Adjunct

Assistant Professor Gary Alexander received his A.B. degree in Biology from Harvard University in 1988. He received his J.D. from the University of San Francisco School of Law in 1993 and is an active member of the California Bar. From 1993 through 2006, he practiced privately in San Francisco as a trial lawyer, including with his own firm of Meis & Alexander for nearly a decade. In 2006, he was appointed to the post of deputy attorney general with the California Department of Justice....

Jackie Ammon is a corporate attorney in the Palo Alto office of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP. Jackie counsels technology and life sciences clients on corporate governance, fundraising strategy, securities law, and technology transactions. She provides practical, solutions-oriented legal advice to navigate clients through legal and business challenges throughout their lifecycle. Jackie received her JD cum laude from USF School of Law and her Bachelor of Arts in political science...

Eric Anderson leads the San Francisco Bay Area state and local tax practice of Andersen Tax. He focuses on income tax planning and compliance, sales and use tax transaction planning, mergers and acquisitions, franchise tax matters, and administrative tax controversies. Eric has extensive experience with unitary tax planning, business and nonbusiness issues, and entity structuring to manage multistate tax liabilities. Eric also serves as a national resource negotiating credits and incentives on...

Adjunct Professor Robert S. Arns has practiced trial and appellate law in San Francisco since 1975, specializing in serious injury or death arising out of product failure cases, Federal Employers Liability Act actions, Jones Act actions, construction site incidents, mass torts, medical negligence and other tortuous conduct, as well as class action suits. He founded The Arns Law Firm with offices in San Francisco and Reno in 1996. He was named Trial Lawyer of the Year in 2004 by San Francisco...

Eileen Barker is an internationally acclaimed attorney, mediator forgiveness teacher, and coach. A practicing lawyer who rejected the traditional adversarial role, Eileen focused her practice on mediation for over twenty-five years, helping thousands of people resolve disputes outside of court. This work led her into a deep exploration of forgiveness as it relates to resolving conflict and making peace, both with others and oneself. Eileen is the founder of The Path of Forgiveness and the...

Laurence A. Blau is a certified specialist in estate planning, trust and probate law, certified by the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization. He has published various articles, including co-authoring an article in the California Tax Lawyer on the effect of tax changes on subchapter S corporations. He has published a textbook entitled Fundamentals of California Estate Planning and Estate Administration. He is a regular panelist for numerous organizations conducting seminars...

Thomas J. Brandi has tried cases to verdict in 18 jurisdictions and has obtained numerous jury verdicts ranging from $1 million to $1 billion. A lawyer for more than 35 years, in 1993 Brandi started his own firm, The Brandi Law Firm, representing plaintiffs in serious injury and mass tort cases. He was Consumer Attorneys of California Trial Lawyer of the year in 2004 (also nominated in 2002 and 2012), a five–time nominee for Trial Lawyer of the Year for the San Francisco Trial Lawyers...

Carol Brown has litigation experience in both the private and public sector and recently retired as an administrative law judge (ALJ) with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). As an ALJ, she was primarily assigned to energy procurement proceedings for the California gas and electric utilities, with the responsibility for cases authorizing the electric utilities to acquire electricity following the failed deregulation experiment. Ms. Brown was also appointed to matters that drove...

Daniel Bryant is a senior attorney with the Office of Chief Counsel for the IRS. As an attorney with the Office of Chief Counsel, he represents the IRS in cases before the United States Tax Court, serving as lead attorney for more than 10 trials. In addition, Daniel provides IRS employees with advice on a variety of corporate, partnership, and individual tax issues. Daniel also worked as a tax and estate planning associate at a large international law firm. Daniel graduated with honors from UC...

Professor Carroll is president of the Law Offices of Carroll & Scully, Inc., San Francisco, representing unions and workers for some 55 years. The firm also represents trustees of Taft-Hartley trusts for pension, health, apprenticeship, and other types of plans providing employee benefits. 

Doris Cheng is a shareholder at Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger and co-director of USF School of Law's Intensive Advocacy Program. As the current president of the Bar Association of San Francisco, she is focused on bringing more women into trial law. Cheng has been ranked as one of the top 50 women lawyers in Northern California. She is listed among the Best Lawyers of America, Super Lawyers, and San Francisco Best Lawyers. Specializing in complex injuries caused by third-party...

Jerry Coleman retired July 1, 2014, after 35 years as an assistant district attorney in the City and County of San Francisco. His most recent position was as chief of the Brady, Appellate, and Training Division, which he held since 2011. In that post he supervised all SFDA’s appellate litigation, trained the entire office, and developed advocacy programs for all trial lawyers and new hires, and managed the Trial Integrity Unit, which handled all prosecution discovery and defense notice...

Sasha M. Cummings is a circuit mediator at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. As a circuit mediator, Ms. Cummings is responsible for mediating federal appellate matters throughout the Ninth Circuit, which encompasses CA, AZ, NV, ID, MT, OR, WA, AK, HI, GU, and MP. Prior to her appointment as a circuit mediator, Ms. Cummings enjoyed an accomplished practice as a partner at a national law firm, successful trial attorney, and mediator with 20 years of litigation experience. Her trial...

Morgan Daly graduated cum laude from USF School of Law in 2005. She served as a legal research attorney for the San Francisco Superior Court and then for the California Supreme Court. In 2008, she opened her private criminal defense practice in Marin County. Ms. Daly's practice is dedicated to representing primarily indigent clients in criminal matters at the trial and appellate levels.

Since 1993, Mr. Dergosits has taught patent law as an adjunct professor of patent law at the University of San Francisco School of Law. In 2005, he was honored as the Distinguished Adjunct Professor of the Year. He frequently speaks and authors publications on intellectual property topics. Mr. Dergosits possesses more than 25 years of legal experience and focuses on handling trials, trial preparation, and counseling (including litigation avoidance) regarding patent matters. He founded Dergosits...

Shounak Dharap is a plaintiffs’ attorney at The Arns Law Firm. Shounak represents working families, consumers, and other injured people through complex litigation in federal and state court, as well as in arbitration. His practice areas include labor and employment, consumer privacy and fraud, and financial elder abuse. He also represents families in wrongful death actions, as well as wildfire cases against PG&E. His passion is in the area of labor and employment, where he has litigated gig...

Adjunct Professor Adrian Driscoll is a senior counsel in the San Francisco office of Murphy, Pearson, Bradley & Feeney. In his over 30 years of practice, he has litigated a variety of civil cases and appeals in state and federal courts. Driscoll is a past member of the USF Law Society's Board of Governors and the State Bar's Committee on the Administration of Justice (Litigation Section) and Committee on the History of Law in California, as well as a past president of the St. Thomas More...

Roy Eisenhardt graduated from Berkeley Law after serving in the Marine Corps, and practiced law in San Francisco until joining Berkeley as a visiting professor in 1978. In 1980 he became president of the Oakland Athletics, and in 1989 he accepted the role of executive director of the California Academy of Sciences. The interim president of the San Francisco Art Institute in 2010, Eisenhardt has served as a lecturer in sports law at Berkeley Law since 2011.

Julie is a founding partner of Erickson Kramer Osborne. Julie’s practice focuses on all phases of complex class action litigation. She exclusively represents plaintiffs in a diverse set of state and national class actions involving consumer fraud, employment/wage and hour violations, and elder abuse disputes in both federal and state courts. Her areas of expertise include employment misclassification, false advertising, and the issue of forced arbitration.

Professor Eric R. Fleming is a San Francisco Superior Court judge and was the chief trial attorney of the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office. He also managed the homicide and gang units during his tenure with the District Attorney's office. Professor Fleming earned a JD from the University of San Francisco School of Law and a BS in engineering from Tulane University. After law school, Professor Fleming worked as an associate at Cooley Godward from 1995 to 1999. He was an extern for the...

Peter Harvey has practiced intellectual property law, with a focus on trademark and copyright law, in San Francisco for over 30 years. He has served on the board of the International Trademark Association (INTA), a 140-year old organization representing trademark owners worldwide, and as INTA’s counsel. He has taught Entertainment & Media Law as an adjunct professor at USF School of Law since 2001. He received USF’s Adjunct Professor of the Year Award in 2013. Annually since 2016, he has...

Kimberly Irish serves as a program manager at OneJustice, where she leads the organization’s statewide Healthy Nonprofits Program. Kim is responsible for developing continuing education programs for alumni of the OneJustice Executive Fellowship Program, and oversees the organization’s consulting work, which provides training, coaching, and other resources to the executives and boards of OneJustice’s statewide network of 100+ nonprofit legal organizations on board governance, fundraising, and...

Kevin Jackson is an attorney at Aaron, Riechert, Carpol & Riffle, APC, where he represents fiduciaries and individuals in a wide range of trust and estate matters, including estate planning, trust and estate administration, conservatorships, guardianships, trust and estate litigation, financial elder abuse, and related civil claims.

Adjunct Professor Teri L. Jackson is the first African-American woman to serve as a superior court judge in San Francisco. She has extensive litigation experience in civil and criminal law. In 2008, she was selected by the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court to sit in Riverside County on a special Criminal Backlog Reduction Task Force, which resolved more than one thousand backlogged criminal cases in one year. She also served as an advisory member and then voting member of the...

Tomasene Knight is an associate attorney at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, where she focuses her practice on estate and tax planning for large and sophisticated estates, wealth transfer and asset protection, estate and trust administration, and estate and trust litigation. She was previously an associate attorney at Aaron, Riechert, Carpol & Riffle, APC. Ms. Knight graduated magna cum laude from the University of San Francisco School of Law, where she was a member of the McAuliffe...

Judge Victoria Kolakowski became the first openly transgender trial court judge of general jurisdiction when she was elected in Alameda County, California in 2010. She is passionate about ensuring access to justice and is the California Council of Churches' appointee to the California Access to Justice Commission. She is a former president of the International Association of LGBTQ+ Judges (2015-2017), and she has spoken widely internationally on LGBT issues, especially transgender legal issues.

Cliff Kuehn is Of Counsel at Dergosits & Noah, a full-service intellectual property firm in San Francisco. He assists multinational companies with implementing global trademark prosecution and enforcement strategies and works across several industries including high tech companies, food and beverage brands, fashion labels, and entertainment. His extensive intellectual property experience and education abroad in Germany, Spain, Sweden, and India are the lens through which he counsels and...

Carol M. Langford is a lawyer in the San Francisco Bay Area. She specializes in giving advice on legal ethics and discipline to attorneys, judges, law firms, and corporations, and in representing lawyers and law students before the California State Bar in disciplinary and admissions matters. She serves as a national expert witness in the ethics area. She was formerly a partner in the Walnut Creek office of the international law firm of Carroll, Burdick & McDonough, where she was ethics...

Elinor Leary is the team leader of the Leary Trial Team at The Veen Firm. She and her team represent plaintiffs in civil cases--people who have been seriously injured due to unsafe worksite conditions, defective products, dangerous property conditions, negligent security, and vehicle collisions. Elinor has tried many cases to verdict. Several of her other cases have been listed in The Recorder's "Top Settlements" publications. Since 2011, Elinor has been listed continuously on various Super...

Ellen V. Leonida is the forensic staff attorney for the Northern District of California Federal Public Defender’s Office. She received her BA from the University of California at Santa Cruz and her JD from the University of California at Berkeley. Ms. Leonida worked for the Contra Costa County Public Defender’s office for nine years before going into private practice in San Francisco. She has been an assistant federal public defender in the Northern District of California since 2010.  Ms....

Adjunct Professor Frank R. Lindh is the retired general counsel of the California Public Utilities Commission and currently a solo practitioner. Mr. Lindh has been a practicing lawyer in the field of energy law for 33 years, initially in Washington, D.C., and since 1991 in San Francisco. Lindh is former president of the Western Chapter of the Energy Bar Association, and is a past member of the Energy Bar Association's national board of directors. He also has been a member of the board of...

David Longinotti is chair of Hanson Bridgett LLP’s 30-attorney real estate section. He specializes in complex real estate secured transactions and related debt and equity financing arrangements. In connection with his real estate practice, Longinotti is a LEED® accredited professional who provides specialized green building services to owners and developers. His recent credits include serving as lead counsel for the development of 200,000 square foot food processing facility. The development...

In addition to teaching at USF, Brian Love is an associate professor of law at Santa Clara University School of Law, where he also serves as co-director of the school’s High Tech Law Institute. His research focuses on patent law and policy, and he teaches courses in patent law, intellectual property law, and remedies. Prior to joining Santa Clara, Brian was a lecturer and teaching fellow at Stanford Law School, where he ran the LLM program in Law, Science, & Technology. He also practiced...

Everett Monroe is an attorney at ZwillGen where he advises a wide range of clients on state, federal, and international data privacy laws and regulations. He received his BS in electrical engineering at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo in 2005, and his JD from the University of San Francisco in 2014. In addition to teaching information privacy law, Everett is also actively involved with USF’s Moot Court Program, coaching its trademark competition teams and working with...

Stephen Murphy is the associate director of the Alameda County Family Justice Center in Oakland. The center provides wrap-around services to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, trafficking, elder abuse, and child abuse. Prior to his work with the Family Justice Center, Stephen was the founder and managing partner of Murphy, Vu, Thongsamouth and Chatterjee, LLP. Murphy, Vu, Thongsamouth & Chatterjee is a community-based boutique law firm offering high quality legal representation...

Erin O'Donnell has been a private criminal defense attorney since graduating from the University of San Francisco School of Law in 2000. She started her career at Pier 5 Law Offices working with the notable J. Tony Serra. After honing her skills at Pier 5, she opened her own office and continued her work as a criminal defense warrior. She has almost two decades of criminal defense work in state and federal courts. Erin works with Professor Lara Bazelon in the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Law...

Matthew M. O’Toole is senior special counsel (regulatory counsel) for the national examination program in the San Francisco Regional Office of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and has worked for the Commission for over 15 years. He received his BBA (1986 summa cum laude) in finance and economics from the University of Notre Dame, and his JD (1991) from Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, where he was an associate editor of the Law Review. Prior to rejoining the SEC, he...

Adjunct Professor Thomas A. Onda has served as chief counsel, global intellectual property, brands and marketing at Levi Strauss & Co for more than 15 years. A former student of Professor J. Thomas McCarthy, Onda has taught intellectual property and trademark law at USF and was awarded the Hon. Ira Brown Distinguished Adjunct Professor Award in 2010. He also serves on the Law School Board of Governors and the USF Intellectual Property Alumni Advisory Board. Before joining Levi Strauss, he...

Adjunct Professor Joseph A. Piasta II has had his own private practice, the Law Offices of Joseph A. Piasta II, since August 2014. He has been a trial lawyer since 1977, practicing in the Army Judge Advocate General's Corps (both active and reserve components, attaining the rank of Colonel), and several Santa Rosa civil litigation firms. He specializes in civil litigation and trial practice, and has been lead counsel in several lengthy trials exceeding 50 days in length. He has tried cases on...

Peter C. Rock is an Assistant Director in the Advance Pricing and Mutual Agreement Program within the Large Business and International Division of the IRS. He is responsible for transfer pricing and allocation cases arising within the U. S. Competent Authority program. Mr. Rock has extensive and broad experience within the IRS and its Office of Chief Counsel. Prior to his current position, he was a Branch Chief with the Advance Pricing Program of the Office of Associate Chief Counsel (...

Lois Schwartz is senior lecturer in law and a member of the full-time faculty at UC Hastings College of the Law. In addition to teaching, she completed a judicial clerkship in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in 2001-2002 and has served as a staff attorney and deputy public defender in Contra Costa County.

Mr. Shaltes has worked in California state income tax appeals since 1993. Prior to that, he spent six years in private practice, mainly in civil litigation matters. He has also been an adjunct professor of law at University of San Diego School of Law and Loyola Law School Los Angeles. Mr. Shaltes has been a presenter at several tax seminars, including the IRS Tax Forum.

Mani Sheik is the principal at Sheik Law in San Francisco. His primary practice is in labor and employment, commercial litigation, and appellate litigation. Mani’s labor and employment practice includes wage and hour litigation, class action litigation, wrongful termination, harassment, and discrimination, as well as advice and counsel to employers and conducting internal investigations. In law school, he chaired the Moot Court Board and was on the California Law Review, and served as a...

Karren Shorofsky is an attorney and art historian who has spent most of her career focused on legal issues related to the arts, emerging technology, and museums and other nonprofit institutions. She holds a BA in art history from Brown University, a JD from Yale Law School, and an MA in art history from San Francisco State University.  After working with the general counsel of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Karren practiced at major San Francisco law firms for more than a decade....

Cristina is a Senior Staff Attorney at the Animal Legal Defense Fund, where she litigates on behalf of farmed and wild animals to protect them from the harmful effects of industrial animal agriculture. Before joining the Animal Legal Defense Fund in 2017, she spent five years challenging industrial agricultural practices that threaten human, animal, and environmental health as an attorney with the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit organization in San Francisco. She earned her J.D. with honors...

Mr. Tomita is a founder of the intellectual property law firm, Staniford Tomita LLP. Mr Tomita's practice includes patent preparation, prosecution, infringement and invalidity, trademarks, and copyrights. He has extensive experience in a wide range of technologies including electrical, mechanical, medical devices, optical equipment, semiconductor fabrication, computer networks, encryption, cloud storage, and green energy systems. Mr. Tomita also an advisor, lecturer, and mentor for various...

Steve Varholik is senior counsel at the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission, where he works in the Division of Enforcement’s Public Finance Abuse Unit. In addition to his work there, Steve has served as special counsel in the Division of Trading and Markets. Prior to joining the Commission, Steve practiced in law firms in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco. In private practice, Steve represented clients in securities regulatory enforcement matters, securities arbitrations and mediations,...

Jon Vaught is a partner in the firm of Vaught & Boutris, LLP in Oakland, California. His practice is focused on counseling and litigation in the areas of tax, estate planning, probate and trust administration and asset protection. Mr. Vaught received a B.A. degree with honors from the University of California, Berkeley in 1981, a Juris Doctor degree from the University of California, Davis, School of Law in 1984 and an L.L.M. degree in tax law from Golden Gate University, School of Law in...

Steven L. Walker focuses on tax controversy and litigation and has experience both in private practice and government service. His practice focuses on representing clients in sensitive tax controversies with the Internal Revenue Service and state and local taxing agencies including the California Franchise Tax Board, the State Board of Equalization, the Employment Development Department, and county assessment appeals boards. His clients include individuals, corporations, investors, partnerships...

Adjunct Professor Matt White is a partner of Monty White LLP, a civil litigation law firm in San Rafael, California. He lectures and writes extensively for lawyers and law students on mediation, trial practice, ethics, and settlement skills. For each of the past 12 years, he has been recognized as a Northern California “Super Lawyer.” As a panelist with Resolution Remedies, he is frequently appointed by the courts and by lawyers throughout the San Francisco Bay Area to serve as a mediator,...

For the past 15 years, Jacque has worked with or mentored USF law students in the Criminal and Racial Justice Clinics. A senior trial lawyer at the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, he serves as the growth and development training director, working with new attorneys, running the intern program, coordinating office training, and handling post-conviction cases. As a trial attorney, Jacque helped reform California’s felony murder rule though the passage of SB 1437. SB 1437 significantly...

Tyson Winarski is a registered patent attorney (BSME, MSEE) specializing in patent licensing, patent portfolio strategic development, and patent prosecution based in Mountain View, California. He is also the inventor of 24 patents in the fields of renewable energy, graphene-based optic fibers, nano-composite storage mediums, and social networking devices. Tyson has testified as an expert witness on licensing in Federal District Court and is widely published on IP matters. His patent practice...

Adjunct Professor Hon. Beverly Wood is a Superior Court judge in Marin County. In her capacity as a bench officer over the last 13 years, she has served in the criminal, family, and juvenile departments. She is also founder of the Marin Superior Court’s Community Court program. Judge Wood regularly offers presentations, classes, or seminars in the areas of family law, mediation, and specialty courts. She has been involved in creating and cultivating innovative settlement programs in Marin...

Davis G. Yee is a Special Trial Attorney with the Office of Chief Counsel for the IRS. As such, he represents the Commissioner of Internal Revenue in significant cases before the United States Tax Court. Before joining USF, Davis was an adjunct professor at Golden Gate University School of Law, teaching in the LLM in Taxation program there for over eight years. As a law student, Davis was a member of a moot court team that won awards in both the legal writing and oral argument categories of the...

Dana Zartner is an Associate Professor in the International Studies Department at the University of San Francisco and is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Law. She received her BA in International Relations from Hamline University, her JD, with a concentration in international law from Boston University, and her Ph.D. in Political Science from UC Davis. Professor Zartner specializes in international and comparative law, with a focus on the intersection of environmental justice and human...