David Anderson
Adjunct Professor of Law
Born and raised in Coronado, Calif., David Anderson graduated from Yale University in 1963. Anderson received an officer’s commission in the U. S. Navy, and went to Navy flight school. He was trained as a fighter pilot in the F-4 Phantom II and in 1966-67, flew 215 combat missions off the U. S. S. Kitty Hawk into North Vietnam. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross and twenty-two Air Medals and accumulated 350 carrier landings. He was a combat/carrier landing instructor in the F-4 before leaving the Navy in August 1969 to attend Harvard Law School.
Upon graduating from Harvard Law in 1972, Anderson spent 1972-1978 as a public defender in Contra Costa County, Calif., where he specialized in trying murder and sex crimes with psychiatric defenses. Shortly after leaving the Public Defender’s Office, he moved back to Coronado and opened his own law firm, representing local clients with real property issues. Breaking with his litigation oriented practice at the end of the 1980s, he moved his office to San Diego, engaged in extensive continuing education and began his representation of estate planning clients, which rapidly became his exclusive practice.
Since 1992, the Law Office of David C. Anderson has restricted its practice to planning for higher net worth individuals and families. His practice is deeply involved with family dynamics, long term legacies and estate and gift tax reduction strategies. Anderson was admitted to the Montana Bar in 1995, and also maintains an active estate planning practice in that state. He is now expanding his firm with younger associate attorneys, and his office representation has broadened to probate, trust and estate litigation, IRS controversies and estate and gift tax reporting.
Anderson has served on multiple charitable and corporate boards of directors including the San Diego Air and Space Museum, Scripps Planned Giving Advisory Board, Lambs Players Theater, Trustee of the Lambs Players Endowment Trust, Ventana, Inc. and Z-Sweet, Inc.
