The Complete Appeal Conference: Strategies from Start to Finish (2009)

Faculty:

Associate Justice Laurence D. Rubin began his career as a Law Clerk to the Honorable Stanley Mosk in 1971. Justice Rubin became Vice President of the CA Judges Association in 1996 and has served in the CA Court of Appeal, 2nd Appellate District, Division 8 since 2001.

Justice Rubin served as a Municipal Court Judge from 1982 to 2000 and a Superior Court Judge from 2000 to 2001. He also served as a Justice Pro Tem in the CA Court of Appeal between 1985 and 2000.

Justice Rubin is a faculty member at The CA Center for Judicial Education and Research, teaching courses on judicial ethics and technology since 1992. He has been a member of the Judicial Council of CA, Trial Court Coordination Advisory Committee and State Constitutional Amendment 4 Working Group. He served on the Board of Directors for the CA Judges Foundation and the CA Judges Association, and currently serves as a Judge in the Trial Advocacy Program at The UCLA School of Law.

Justice Rubin earned his J.D. from The UCLA School of Law in 1971, where he earned the Academic Achievement Award from the UCLA Alumni Association.

Presiding Justice Paul Turner was appointed to the Los Angeles Municipal Court at the age of 35. In 1984, he was challenged for his seat on the municipal court in the primary election. He won the June primary election after securing endorsements from virtually every side of the political spectrum and retained his seat with 67.18 percent of the vote. In 1984 and 1985, he was appointed by Governor George Deukmejian to serve as the judicial representative to the Intergovernmental Advisory Council on Alcohol, Drugs, and Traffic Safety. On March 1, 1985, at the age of 38, he was appointed to the Los Angeles Superior Court. While on that court, he was the first judge to serve in the night court project where felony cases were tried during the late afternoon and evening as part of an effort to reduce county jail crowding. Later, after serving one year as a law and motion civil judge, he was 1 of 25 civil judges assigned to the trial court delay reduction project. This program assigned civil cases to judges and gave them the responsibility of insuring that the lawsuits were promptly resolved. At the commencement of the program, civil cases were routinely taking five years to resolve. In then Judge Turner's court, virtually all new cases were resolved within one year rather than the normal five years that it had previously taken.

Justice Turner was appointed to Division Five of the Court of Appeal for the Second Appellate District by Governor George Deukmejian; he was confirmed by the Commission on Judicial Appointments as an Associate Justice and took office on November 2, 1989. He was elevated to the position of Presiding Justice and after confirmation by the Commission on Judicial Appointments and took office on January 6, 1991. For six years Justice Turner served as the Assistant Administrative Presiding Justice and as a Presiding Justice has sat by assignment on the California Supreme Court on seven occasions. He is currently a member of the Second Appellate District Executive Committee. He is a member of the California Judge's Association and has served on that group's civil law and procedure, criminal law, and election committees. On four separate occasions, he has been assigned by the California Supreme Court to act as a Special Master in hearings ordered by the Commission on Judicial Performance

Prior to taking his judicial appointment, Justice Turner was a litigator in private practice, where he litigated both criminal and civil cases in federal and state courts. He also represented principally criminal defendants in several hundred appeals. He represented the defendant in the case of People v. Barraza in which the California Supreme Court changed the test for entrapment in California courts. He also represented the California Retailers Association and former State Senator Newton Russell in the case of In re Deborah C. where the California Supreme Court held that Miranda warnings need not be given by store security guards.

Justice Pollak has been an Associate Justice in the First District of the California Court of Appeal since 2002.
 
Prior to becoming an Associate Justice, Mr. Pollak was a Judge of the San Francisco Superior Court for twenty years.  Prior to joining the court, he was a partner at Howard, Rice Nemerovski, Canady & Pollak for fourteen years.  Before joining Howard Rice, Justice Pollak served on the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and was Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General from 1963 to 1965.

Justice Pollak received his LL.B. from Harvard Law School in 1962, Magna Cum Laude.  

Justice Richman was born and raised in San Francisco. He attended Saint Ignatius High School, the University of San Francisco, and its School of Law. He received his J.D in 1965, graduating first in the class, and was president of the McAuliffe Law Honor Society.

Following law school Justice Richman clerked for the Honorable Raymond L. Sullivan on the First District Court of Appeal, and then served a year as Assistant Professor at Gonzaga University School of Law. In June 1967, he joined the law firm now known as Cooley Godward LLP, where he became a partner in 1972, and where he practiced law until appointed to the Alameda County Superior Court in 1996. Justice Richman served on the Superior Court for nine years, in both criminal and civil assignments, the last seven years in the law and motion department. He was appointed to the Court of Appeal in February 2006.

Justice Richman's practice at Cooley Godward was general commercial litigation, with emphasis on probate and trust litigation, primarily for charitable or non-profit institutions. His clients included the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children, and Guide Dogs for the Blind; he also represented the University of San Francisco and the Pacific School of Religion. Justice Richman also handled insurance coverage and related issues for business clients of the firm, and was the lead attorney on over 40 cases in the California and federal appellate courts.

From 1972 to 1997, Justice Richman taught as an Adjunct Professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, where he taught Evidence, Torts, and Civil Procedure Before Trial; he also served on the faculty in 2000 as a Distinguished Visiting Professor. He has also taught at numerous legal education programs, teaching both lawyers and judges. Before his appointment to the court, Justice Richman was involved in many bar associations and legal professional societies, and is currently a member of the California Academy of Appellate Lawyers and the Earl Warren American Inn of Court.

Mitchell E. Abbott is a shareholder in the Litigation Department at Richards, Watson & Gershon and Chair of the firm's Appellate Law Practice Group.  Mr. Abbott is currently one of fewer than 250 lawyers in the state designated as a Certified Specialist in Appellate Law by the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization.  For more than 30 years, he has specialized in the representation of municipalities and other public entities in a variety of cases at both the trial and appellate level, and in both the state and federal courts.  He has handled many constitutional cases arising under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the federal constitution, as well as land use cases and disputes arising under the California Environmental Quality Act.  Mr. Abbott has also handled litigation and appeals in public financing cases, including validating actions challenging the formation of redevelopment agencies and other districts, taxpayers' actions challenging the validity and fairness of local assessment districts, and a variety of other cases involving challenges to local enactments under Propositions 13 and 218.

While at the University of Virginia Law School, he was Notes Editor of the Virginia Journal of International Law.  He is a member of the California Academy of Appellate Lawyers, and of the State Bar Board of Legal Specialization's Appellate Law Advisory Committee, and he is a past chair of the State Bar of California's Standing Committee on Appellate Courts.  He is a contributing author of the CEB treatise, California Civil Appellate Practice (3d ed.) and of CEB's California Administrative Mandamus (3d ed).  He is a consulting editor of Bancroft Whitney's California Civil Practice regarding governmental immunities, and is co-author of the chapter on "Privileges and the Work Product Doctrine" in California Civil Discovery Practice (3d ed.).  In addition to his legal career, Mr. Abbott serves on the Board of Directors of Los Angeles Music Week and is a past Moderator of First Congregational Church of Los Angeles.

Randee Barak has been a Senior Appellate Attorney at the California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District since 1999.  Prior to coming to the Court of Appeal, Ms. Barak specialized in business and health care litigation for Sidley Austin, working in both its Litigation and Appellate Practice groups.  Ms. Barak graduated with honors from UCLA School of Law in 1992 and, following graduation, served as law clerk to the Honorable Judge Arthur Alarcon on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  A member of the Los Angeles County Bar Appellate Courts Committee, she is the co-chair of the “Appellate Court Experience program (ACE),” a program developed in conjunction with the Constitutional Rights Foundation to educate Los Angeles County area high school students about the appellate court system.  In 2008 the Constitutional Rights Foundation honored Ms. Barak as “Lawyer of the Year for the Public Sector.”  She is the author of several articles on litigation and appellate practice. 

Gina M. Calvelli has been a Senior Appellate Court Attorney since 2001.  Ms. Calvelli formerly worked for Associate Justice Richard M. Mosk (Division 5) and currently works for Associate Justice Thomas L. Willhite, Jr. (Division 4).  Between 1993 and 2001, Ms. Calvelli was a Parter at Riordan & McKinzie where she specialized in Appellate Law.  Prior to joining Riordan & McKinzie, Ms. Calvelli practiced at the San Francisco firm of Khourie, Crew & Jaeger.  Ms. Calvelli is a 1991 graduate of Stanford Law School.

Wendy C. Lascher, Esq. is a Certified Specialist in Appellate Law, California Board of Legal Specialization.  She has handled more than 300 state and federal appeals and has argued in the United States Supreme Court, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 7th and 9th Circuits, the California Supreme Court, and the California Courts of Appeal.  She is a board member of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, a past president of the California Academy of Appellate Lawyers, and a former chair of both the State Bar's Appellate Courts Committee and the Board of Legal Specialization's Appellate Law Advisory Committee.

Ms. Lascher graduated from Stanford University in 1970 and from the University of Michigan Law School in 1973.  Among her landmark cases are In re Marriage of Pendleton and Fireman (2000) 24 Cal.4th 39, the first California case to hold spouses may waive spousal support in a properly drafted prenuptial agreement, Morehart v. County of Santa Barbara (1994) 7 Cal.4th 725; clarifying appealability of judgments on separately tried issues, and Sanchez v. Hillerich Bradsby (2002) 104 Cal.App.4th 703, holding that although the game of baseball includes an inherent risk a player may be hit by a batted ball, where a bat increases the risk above that inherent level, a player does not as a matter of law assume the risk of being hit by a batted ball.  Ms. Lascher teaches appellate law at the Santa Barbara and Ventura Colleges of Law.  She is a past president of the Ventura County Bar Association, and has been editor of its magazine, CITATIONS, for several years.

Robin Meadow joined Greines, Martin, Stein & Richland LLP as a partner in 1994, after 23 years as a trial and appellate lawyer in a major commercial firm.  He has successfully defended lender liability actions before both juries and appellate courts.  Robin continues to focus his practice on business disputes involving such areas as real estate, title insurance, partnerships, professional malpractice and intellectual property, and in all of these areas his appellate work has resulted in groundbreaking decisions.  Robin co-authored the Second District Court of Appeal's protocol for electronic briefs (since adopted by other districts), and he filed the first electronic brief ever accepted by that court.  Robin has shared his expertise with the legal community through countless articles and lectures on business litigation and appellate law.

Robin has been a member of the California Academy of Appellate Lawyers since 1988, serving as its president in 2005-2006, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.  He is listed in 'The Best Lawyers in America' and was named one of the 'Top 100 Southern California Super Lawyers for 2006.'

In addition, throughout his career Robin has been active in the organized bar and community organizations.  Among many other activities, he served as the president of the Los Angeles County Bar Association (2003-2004); as the chair of many Association committees, including its Appellate Courts Committee (2001-2003); as the president of Public Counsel (the nation's largest pro bono legal services organization); and as the president of Hathaway Children and Family Services (a nationally-recognized multi-service organization focusing on vulnerable children and their families).  He has also served for many years on the Board of Directors of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.

Robin is a graduate of the Boalt Hall School of Law (J.D. 1971, Order of the Coif) and the University of California, Berkeley (1968).

T. Peter Pierce is a shareholder and Assistant Chair of the Litigation Department at Richards, Watson & Gershon.  Mr. Pierce is one of fewer than 250 attorneys designated as a Certified Specialist in Appellate Law by the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization.  Mr. Pierce has represented public agencies before the United States Supreme Court and other appellate courts.  The cases Mr. Pierce has managed from inception through the appellate process have involved land use and zoning issues, CEQA, constitutional law, telecommunications law, inverse condemnation issues, and elections law.

Mr. Pierce is a member of the California State Bar Committee on Appellate Courts.  He is a contributing author of the CEB treatise, California Administrative Mandamus (3d ed.), and is a consulting editor of CEB's California Civil Appellate Practice (3d ed), and California Civil Writ Practice (4th ed.)  Mr. Pierce also is an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California Law School.  He has served as a volunteer in Los Angeles County's Temporary Judge Program.

Outside of his law practice, Mr. Pierce is an Advisory Trustee to the ALS Association, Greater Los Angeles Chapter, a non-profit organization assisting those afflicted with Lou Gehrig's Disease.  Mr. Pierce served as a Trustee of the chapter from 2002-2005 and has represented the chapter in meetings with members of Congress.

Mr. Shatz is certified as an appellate law specialist by the California State Bar Board of Legal Specialization and is a member of  the Appellate Practice Group in the Los Angeles office of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP.  He has briefed hundreds of civil appeals, writs and petitions to the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Courts of Appeals, California Supreme Court and California Courts of Appeal, covering a variety of practice areas.  Mr. Shatz frequently contributes appellate law articles to periodicals including CEB’s Civil Litigation Reporter, Los Angeles Lawyer, California Lawyer, and the Daily Journal.  He is the Chair of the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s Appellate Courts Committee and the Vice Chair of the California State Bar's Committee on Appellate Courts.  He has been named by Los Angeles Magazine and Law & Politics Magazine as one of Southern California’s “Super Lawyers” in the field of Appellate Law, 2004-2010.

Mr. Shatz also served as Law Clerk to the Honorable Robert J. Johnston, United States Magistrate Judge for the District of Nevada and as Extern to the Honorable Dorothy W. Nelson, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  Mr. Shatz graduated magna cum laude from Pepperdine University School of Law, and was an Associate Editor of the Pepperdine Law Review and an Assistant Editor of the California Supreme Court Survey.

A seasoned career court attorney, Greg Wolff has been a judicial attorney in both the Court of Appeal in Los Angeles and at the California Supreme Court for more than twenty years.  He currently serves as a senior research attorney for an appellate court in the California court system.  As Supervisor of the Appellate Section of the Criminal Branch of the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office, and in the Appellate Section of the Civil Branch, Mr. Wolff has briefed and argued over 350 appeals and 100 writ proceedings.  He has been an Adjunct Professor at UC Hastings College of the Law since 2000, where he teaches Moot Court and Legal Writing & Research.  In 1977, Mr. Wolff received his J.D. from Southwestern University School of Law, where he was an editor of the law review.

Elliot Bien is one of California’s most highly regarded civil appellate specialists.  A former law professor, he has argued cases in the United States Supreme Court; the California Supreme Court, the Ninth and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeals, and almost all California Courts of Appeal. His appellate experience covers an unusually wide array of legal subjects. 

Before forming an appellate specialty firm in 1990, he was a partner and chair of the appellate department of Bronson, Bronson & McKinnon, a large San Francisco firm.

Elliot’s memberships and leadership roles include: President, California Academy of Appellate Lawyers (2002-2003); member since 1987; Fellow, American Academy of Appellate Lawyers (elected 1994); Among first group of lawyers certified as appellate specialists by the State Bar of California (1997); Founder and chair (1985-1988), Committee on Appellate Courts of the Bar Association of San Francisco (1985); received Award of Merit in 1987 for contributions to appellate practice; AV rating by Martindale-Hubbell since 1980; Northern California “Super Lawyer” in appellate practice every year since San Francisco Magazine started the program in 2004; Best Lawyers in America, 2008-2009; Best lawyer in Northern California, “J” Magazine (formerly N.Cal. Jewish Bulletin) (2005).  Elliot is also a member of the State Bar of California’s Litigation Section and the Marin County Bar Association’s Judicial Fairness Committee.

Elliot is widely published and frequently speaks at Bar Association and Appellate Committee CLE programs.  Some of his publications and presentations include: Author, “Toward a Community of Professionalism,” 3 Journal of Appellate Practice & Process 475 (Fall 2001); Author, “A New Way for Courts To Promote Professionalism,” 86 Judicature 132 (Nov-Dec 2002); Panelist on “Ethical Issues and Bias in Litigation” (Marin County Bar Assn. 2001); Founder and coordinator, California First Appellate District’s Bench-Bar Lunch Series for Professionalism (2004-2008); Guest speaker, “Zeal and Restraint in Appellate Advocacy,” at the second meeting of the Gerald Brown Inn of Appellate Court (2004); Guest speaker on professionalism at First District Appellate Project’s training seminar (2005); Panelist on “Appellate Ethics: Candor & Beyond” (Bar Assn. of San Francisco 2006); Panelist on “Ethical Issues and Bias in Litigation” (Marin County Bar Assn. 2001).

Elliot also helped establish the Gerald Brown Inn of Appellate Court, a professionalism project sponsored by the California Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division One, in San Diego (2002-2003). 

Elliot received his J.D. in 1971 from Columbia Law School, and his LL.M. in 1972 from Harvard Law School.

A lengthier bio and representative cases Elliot has litigated can be found at http://biencounsel.com/bio_bien.asp.

Mr. Bromberg is an experienced appellate advocate who has argued before the United States Supreme Court as well as numerous federal and state appellate courts.  With more than a decade’s experience in the Supreme Court, Mr. Bromberg is familiar with all aspects of Supreme Court practice, including merits briefing, petitions for certiorari, and amicus briefs.  He also is experienced with practice in federal appeals courts and California appellate practice, including writ petitions, requests for depublication, and petitions for review.  

Mr. Bromberg’s practice focuses upon intellectual property, commercial disputes, constitutional law, and other complex legal matters at both the trial and appellate levels.  He has been involved in many of the patent cases before the Supreme Court in recent years, filing amicus briefs on behalf of high tech companies in both the eBay and KSR cases.  He also has litigated several groundbreaking copyright cases and is currently litigating appeals involving patents, trademarks, antitrust, and punitive damages.  

Carin Fujisaki has been an appellate attorney with the California Supreme Court since 1990.  She spent her first year on the court’s civil central staff handling petitions for review, and has since served as a judicial staff attorney for Associate Justice Marvin R. Baxter.  Prior to joining the court, Ms. Fujisaki worked as a litigation associate with the San Francisco law firm of Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Robertson & Falk.

She received her J.D. in 1985 from U.C. Hastings College of the Law, where she served as an associate editor of the Hastings Law Journal.  In 2003, Governor Gray Davis appointed Ms. Fujisaki to the Board of Directors of U.C. Hastings, where she currently chairs the Educational Policy Committee and is a member of both the Finance Committee and the Advancement and Communications Committee.

Amy Margolin practices at Bien & Summers, a civil appellate boutique headquartered in Marin County.    

Ms. Margolin has more than ten years of experience in civil appellate litigation, representing clients on appeal in a wide range of disputes, including complex commercial litigation, bankruptcy matters, business torts, family law, employment matters, trade secret disputes, arbitration issues, and constitutional litigation.  

She has successfully argued cases in the California Court of Appeal and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, including before an en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit.  Before joining Bien & Summers, Ms. Margolin was a director in the Appellate Practice Group of Howard Rice Canady Falk & Rabkin in San Francisco. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Stanford Law School, lectures frequently in the area of appellate practice, and since 2007 has been recognized in the annual “Super Lawyers” survey of Law & Politics as among the top five percent of lawyers practicing in Northern California in the area of civil appeals.

Mr. Schulman's practice involves appeals, representation of public entities, representation of attorneys and law firms, and complex commercial litigation.  

He has been a Certified Appellate Specialist since 2003, is a member of the California Academy of Appellate Lawyers, and Vice Chair of the Appellate Practice Section of the San Francisco Bar Association.

Mr. Schulman joined FLK in 2008 after practicing for many years as a litigation partner in a prominent San Francisco law firm. He is AV Peer Review Rated and has been selected as a Northern California Super Lawyer each year since 2004.

Mr. Schulman received his J.D. in 1983 from Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, Order of the Coif.

Todd E. Thompson has been a Judicial Staff Attorney in the First District of the California Court of Appeal since 2003.  He currently works in the chambers of the Honorable Sandra L. Margulies.

Prior to joining the court, Mr. Thompson was a litigation partner at Howard, Rice Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin for eighteen years.  While at Howard, Rice, he had a broad commercial civil practice, with particular emphasis on land use and intellectual property law.  Although Mr. Thompson’s practice at Howard Rice was primarily in the trial court, he litigated a significant number of appeals, including two appeals challenging the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, Holmes v. California National Guard, 90 Cal. App. 4th 297 (2001) and Holmes v. California Army National Guard, 124 F.3d 1126 (9th Cir. 1998), and cases in the Federal Circuit, such as Elekta Instrument S.A. v. O.U.R. Scientific International, Inc., 214 F.3d 1302 (Fed. Cir. 2000).  Prior to joining Howard Rice, Mr. Thompson served from 1983 to 1985 as a law clerk to the Honorable Charles S. Haight, Jr., in the US District Court, Southern District of New York.

Mr. Thompson is currently serving as a member of the State Bar’s Judicial Nominee Evaluation Commission and is admitted to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.  He received his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law in 1983, Order of the Coif.  He also holds a M.S. in Agronomy from Cornell University and a B.A. in Environmental Science from the University of Santa Barbara.