Experience Across Law, Finance and Real Estate Operations
Simond Lavian is the principal attorney of the Law Offices of Simond Lavian. His legal practice draws on approximately 15 years of practical experience spanning institutional real estate finance, investment, asset management, workouts, development, and property operations.
The principal foundation of Simond’s experience is his nearly 13 years at Calmwater Capital, a Los Angeles-based institutional real estate lender and investment manager. During that period, he served in increasingly senior asset-management and investment-leadership roles involving more than 200 real estate loans and investments and approximately $4 billion in institutional real estate investments.
Simond’s responsibilities extended throughout the life of an investment after closing. He reviewed, structured, and applied loan documents, assessed borrower compliance and performance, evaluated construction progress and draw requests, monitored property operations and leasing, analyzed collateral value, and presented investment and resolution strategies through the investment-committee process.
His experience included bridge and construction loans, amendments, extensions, additional funding requests, covenant and reporting issues, borrower defaults, lender-performance disputes, workouts, restructurings, deeds in lieu of foreclosure, foreclosures, receiverships, and bankruptcy proceedings. In matters involving control of troubled collateral, Simond also oversaw the completion of interrupted construction projects, property stabilization, leasing, property management, and eventual disposition.
These matters required Simond to develop and direct the investment strategy, work with appropriate specialized counsel in areas such as bankruptcy and tax, and determine whether the legal approach supported the investment’s broader economic and operational objectives.
Simond’s legal experience developed alongside his institutional real estate career. During law school, he worked with BASTA, Inc., a well-known, high-volume tenant-defense litigation organization, gaining early exposure to landlord-tenant disputes from the tenant side. His later law-school experience included landlord-side matters and civil litigation. After his admission to the State Bar of California in 2014, Simond provided contract and outside-counsel services to VZN Law from 2016 through 2018 while continuing his institutional real estate work.
Simond owns and manages a personal portfolio of local real estate providing firsthand experience acquiring, financing, renovating, developing, leasing, managing, repositioning and selling residential real estate in Los Angeles. His ownership and operating experience includes construction oversight, property-management procedures, tenant communications, leasing, financing, relocation matters, regulatory compliance and the recurring decisions that determine how a legal strategy works in practice.
His combined experience as an attorney, lender, investor, and operator allows him to assess legal exposure and available remedies within the property’s broader economic, operational, and strategic context.
Simond advises real estate owners, investors, developers, operators, property managers, borrowers and lenders on transactions, leasing, finance, construction, property operations, distressed situations, and disputes. He also acts as outside general counsel for clients who need continuing access to experienced legal judgment without maintaining a full-time in-house legal department.
Clients work directly with Simond. His objective is to identify the real issue, protect the client’s position and develop a practical path forward that addresses the immediate legal need while advancing the client’s broader business objectives.
Simond earned his Juris Doctor from UCLA School of Law and his Master of Business Administration from UCLA Anderson School of Management in 2014. He was admitted to the State Bar of California that same year.