Bruce Michael Smiley

Bruce M. Smiley is a founding partner of the law firm of Freeman, Freeman & Smiley, Chair of the firm’s Real Estate Department and a regular member of the firm’s Executive Management Committee. 

For over 35 years, Mr. Smiley has counseled international and national companies as well as local Southern California businesses and families regarding all legal aspects of transactional real estate matters. Mr. Smiley’s practice encompasses both public and private sector transactional real estate law with an emphasis on commercial and industrial leasing, commercial acquisition and sales, construction contracts and disputes, finance, retail shopping center matters, environmental matters, workouts and eminent domain disputes. He has served as an expert witness in real estate litigation matters and he has extensive experience in structuring shopping center transactions, handling environmentally complicated properties, and in the sale and liquidation of multiple parcels of property located throughout the United States. Mr. Smiley is regularly retained by large East Coast and Midwestern multi-national corporations and retailers to handle their company's most challenging transactional matters in the Western United States, and he handles real estate construction, leasing and acquisition issues for a large local Charter School. 

In 2005, Mr. Smiley was invited to become a permanent member of the American College of Real Estate Attorneys (“ACREL”). Since 1997, he has continually served as a member of the Georgetown Law School Advisory Board of Directors and regularly teaches continuing education courses at the law school. 

Mr. Smiley has been recognized for ten consecutive years in the Southern California Super Lawyers list (2006-2015), a designation bestowed on only the top 5% of lawyers in this region.