William J. Birney is a transactional real estate attorney and a partner of Kennerly Lamishaw & Rossi LLP. Mr. Birney’s practice focuses on acquisitions, sales, leasing, financing, development, repositioning and workouts of commercial real estate across all asset classes, including office, retail, mixed-use, industrial/warehouse, and residential projects.

He has extensive experience representing owners, investors, developers, borrowers, landlords, tenants, REITs, joint ventures, limited liability companies, corporations, and individuals and has handled the acquisition, financing, leasing, workout and sale of a wide variety of real estate assets, including many of the country’s most prominent office, retail, healthcare, industrial and hospitality projects.

Mr. Birney frequently serves as project, portfolio and fund counsel for landlords that own and operate shopping centers, office and mixed-use projects and as tenant counsel for grocers, banks, healthcare companies and retailers with branch locations over wide jurisdictions. In these roles Mr. Birney leads teams of KLR attorneys to negotiate and document the various agreements attendant to real estate operations and ownership – including letters of intent, construction contracts, development agreements, leases, licenses, service contracts, easements, CC&Rs, property management agreements, and brokerage agreements – and most critically in helping clients implement processes and protocols to efficiently and consistently complete transactions throughout their projects and portfolios and across regional and national jurisdictions.

He also represents developers, owners and operators, physicians, physician groups, hospitals and health care systems with the acquisition, financing, development, leasing and sale of a variety of healthcare facilities.

Mr. Birney was formerly the Senior Vice President and General Counsel of a $1 Billion privately held real estate investment company where he oversaw all legal aspects of the company’s real estate and financial transactions and provided strategic legal advice to management. Mr. Birney began his legal career with Allen Matkins. Prior to that, he was a mortgage banker with Countrywide Home Loans/Bank of America, where he specialized in conduit lending and gained considerable experience in the pricing, purchase, sale and servicing of mortgage-backed securities. With this diverse background, Mr. Birney utilizes a hands-on, collaborative approach in delivering legal services and takes pride in counseling clients on both legal matters as well as business-related issues and considerations that arise from the underlying transaction.

Mr. Birney received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Eugene Lang College – The New School for Liberal Arts in 1990 and received a Diploma from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1991. He received his Juris Doctorate degree from Loyola Law School (Los Angeles).

• Member of the Urban Land Institute, the International Council of Shopping Centers, the Real Property Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association and a member of BOMA of greater Los Angeles.
• Member of the Steering Committee for BOMA International’s annual Medical Office Buildings & Healthcare Facilities Conference.
• Trustee of the Pasadena Waldorf School (President 2015-2017, Chair Legal Affairs Committee 2013-Present).
• Active participant in the Loyola Law School and Loyola High School Alumni Associations.