Shimizu, Leo Y.

Leo Y. Shimizu’s practice areas include business sales acquisitions, mergers and reorganizations, contracts, commercial leasing, intellectual property, and other general corporate and business-related matters.  He also focuses on community association law, litigation, and alternative dispute resolution.  He has recently prevailed in a federal jury trial and a state circuit court jury trial, serving as co-lead counsel and securing favorable jury verdicts for his clients in both.  He continues to build on that experience to serve his clients both in litigation and in advising business entities to reduce the risk of litigation in the future.  He is fluent in both Japanese and English, and serves clients on Oahu and the neighbor islands.

Leo earned his J.D., magna cum laude, from the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii. While in law school he served as a Judicial Extern to the Honorable Richard R. Clifton, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was a Staff Editor for the Asia-Pacific Law and Policy Journal. As a research assistant to Professor Ronald C. Brown, he also focused on labor and employment law. Leo received the Bernard Levinson Best Constitutional Law Paper Award for his Second Year Seminar paper and earned the high-grade CALI Excellence for the Future Awards in Contract Drafting, Commercial Real Estate Transactions, Federal Income Taxation, Lawyering Fundamentals II, and Second Year Seminar.

Leo has a broad range of previous experience in business, education, and law.  Prior to joining Go Law, he worked with large Honolulu law firms focusing on litigation, community association law, real estate law, and corporate law.  Prior to becoming a lawyer, Leo was a secondary teacher and athletics coach at Nanakuli High and Intermediate School through Teach for America.  Growing up on Oahu, Leo graduated from ‘Iolani School and thereafter received his Bachelor of Science in Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California and his Master of Education from the University of Hawaii.