About Charles Ostertag

Charles’s practice areas include tenants’ rights, eviction defense, affirmative lawsuits on behalf of tenants, personal injury, and general civil litigation. Charles also engages in numerous pro bono activities and cases throughout the Bay Area.

Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Charles graduated magna cum laude from U.C. Berkeley with B.A.s in English Literature and Rhetoric. At U.C. Berkeley, he received the Cal Bears Scholarship (full tuition) and the H.W. Hill Scholarship (a faculty-selected award for work in the English Department of exceptionally high caliber). Upon graduation, Charles was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society.

Charles received his J.D. from Tulane University Law School in New Orleans, Louisiana. During law school, Charles interned for Orleans Public Defenders in New Orleans, Louisiana; served as a certified student attorney at the Office of the Federal Public Defender in the Eastern District of California in Sacramento, California; externed in his third year of law school for the Honorable Helen G. Berrigan in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans, Louisiana; studied Chinese law at Tsinghua University in Beijing and Fudan University in Shanghai; and served as managing editor for, and published in, the Tulane Journal of International and Comparative Law. 

After graduating law school in 2012, Charles returned home to the Bay Area and worked for an international grantmaking nonprofit organization in San Francisco. There, he advised staff on the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and educated corporate clients on the charity laws of India, China, and Hong Kong. Afterwards, Charles founded Ostertag Law Offices in 2014.