Brenda GrantlandBrenda Grantland is a lawyer located in Mill Valley, California. She started her legal practice in the District of Columbia in 1982 and Maryland (1985). In 1993, she passed the California bar and moved her practice to California. She defended her firt forfeiture case in 1983. Forfeiture defense has made up the bulk of her practice ever since. She handles and/or consults on federal forfeiture cases nationwide but also handles state forfeiture cases in California. Brenda got her law degree from George Washington University National Law Center, going to law school at night while working full time at the D.C. Public Defender Service as a law clerk/librarian. During law school she participated in the D.C. Law Students in Court program, representing criminal defendants charged with misdemeanors in D.C. Superior Court. Before law school she worked at Auto Code/Auto Comp Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, writing and editing for Auto Code's official publication of the D.C. Code. Later she joined Auto Comp's team working on a government contract to develop a legal research database (like an early version of Lexis or Westlaw) for the Food and Drug Administration. Compiling and editing the legal digests on food and drug law exposed her to the concept of asset forfeiture and inspired her to apply for law school. Her exposure to forfeiture law during her work on the FDA project segued into her experience at the Public Defender Service, where one of her writing projects was a guide for agency lawyers on return of seized property. After passing the D.C. bar, she left the Public Defender Service and started her solo practice as a court appointed criminal defense lawyer. In her first year in practice she defended her first forfeiture case and won the clients' money back. That case lead to forfeiture referrals from other lawyers and she was able to transition from criminal cases to primarily defending forfeiture cases. In her tenth year as a sole practitioner in D.C., she made plans to move her practice to California, and became a founding member of Forfeiture Endangers American Rights, a nonprofit that educates the public on the dangers of asset forfeiture and advocates for forfeiture reform. In November 1992, just weeks before moving to California, she had the honor of testifying before Congress, during the House Government Operations Committee hearings into the abuses of civil forfeiture laws. Rep. John Conyers, who chaired that committee, introduced a forfeiture reform bill based on FEAR's position paper, which Ms. Grantland wrote. She consulted with the aides for Rep. Conyers, and later with Rep. Henry Hyde, as they drafted and introduced forfeiture reform bills. After eight years of lobbying for forfeiture reform, the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act ("CAFRA") passed in 2000. In his speech to Congress on the day CAFRA passed, Rep. Hyde thanked Brenda Grantland personally for the work she had done to reform the law. Read More Read Less