012-2020.

Ms. Christianson has been selected as one of Northern California's Super Lawyers every year from 2005 to 2020 and to Martindale-Hubbell’s Bar Register of Preeminent Women Lawyers.

Ms. Christianson received her B.S. magna cum laude from Boston College and her J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, where she was on the editorial board of the Hastings Journal of Communications and Entertainment Law. She argued, at every level from the trial court through the Ninth Circuit, a seminal case on the topic of perfection of security interests in unregistered copyrights, In re: World Auxiliary Power.