Our Attorneys

Bryan w. pease, esq.

Bryan W. Pease graduated from Cornell University in 2000 and SUNY Buffalo School of Law in 2004. Bryan is a nationally recognized civil rights, environmental law, and animal protection attorney based in San Diego and licensed in California and New York, defending free speech, holding government agencies accountable, and stopping harmful and destructive industry practices throughout the United States. Bryan has been rated by the national ratings firm SuperLawyers as one of the top 5% of civil rights lawyers every year consecutively from 2017 through 2021. SuperLawyers bases its ratings solely on peer recommendations, ethical standards, and achievement, and cannot be purchased.

Bryan has won federal civil rights cases from Baltimore to Los Angeles defending the rights of vegan activists to pass out flyers about cruelty-free eating and other issues without being arrested by police simply for doing so, and against the San Diego Police who even arrested a community activist for registering voters outside of City Hall during the 2011 Occupy protests. Bryan’s nationwide undercover investigations and lawsuits against factory farm cruelty have been featured in the national bestseller The Foie Gras Wars by Chicago Tribune reporter Mark Caro. Bryan has also been quoted in the New York Times here, here, here, here, and here on this issue, and featured in a Vice News special report on banning force feeding cruelty in California.

Bryan’s multiple lawsuits against the City of San Diego saved a treasured harbor seal colony from having the beach where they give birth and nurse their pups destroyed. Bryan’s work on this issue has been extensively covered by national media including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times (here, here, and here), and NPR’s This American Life.

When 10 puppy stores in California began fraudulently labeling puppy mill puppies as “rescues” to evade a 2019 law banning the sale of non-rescue dogs in pet stores and authorities failed to act, Bryan systematically shut each one down by filing seven state and federal cases across three counties and obtaining injunctions.

Bryan is a co-founder and the volunteer executive director of the Animal Protection and Rescue League, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the rights and habitats of all animals. Bryan has taught Animal Law at California Western School of Law and frequently guest lectures in animal law classes in California and New York.

PARISA IJADI-MAGHSOODI, ESQ.

Parisa Ijadi-Maghsoodi graduated from the University of Michigan in 2007 and the University of California Davis School of Law (King Hall) in 2010. She is a 2021 Fellow of the Racial Justice Institute.

Parisa’s legal background includes extensive experience advocating for social justice and advancing the rights of marginalized and minoritized communities in poverty law cases, both individual cases and impact litigation. She previously served as a Staff Attorney and then Managing Attorney at Legal Services of Northern California from 2010-2014, as the Pro Bono Manager and Supervising Attorney at San Diego Volunteer Lawyer Program from 2014-2017, as the Assistant Director of Public Service at USD School of Law from 2017-2020, and as a Senior Attorney at Disability Rights California in 2020 and 2021.

In addition to full-time practice, since 2019 Parisa has served as an adjunct law professor at University of San Diego School of Law where she teaches the law school’s Poverty Law course.

Parisa serves as an appointed Commissioner on the San Diego County Commission on the Status of Women and Girls, serves as the Commission’s Chair, and served as Chair of the United Nations CEDAW Committee from 2019-2022. She also serves as a volunteer member of the California Commission on Access to Justice Pro Bono Coordinating Committee and Cities for CEDAW’s National Advisory Committee. Previously, she served as an appointed member of the California State Bar’s Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services and the Equal Justice Works National Advisory Committee.    

Parisa’s recent law review articles include Eradicating Race-Based Health Disparities by Effectuating the Fair Housing Act’s De-Segregation Intent, which is discussed in Racism without Racists, and Redlining of our Era: Land-Use Voter Initiatives.