Attorney Profile

Tom Espinoza is a native Californian, born and raised in Southern California. In 1985, Mr. Espinoza graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Finance and Marketing. Mr. Espinoza worked in commercial banking for ten years with Wells Fargo Bank, including five years as a trust auditor as well as a legal compliance officer in the Bank’s Consumer Lending Division, dealing with state and Federal truth-in-lending laws. He attended John F. Kennedy University School of Law, while continuing to work for the Bank.

In 1996, Mr. Espinoza left the Bank to begin his legal career in the Monterey Bay Area. Over the past ten years, he has had extensive legal training and a breadth of experience working for highly respected local practitioners. Prior to opening his office in 2003, Mr. Espinoza had the distinct honor of working with the attorneys and staff of Grunsky, Ebey, Farrar & Howell, located in Watsonville, California. At the Grunsky Law Firm, much of his case load involved trust and estate litigation which is the practice area Mr. Espinoza continues to enjoy, utilizing his extensive business/banking background and legal training and experience.

Mr. Espinoza has served on the Executive Committee of the Monterey County Bar Association since 2004, and was the President of the Monterey County Bar Association for 2008. In 2005, he, along with other local attorneys, reconstituted the Estate Planning/Trusts and Probate Law Section of the Monterey County Bar Association. He has served as the Chairperson of the Probate Law Section since 2005. In 2003, Mr. Espinoza attended a Mediation and Conflict Resolution Seminar at the University of California, Berkeley, completing forty hours of evaluated mediation instruction with San Francisco based mediator Ron Kelly. More recently, he completed an additional thirty-two hours of mediation training through the Mandell-Gisnet Center for Conflict Management, and has worked as a mediator as part of the Monterey County Superior Court’s, Court-Directed Mediation Program, since its inception.