Frank advises visionary, iconoclastic venture capitalists and hedge fund managers, impact fund managers, and institutional investors on all aspects of fund formation, fund management, and regulation. In 2023, Frank co-created a new form of impact fund known as the “Benefit Fund” to further align impact managers and their investors (work highlighted by Chambers in the firm’s 2025 ranking). Frank also advises investment management principals when they transition between professional endeavors (“Principals in Transition“). Frank focuses on business-oriented, practical advice stemming from his previous experience as President and General Counsel of Standard Pacific Capital, a multi-billion-dollar, multi-strategy, global hedge fund headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Hong Kong and Tokyo. In addition to Frank’s work advising clients, he also serves as Cole-Frieman & Mallon’s General Counsel.
Frank has extensive, hands-on experience in the full range of fund and investment management legal matters including fund and investment manager formation, day-to-day operational, legal, and compliance matters, negotiations with (and on behalf of) institutional investors and asset allocators, fund marketing, separately managed account negotiations, counterparty documentation, SEC examinations and enforcement inquiries, trading and operational matters, investment manager employment and partnership matters, fund closures and the wide range of other business and legal matters that arise in the life cycle of investment managers and investment funds.
While at Standard Pacific Capital, Frank taught at UC Berkeley School of Law where he created and taught Berkeley Law’s course on structuring, advising, and regulating hedge funds.
Frank grounds his legal practice in intellectual curiosity, rigor, and kindness. His approach to legal counseling focuses on reasoning from first principles and is influenced by the Prayer of St. Francis.
Outside of Frank’s investment management work, he served as a senior executive, board chair, and general counsel to non-profit and social impact organizations, including time as Interim Executive Director and Lecturer at Berkeley Law’s East Bay Community Law Center, the law school’s largest clinical education program and one of the Bay Area’s largest legal aid offices. Frank writes frequently for national publications on topics of civic engagement and civil society and has been published in Stanford Social Innovation Review, National Civic Review, Bloomberg Law, Daily Journal (SF & LA), The Life You Can Save Blog (international aid organization founded by philosopher Peter Singer), and California Law Review.
Frank began his legal career at Venture Law Group representing venture capital funds and emerging companies.
Frank lives with his wife and two sons in Oakland, CA, where he enjoys walking, reading, and supporting local non-profits working to advance economic, racial, and social justice. Frank currently serves on the Board of Directors of Centro Legal de la Raza. Frank and his family support Oakland’s art institutions. In 2023, his family donated their Calli Americas collection, one of the nation’s largest collections of Mexican-American graphic art, to the Oakland Museum of California. The collection was featured in the Oakland Museum’s exhibition Calli: The Art of Xicanx Peoples and in the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s exhibition ¡Printing the Revolution! The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now.
