RKD Law Desai & Associates LLC was founded by Managing Partner Rishi K. Desai. Rishi is devoted to helping his clients attain their goals by acting as their closing counsel and advisor on commercial transactions. He advises and represents small and mid-size business owners on the purchase, sale, lease and financing of their businesses and commercial real estate. Rishi also represents lenders in SBA, conventional, and non-institutional loan closings.
Rishi has an in-depth understanding of the law, business transactions, and human nature. This understanding allows him to move closings forward efficiently and with minimal resistance. He provides his clients with enthusiastic support in various aspects of business, banking, and commercial law. Rishi is not just an attorney performing work for his clients. He enjoys working closely with them as a partner and a family member to help them reach the success they deserve.
These types of transactions can be critical to the success of RKD’s clients. Rishi’s clients trust him with these important matters and he works to earn that trust every day.
Rishi’s interest in helping small and medium-sized businesses came early in life, as he saw his grandfather grow the CPA practice he founded in 1978 to over five hundred clients. Rishi learned the importance of helping others, providing excellent professional services, and treating clients with respect.
Since 2009, Rishi has represented business owners in matters that create value for them. He came to love closing transactions and chose to specialize in closing commercial deals. After practicing at other law firms, Rishi decided that he could better help his clients by establishing his own practice and implementing his own innovative approach.
Rishi has extensive experience in SBA 7(a), 504, conventional, cash, and alternative financing transactions in a variety of industries. He also has significant experience closing multi-unit QSR, franchise, hospitality, dental, liquor licensing, retail, and commercial real estate transactions. In his earlier partnerships, Rishi led one firm’s Commercial Transactions Group and the Transactional Law Department of another.
Rishi is licensed to practice in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. He’s a current Trustee and former President of the South Asian Bar Association of New Jersey. He speaks English and Gujarati. In his spare time, Rishi loves to explore new dining destinations, racing cars on the track, cooking, traveling, and exercise.
Rishi received his Bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University and his law degree from Western New England University School of Law.
Marissa Shulman is an associate attorney at RKD Law Desai & Associates LLC. She is licensed to practice law in the States of Florida and New Jersey, and is pursuing her license to practice in New York as well. She currently specializes in corporate formations, liquor license approvals, and the purchase, sale, leasing, and financing of commercial businesses and real estate. She has experience closing multi-unit transactions in the quick-service franchise restaurant industry, in addition to the purchase and sale of dental practices, hotels, liquor stores, and other commercial businesses.
Marissa received her Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Miami School of Law, graduating with honors in 2018, and was a summa cum laude 2014 graduate of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. Marissa grew up in New Jersey and aspired to become an attorney from a young age. Before attending law school, she worked with a commercial real estate attorney in Brooklyn, New York, and worked as a corporate paralegal at a New Jersey law firm that specializes in business planning, estate planning, and tax planning.
While in law school, Marissa was active on and off campus, taking on various leadership roles and participating in various volunteering and fundraising opportunities around Miami. On her law school campus, Marissa served as the Vice President of OUTLaw, Treasurer of Miami Law Women, Treasurer of the Society of Bar & Gavel, and an Investigator on the Honor Council. She also worked as an intern in the law school’s Investor Rights Clinic and as a fellow for the Professional Responsibility and Ethics Program, where she helped to provide Continuing Legal Education (CLE) courses on professionalism and ethics to attorneys in the Miami legal community. Additionally, she became certified to participate in the Internal Revenue Service’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program (VITA) in order to help provide free tax filing services to the low-income Miami community.
Over the summers between her law school semesters, Marissa interned with an estate planning and probate attorney and worked with the in-house counsel at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, a non-profit theatre organization. In her final year of law school, she worked in the University of Miami School of Law’s Office for Alumni Development, interviewing notable alumni and publishing articles in the school’s alumni newsletter. Upon receiving her law degree, Marissa moved back to New Jersey and joined a 10-month internship program in the wealth management department at Morgan Stanley. Prior to joining RKD Law Desai & Associates LLC, she also spent some time working as a law clerk at a local estate planning law firm.
Marissa is a member of the American Bar Association, the Florida Association of Women Lawyers, the National LGBT Bar Association, the New Jersey Bar Association, and the Middlesex County Bar Association. In her spare time, Marissa enjoys traveling, rock climbing, nature photography, playing guitar, and volunteering in her local community.
Learn more today by calling us at 732-719-7477 or emailing us via the contact form to request a consultation.