CRAIG S. BICKLER became affiliated with our firm in January 2013 and serves in a senior “of counsel” position, having been a real estate and corporate lawyer for more than 35 years. For the last 20 years, Mr. Bickler has practiced almost exclusively in the field of common interest development law. Since 1994, he has represented hundreds of homeowner associations in southern California as their primary legal counsel.
Originally from New York State, Craig Bickler moved to England in his late teens. He attended law school in London and, following the English model requiring five years of formal legal training, practice and written examination, was admitted as an English solicitor (attorney) in 1976 at the age of 24. He is believed to have been the first non-British Empire citizen to have achieved this status. Mr. Bickler became the joint founding partner of a central London law firm in 1979 and practiced law in England for 17 years in all. His firm numbered among its clients England’s largest bank, renowned international architects and numerous corporations and other business entities.
Mr. Bickler moved with his family to San Diego in 1993. Following admission to the California bar, Craig Bickler became an attorney with one of the largest law firms in southern California whose legal work is limited to homeowner association law. As a senior attorney, Mr. Bickler established and was principal managing attorney for that firm’s two satellite offices in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties.
During this period, in addition to supervising the work of satellite office staff, Mr. Bickler was the main legal counsel for well over 200 homeowners associations. He advised his client associations on all aspects of non-profit common interest development law, including the drafting, interpretation and enforcement of governing documents, corporate operating issues and financial and assessment collection matters.
In the late 1990s, Mr. Bickler opened his own practice in north San Diego County His practice was limited predominantly to representing homeowner associations but with some ancillary legal work in the general real estate and corporate fields. Over the past nearly 20 years, Mr. Bickler has continued to hone his skills and experience in the field of homeowner association law while advising hundreds of associations, both residential and commercial, in southern California and elsewhere.
Craig Bickler has taken particular interest in representing individual or master community associations with complex or unusual problems. For example, he has advised and assisted sub-associations whose inadequate or poorly drafted governing documents have created uncertainty as to the associations’ respective legal rights and responsibilities within a master community to correct and resolve their legal position. He has also guided several associations through the unusual process of governing document termination, and corporate dissolution, where the membership considered that the needs of the community no longer required the formal common interest development structure created by the project’s original developer.
Craig Bickler has served on the Educational Service Committee for the San Diego Chapter of Community Association Institute (CAI) and is past co-chair of the Inland Empire Chapter Education Committee. Mr. Bickler has been a speaker on various aspects of common interest development law at numerous seminars and has also acted as an expert witness in the field of homeowner association law.
