Mr. Brandel was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1938. He received his B.S. in economics from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1960. He received his J.D. degree, cum laude, from the University of Chicago in 1966, served as a law clerk to the Chief Justice of California, Roger Traynor (1966-1967), and then joined Morrison & Foerster. He attended the Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law, Columbia Law School, in 1970. He became a partner of the firm in 1971 and currently serves as Senior Counsel. He was appointed a Visiting Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley, for the 1974-1975 academic year.

Mr. Brandel has been active in bar association and community affairs. He served as a member of the City of Berkeley’s Planning Commission and Chairman of its Waterfront Advisory Board. He is a past Chairman of the San Francisco Bank Attorneys’ Association and is Chairman of the San Francisco Committee on Foreign Relations. He has served as President of the San Francisco Barristers Club and has served two terms as a director of the San Francisco Bar Association. He has served on or chaired numerous local, state, and national bar association groups, including his chairmanship of the ABA Ad Hoc Committee on Payment Systems, and Committee on Consumer Financial Services and its Subcommittees on Electronic Fund Transfers and Access to Services. He was the ABA Advisor to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws on UCC Article 4A (wire transfers) and major revisions to Articles 3 and 4. He has served as Chair of the California State Bar’s 11,000 member Business Law Section and its Secretary and Vice-Chair, as Chairman of its Committee on Financial Institutions, and is a member of its Executive Committee.

He was appointed as a charter member of the Consumer Advisory Council, Federal Reserve Board. He has served on the Advisory Council of the Institute of Marine Resources, the governing Council of the ABA’s Section of Business Law, and the Visiting Committee of the Law School of the University of Chicago. Mr. Brandel served on the Managing Committee and as Chairman of the Legal Advisory Committee of the National Center on Financial Services, on the Visiting Committee of the Golden Gate University law school, and as a member of the Study Group on EFT of the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on Private International Law. He served as President of the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers and is a member of its Board of Regents. He received the California Bankers Association 2000 award for superior and noteworthy legal assistance to the industry over a lifetime.

He received the Senator William Proxmire Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004 from The American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. In 2006, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Business Law Section of the State Bar of California.

Mr. Brandel is active primarily in the field of consumer financial services and financial institution regulation. He has chaired the firm’s Financial Services group, which is represented in most of the firm’s major domestic offices. In addition to regularly advising clients in that field, he has been directly involved in many federal legislative and regulatory efforts affecting the field in the past 30 years. He has written more than a dozen articles and several books, including, with Don Baker, The Law of Electronic Funds Transfer Systems (Warren, Gorham), The Community Reinvestment Act, Policies and Compliance (Prentice Hall), and Truth in Lending: A Comprehensive Guide. He has given numerous lectures before national audiences of lawyers and businessmen on such subjects as electronic signature legislation, credit disclosure, equal credit opportunity, community reinvestment, fair lending, electronic fund transfer, cyberbanking, and financial privacy laws. He served for seven years as co-chair of an annual national conference on the Emerging Law of Cyberbanking and Electronic Commerce. He has had primary responsibility for joint efforts in the financial services industry in development of products such as bankcards, electronic fund transfer systems, and other innovative lending and value transfer services.

Mr. Brandel was named one of Northern California’s Super Lawyers for Banking and Financial Law in 2004, and one of the Best Lawyers in America in Financial Institutions Law for 2005-2006. Mr. Brandel was recommended in the 2006 PLC Which Lawyer? Yearbook for Finance law. Mr. Brandel is also listed in The Best Lawyers in America (2006-2008) as a leader in the field of Banking law.