Faculty

Adam Abelkop teaches the 1L sequence in legal research, writing, and analysis as well as torts, remedies, and environmental justice.

From 2016 to 2019, he served as a teaching fellow supervising Stanford Law School's Environmental Law and Policy LLM program. His research focuses on institutional analysis within the realm of public health and environmental protection. Adam has written on chemical risk regulation, international and domestic climate change policy, and the role of tort law in...

Professor J.P. Allen is a pioneering researcher and educator in the field of online/internet business, specializing in open technologies and the digital transformation of organizations and society. He is the author of Digital Entrepreneurship and Technology and Inequality: Concentrated Wealth in a Digital World.

As founding chair of the Technology, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Department, Dr. Allen pioneered the development of internet business classes, which guide non-technical...

Lara Bazelon is a professor of law and the director of the Criminal Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice Clinical Programs at the University of San Francisco School of Law. From 2012-2015, she was a visiting associate clinical professor at Loyola Law School and the director of the Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent. Professor Bazelon was a trial attorney in the Office of the Federal Public Defender in Los Angeles for seven years. Prior to that, she was a law clerk for the Honorable Harry...

Luke Boso is an associate professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, where he teaches Constitutional Law I, Constitutional Law II, Criminal Law, Education Law, Family Law, and Remedies. He has also served as a part-time visiting professor at the UC Hastings College of Law since 2019, where he teaches Constitutional Law II. Previously, Boso taught courses dealing with law and sexuality for two years as a law teaching fellow with the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law...

Assistant Professor Zachary C. Burns specializes in managerial and organizational behavior with research in the psychology of morality and ethics, applications in law, and judgment and decision-making. His works surrounds behavioral patterns, intellectual property and intentionality. Dr. Burns previously taught as a Visiting Assistant Professor and Postdoctoral Fellow at Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

He has had articles on his research published in the Journal of...

Professor Mark V. Cannice is an internationally recognized scholar, teacher, and speaker on entrepreneurship and venture capital. He is Department Chair and Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation with the University of San Francisco School of Management.

Cannice writes the widely-followed quarterly Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index Report® which is published by ProQuest and EBSCO, indexed globally on Bloomberg Professional Services in 170 countries (Bloomberg ticker...

Roger Chen brings to USF forward-thinking expertise in the fields of corporate innovation and growth, competition and global strategy - areas he views as entirely interdependent. By developing a balanced approach to his research endeavors - devoting equal time and effort between pure quantitative/academic research and case research methods - Dr. Chen embodies academic rigor, benefiting his students, fellow academics, global corporations and communities with his egalitarian work philosophy.

Pr...

Ludwig B. Chincarini, CFA, PhD, is Professor of Finance in the School of Management at the University of San Francisco as well as an advisor to United States Commodity Fund Investments with over fifteen years of experience in the financial industry specializing in portfolio management, quantitative equity management, and derivatives. He also works with an angel group to help start-up companies. Prior to that he was a member of the academic council of Index IQ which was bought by NY Life in 2015...

Jonathan previously served at Golden Gate University School of Law as the Director of Bar Exam Services and the Director of Graduate Law Programs. He was a former grader for a national bar company and has tutored students and attorneys for over 16 years to pass the California bar exam. He has worked with associates and partners from top 25 law firms and Fortune 500 companies to successfully pass the bar exam.

Jonathan worked as a staff aide to Congressman Tom Lantos (SF/San Mateo) and served...

Assistant Professor Fernando Comiran brings to USF both an enthusiasm for accounting and a philosophy that attempts to integrate real-world application and leading-edge research in the classroom. His research areas of interest include Earnings Management, Accounting Fraud, Voluntary Disclosure, Financial Statement Analysis, and Security Valuation.

Currently, Professor Comiran is focusing his research on individual investor behavior and company incentives to better understand how disclosure...

Kimberly Rae Connor is the author of Conversions and Visions in the Writings of African American Women (Tennessee, 1994) and Imagining Grace: Liberating Theologies in the Slave Narrative Tradition (Illinois, 2000). She has written extensively on African American religious life and cultural production and multicultural and Ignatian pedagogy. Connor has also been active as an editor for Oxford University Press and in service to the American Academy of Religion.

Although trained in the...

Amy Flynn joined USF Law in 2007. From 2004 to 2007, Flynn served as the Assistant Public Defender in Contra Costa County. She is co-author of California Criminal Law: Cases and Problems, 4th Ed. As Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Flynn oversees the law school’s academic programs and is responsible for curricular program development and implementation, including the Academic and Bar Exam Success Program. As a member of the faculty, she has taught Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, and...

Assistant Professor John Gonzales is internationally recognized for his service work as an economist focusing on transition economies, emerging market economics, and monetary policy. With the aim of helping his students develop a more comprehensive understanding of the intricate and interdependent network of variables that affect our global economy, Gonzales teaches courses in capital market theory, corporate finance, investment and analysis, micro and macroeconomics, monetary economics, equity...

USF Law Professor, Dean’s Circle Scholar, and Co-Director of USF's Work Law and Justice Program, Tristin Green specializes in laws affecting inequality, especially employment discrimination law. She brings to her teaching and her scholarship a background in journalism and sociology, and an interest in human relations and in the ways in which laws and contexts shape those relations. Her research and teaching interests include feminist legal theory, employment discrimination, race, gender and...

Professor Tom Grossman likes to see non-technical people harness the power of analytics and technology to lead their organizations. His interests include business analytics, spreadsheet engineering, spreadsheet information systems, managerial communication of analytical work, and analysis-driven process improvement.

He spent the early years of his career at an analytics consulting firm working on large-scale systems for operations and planning in the United States and Scandinavia. His...

Throughout his career, Professor Bill Ong Hing pursued social justice through a combination of community work, litigation, and scholarship. He is the author of numerous academic and practice-oriented publications on immigration policy and race relations, including American Presidents, Deportation and Human Rights Violations (Cambridge Univ. Press 2019); Ethical Borders—NAFTA, Globalization, and Mexican Migration (Temple University Press, 2010), Deporting Our Souls–Morality, Values, and...

Professor of Legal Writing Edith Ho received her bachelor of arts from Smith College and her juris doctor from the University of Pennsylvania. After graduation, she worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on health care and social service matters in federal court and administrative hearings. After public service, she was in private practice for many years specializing in insurance coverage and civil litigation with several San Francisco law firms. Ho teaches in the Legal...

Heidi Ho is an assistant professor and the co-director of the Academic Support Program. She previously served as the Asian Battered Women’s project attorney and managing attorney of the Asian Outreach Unit at Great Boston Legal Services. As a student at the University of San Francisco School of Law, she participated in the Academic Support Program and was the Public Interest Scholar. She is admitted in the Bar in California, Massachusetts, and Hawaii. She graduated from UC Irvine having majored...

Keith Hunter's primary research interests revolve around organizational networks, power, and leadership. He is particularly interested in how social networks both influence and reflect active mental models and power dynamics within groups and organizations. His investigations of the patterns of interaction among people and their implications for human behavior and organizational outcomes are of critical significance to tomorrow's business leaders.

His rich background inspires his research and...

Megan Hutchinson is an Associate Professor of Legal Writing whose courses include Negotiation, Legal Research, Writing and Analysis, Employment Law, and American Legal Studies. As an attorney she represents employers in all aspects of employment litigation, with a focus on employment discrimination claims. In her practice, she also advises employers with respect to compliance issues arising under local, California, and federal labor and employment laws, including handbook policies, terminations...

Professor Stephen J. Huxley is recognized by his fellow colleagues, students and a number of professional organizations for his achievements in academia, having been a teacher and researcher at USF since 1973. Most notably, he is the recipient of the Franz Edelman Outstanding Management Science Award, the highest award given in the profession and the Sarlo Prize, the highest award bestowed to a faculty member for teaching that exemplifies USF's mission and values.

With research...

Nicholas Imparato is a professor of marketing and management at the University of San Francisco and formerly a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University (1996-2012).

During a lengthy series of special leaves of absence from the university, he held positions as a senior executive and board member at publicly listed (NYSE, NASDAQ) and closely held companies here and in Europe. As a speaker and adviser in over 35 countries with Visa, IBM, and other organizations, Professor...

Professor Alice Kaswan is an expert on climate change and on environmental justice. She has written and spoken widely about climate federalism, addressing the appropriate roles of federal, state, and local governments in mitigating and adapting to climate change. Her work also explores the intersection between environmental justice and climate change policies.

Kaswan is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a member scholar for the Center for Progressive Reform, and a past Chair of...

Professor Eugene Kim co-directed USF’s Tracy Seeley Center for Teaching Excellence from 2019 to 2021, helping to lead USF's efforts to build community among faculty, present opportunities for faculty to enrich their teaching, and use technology to enhance student learning. He frequently presents on legal writing pedagogy and has been recognized for his innovations in the law school classroom. Professor Kim's video lectures on legal writing and analysis on YouTube have been viewed by law students...

Assistant Professor Ryan Langan’s research area lies in branding and corporate social responsibility with a focus on understanding how consumers perceive and respond to firms who engage in corporate philanthropy.  His current projects explore the potential for corporate giving to elicit feelings of gratitude on the part of consumers. Langan’s research has been published in the Journal of Brand Management, Journal of Business Research and the Encyclopedia of Public Administration and Public...

Richard A. Leo, PhD, JD, is the Hamill Family Professor of Law and Psychology at the University San Francisco School of Law, and a Fellow in the Institute for Legal Research at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. He was previously a tenured professor of psychology and criminology at U.C. Irvine for a decade (1997-2006), and a professor of sociology and adjunct professor of law at the University of Colorado, Boulder (1994-1997).

Dr. Leo is one of the leading experts in the...

Tiffany Li is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco School of Law, where she teaches intellectual property and technology law courses. She is also a Fellow at the Yale Law School Information Society Project. Li is an expert on privacy, artificial intelligence, and technology platform governance. She regularly appears as a legal commentator in national and global news outlets, and she has written for popular publications including the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and...

Professor Matthew Liebman joined the USF faculty in 2020 as the endowed Justice for Animals chair and as an associate professor of law. Before coming to USF, Matthew practiced law for 12 years with the Animal Legal Defense Fund, including three years as the organization’s director of litigation. At ALDF, Professor Liebman litigated a wide variety of animal protection issues, including cases to defend the First Amendment rights of activists and to establish fundamental legal rights for nonhuman...

Kevin Lo, professor in the Department of Humanistic Management and Hospitality, is a graduate of the USF joint Master of Business Administration (MBA) - Master of Arts in Asia Pacific Studies (MAPS) program. His scholarly work and teaching focus on emotional and cultural intelligence.

Professor Rhonda V. Magee is a teacher of mindfulness-based stress reduction interventions for lawyers, law students, and for minimizing social-identity-based bias. A full-time faculty member at University of San Francisco since 1998, and a full professor since 2004, she has been named Dean’s Circle Research Scholar, served as co-director of the University’s Center for Teaching Excellence, and co-facilitator of the Ignatian Faculty Forum faculty development program. She teaches Torts; Race, Law...

Associate Professor Thomas Maier brings to USF more than 20 years of industry experience, a wealth of current research, and a honed experiential teaching methodology. Prior to academia, Professor Maier was a senior level executive in the hotel, restaurant, and food and beverage industries. His research interests include generational leadership, revenue management theory, and experiential learning.

In the classroom, Professor Maier centers his pedagogy on experiential learning and visible...

Dr. Courtney Masterson teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on topics including diversity and inclusion; work and well-being; research methods; and community-engaged learning. As a teacher, she strives to create an engaging learning environment that enables students to cultivate knowledge and develop personally and professionally. This includes providing students opportunities to partner in meaningful ways with the University’s surrounding community. 

Courtney is also an active...

Robert Mefford, Professor of Finance, brings a breadth of international experience to USF, with research emphasis on global supply chains, lean production systems, behavioral finance, and the productivity of global enterprises. Professor Mefford's business acumen is founded on senior management positions with leading health care providers including Blue Cross and Kaiser Foundation Health Plan.

In studying the productivity of off-shore operations, Professor Mefford has explored how management...

Professor Vijay Mehrotra serves as a professor of Business Analytics at the University of San Francisco, where he has recently developed an innovative module for his MBA students that is focused on Customer Success Management (the first such academic program in the world). He also leads the Business Analytics concentration within USF's MBA program and teaches courses in Business Analytics, Predictive Modeling, and Data Mining.

Since 1992, he has been active in the world of analytics...

Michelle Millar researches sustainability and corporate social responsibility in the lodging, meeting, and event management industries. She studies the choices travelers make when choosing sustainable travel products and what factors are most important to them when it comes to sustainable hospitality products and services.

She developed a framework used by hospitality educators and industry professionals to identify the sustainable skills most needed by students when entering the industry.

Yohannes Moore is an Assistant Professor and Supervising Attorney working within the University of San Francisco School of Law's Racial Justice Clinic. He received both his B.S. and his J.D. from the University of San Francisco. After graduating from law school, Yohannes spent four years at the Contra Costa County Public Defender's Office, where he worked most recently as a trial attorney.

Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Academic and Bar Exam Success (ABES) program Katie Moran is a proud USF School of Law alumna, graduating summa cum laude in 2016. An advocate and deputy district attorney in Contra Costa County for nearly four years, she tried 29 jury trials to verdict. In her final year at that office, Moran worked on the felony domestic violence team, where she handled a caseload of 30 cases from filing to resolution.

While at USF, Moran externed for the Honorable...

Mike Muehe (he/him) is a Research Librarian & Assistant Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco’s Zief Law Library, where he teaches 1L legal research and upper-division Advanced Legal Research.

Prior to joining USF School of Law in 2021, he held various positions in law librarianship and brought to USF a range of legal information knowledge. He was an Archives Assistant on the Antonin Scalia Papers Project and an AALL George A. Strait Fellow at Harvard Law School Library’s...

Charlie Nelson Keever graduated from Loyola Law School in 2018 with a concentration in Public Interest Law. During law school, Charlie worked as a judicial extern to the Honorable Audrey B. Collins of the California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, and served as editor-in-chief of the Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review. As a clinical law student and research assistant for Loyola Law School's Project for the Innocent, Charlie worked to secure the release of...

Professor Julie Nice joined the USF Law faculty in 2009 as the Herbst Foundation Professor of Law. She was featured as one of the nation's top-25 law teachers in the evidence-based study What the Best Law Teachers Do (Schwartz, Hess & Sparrow, Harvard University Press 2013). As of 2022, she has received 15 awards for law teaching, including being voted six times as the Distinguished Professor of the Year at USF Law. Nice previously served as the Delaney Professor of Law at the University of...

Frank Ohara is recognized for his dedication to teaching excellence by the School of Management as the eight-time recipient of the Outstanding Teaching Award. Establishing the USF National Honor Society Chapter of the International Financial Management Association, Ohara continues to serve as faculty advisor for the organization today. With over fifteen years' financial management and administrative experience in the computer manufacturing and financial services industries, he brings extensive...

Professor Maria Linda Ontiveros is the Co-Director of USF's Work Law and Justice Program and focuses her scholarly work on employment law with an emphasis on immigrant workers' rights. She publishes and presents regularly on a variety of related topics, including the history of immigrant workers, workplace harassment of women of color, organized labor, immigrants and the Thirteenth Amendment, and access to education for children of undocumented workers. Ontiveros is co–author of Employment...

Professor Jennifer Parlamis's academic career has centered on pioneering social-psychological research in the areas of negotiation, conflict resolution, communication, and organization dynamics. Specifically, she studies the impact of technology on negotiation outcomes and the role of anger and incompetency emotions in negotiation and conflict contexts. In addition, she has written on ageism in organizations as well as negotiation pedagogy.

She employs the latest scholarly research to help...

Anthony Patino is a renowned expert in entertainment, advertising, and promotion, consumer behavior, public policy and marketing analytics. He holds degrees in marketing, business administration, planning and social policy from Duke University, Harvard University, and Temple University. His widely-published research takes him to conferences all over the U.S.

During his career in entertainment, Patino worked in marketing, sales and research at leading entertainment firms like Sony Picture...

Nicole Phillips is a legal research, writing, and analysis assistant professor at USF. As an attorney she represents employers in all aspects of employment litigation, with a focus on employment discrimination claims. In her practice, she also represents local Bay Area school districts in all aspects of litigation and pre-litigation including issues involving students, staff, and faculty. She received her BA from UCSD in 20th Century History and obtained her JD from USF School of Law.

Professor Bruce M. Price primarily focuses his research on empirical studies involving consumer bankruptcy issues. During his years of practice, Professor Price concentrated on bankruptcy, contracts, and corporate law. He joined the faculty at Denver University in 2004, where he received the Mentorship Award and was nominated for Most Outstanding Faculty Member and Most Engaging Professor in 2006. A graduate of Haverford College, Price earned his juris doctor with honors from George Washington...

Before joining the USF faculty, Marci spent half of her twenty-year legal career supporting the judiciary as a research attorney for two different trial courts, and half of her career working in private practice with large and small firms in the Bay Area.

As a practitioner, Marci's work focused on complex civil litigation, primarily in the areas of securities, antitrust, business, banking, and insurance law, and she routinely drafted and argued critical motions in state and federal courts...

William (Billy) Riggs, PhD, AICP, LEED AP is a global expert and thought leader in the areas of autonomy and smart transportation, housing, economics and urban development. He has over 100 publications in these areas and has had his work featured in multiple national media outlets — including the Economist, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and the Atlantic.  He is currently a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Management, director of strategy and research at Sustinere...

Claudia Roehl, Instructor of Accounting, brings to USF over ten years of experience as a Finance Director, V.P., Financial Analyst Officer and Senior Accountant, with a research concentration in structured finance, and specifically, collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs) and asset-backed securities (ABS). Her work aims to leverage and combine economic and accounting studies with her extensive knowledge of financial investment instruments. Drawing from her own explorations into credit...

Jacqueline Brown Scott is an immigration attorney with experience solving a wide array of immigration issues pertaining to asylum, deportation defense, and family-based immigration.

Jacqueline began her career in immigration law at the San Francisco Immigration Court as an attorney advisor through the Department of Justice Honors Program. There, she wrote hundreds of orders and written decisions for the Immigration Judges. When working at her firm, Law Office of Jacqueline Brown Scott, she...

Gabby Sergi is an Assistant Professor and Supervising Attorney with University of San Francisco School of Law's Racial Justice Clinic. During law school, she worked at the Alameda County Public Defender's Office and the ACLU of Northern California. Gabby was also a clinical law student in UC Law SF's Individual Representation Clinic and Mediation Clinic.

Shivani Shukla works in the fields of Operations Research, Statistics, and Game Theory. Her research is in security investment issues in the realm of supply chains and logistical networks that examine the financial and strategic implications of cooperation among various entities of the networks. In addition to the applied benefits, her goal is to make methodological contributions to successfully bring together optimization and game theoretic techniques in presence of uncertainty.

Her work has...

Professor Sidwell joined the faculty of the University of San Francisco School of Law as the Director of Externship Programs and an Assistant Professor in 2019. Professor Sidwell oversees the judicial, civil, externship, tax, and summer international externship programs. As Director of the Externship Programs, Professor Sidwell teaches the classroom component, works with adjunct faculty, and oversees students, placements, and supervising attorneys.

Prior to coming to USF, Professor Sidwell...

Richard Stackman is a tenured professor in the Humanistic Management and Hospitality Department. His coursework focuses on topics that include organizational behavior, organizational change and development, leadership versus management, and complexity science. Stackman’s recent research with Dr. Linda Henderson explores the gender differences on project team membership, and his scholarly activities underscore personal value systems and complexity theory in organizational functioning. This...

Professor Nicholas Tay’s research focuses on building theoretical models and conducting empirical studies to understand how human behaviors and market frictions interplay to affect the pricing of financial assets and the stability of financial markets. He uncovers relationships and patterns through financial econometrics and non-economic concepts, including agent-based modeling, social network analysis, cellular automata, genetic programming, fuzzy logic, chaos theory, fractal analysis, wavelet...

Professor Michelle Travis is a Dean’s Circle Scholar and Co-Director of USF's Work Law and Justice Program. She specializes in employment law with a focus on disability discrimination, sex discrimination, and work/family balance. Her interdisciplinary scholarship uses social cognition and sociology research to reveal how antidiscrimination law could be used to eliminate structural, organizational, and cognitive biases in the workplace. She regularly speaks on these topics around the country...

Associate Professor Ricardo Villarreal De Silva brings to USF years of experience in consumer behavior research and methodology. He was the lead researcher on two large consumer behavior studies that brought together experts in the advertising industry with his research expertise. That expertise started in multicultural marketing, where his theory of ethnicity provided great insight into understanding U.S. Hispanics’ consumer behavior. Recently, his work has focused on applying sophisticated...

Monalisa Vu teaches Appellate Advocacy, Domestic Violence Law and Litigation, Legal Research, Writing, and Analysis, and American Legal Writing to international LLM students.

As a practicing attorney, Monalisa represented survivors of domestic violence in areas of family and immigration law.  She has worked in both the public interest and private sector spheres.

Neil's principle area of research is the role of virtue and morality (or the lack thereof) in organizations, specifically the presence of courage and cowardice within organizational life. His work explores the psychological mechanisms and consequences of virtuous behavior as part of expected occupational roles. By focusing on high-risk occupations such as ordnance disposal, private military contracting, and air-traffic control, Neil attempts to develop greater insight into how workers construct...

Allison Wang is an associate professor of law, and Director of the Externship Programs at University of San Francisco School of Law. Professor Wang oversees the judicial, civil, externship, tax, and summer international externship programs. She is passionate about giving law students the practical tools they need to become successful lawyers.

Before joining USF, she directed the Pro Bono Program at UC College of the Law San Francisco, and served as Golden Gate University’s Externship Director...

Richard D. Waters is an associate professor in the School of Management, where he teaches strategic communication and communication management courses. His primary research interests are fundraising, stakeholder loyalty and relationship cultivation, and the use of new technologies in organizational communication efforts.

He serves on the editorial review boards at Public Relations Review, Journal of Public Relations Research, Journal of Public and Nonprofit Sector Management, Journal of...

Assistant Professor Carol Wilson is co–director of the Academic Support Program (ASP) and has contributed to USF's Center for Law and Global Justice programs. As ASP co–director, she helps students prepare for the study of law and enhance academic performance throughout law school. With Professor Sharon Meadows, Wilson revised the Martindale–Hubbell Law Digest: California (Martindale–Hubbell, 2007).

Professor Xiaohua Yang teaches international business and is the founding director of the China Business Studies Initiative in the School of Management at the USF. She specializes in the internationalization of Chinese firms, MNE corporate social responsibility and sustainable development, international R&D strategic alliances, and foreign market entry strategies. She has taught and lectured in the USA, Australia, China, Taiwan, and Europe, and is a recipient of multiple Best Paper Awards from...

Dana Zartner, JD, PhD is a Full Professor in the International Studies Department and is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Law at the University of San Francisco, where she specializes in international and comparative law, with a focus on the intersection of environmental justice and human rights. Professor Zartner’s first book Courts, Codes, and Custom: Legal Tradition and State Policy Toward International Human Rights and Environmental Law was released by Oxford University Press (2014)...

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...

Drew Amoroso is the founder of DueCourse, a platform that connects lawyers and law firms with personal, professional, and business development coaches. Drew started his career as a senior associate at Reed Smith LLP and was the founder of Move Legal, a law firm dedicated to counseling startups in the fitness and health and wellness industries.

He graduated from UC Davis School of Law where he was the editor-in-chief of the law review.

Drew is the host of The Workday Mindset Podcast and an...

Peter Arian is a graduate of U.C. Hastings College of the Law, was admitted to the California Bar in 2005, and was named a State Bar Certified Specialist in the field of criminal law in 2013. Now in private practice, Mr. Arian previously worked as a deputy public defender for the County of Marin (2005-2012), and as a deputy federal public defender in both the trial and capital habeas units of the Federal Defender for the Central District of California (2012-2015). He has represented a wide...

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...

Brandon M. Banks started Brandon Banks Law APC focusing on employment law in order to fight for workers in the workplace. Brandon is also an Adjunct Professor of Law at UC Hastings School of Law where he teaches Legal Research and Writing.

After graduating law school, Brandon became a dedicated Attorney working as a Deputy Public Defender in San Francisco, which allowed Brandon to work on dozens of misdemeanor and felony cases with great success, fighting to take dozens of cases to...

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...

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...

Angela Chuang has been an Assistant Federal Public Defender (Trial) with the Federal Public Defender's Office in the Northern District of California since 2019. Prior to that, she was a trial attorney with New York County Defender Services, a public defender's office in New York City, for 5 1/2 years. She has also previously worked with an access-to-justice NGO in Sierra Leone, migrant workers in China, and Burmese refugees in Thailand.

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 9th Circuit specializing in federal appellate mediation.

Prior to her appointment as a Circuit Mediator, Ms. Cummings was a partner at a national law firm, where her trial practice focused on complex litigated matters, including catastrophic injury, products liability, and premises liability.

Ms. Cummings has volunteered extensively as a Judge Pro Tem, Settlement Conference Officer, and Mandatory Settlement...

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 Society...

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.

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.

Marc H. Greenberg is a Professor of Law and the founding Director of the Intellectual Property Law Center and Program at Golden Gate University School of Law. A member of the faculty since 2000, he teaches IP Survey, Internet and Software Law,  IP and New Technology, and Entertainment Law in the IP curriculum. He also teaches Contracts, Civil Procedure, Business Associations, Property, Wills and Trusts, and related courses in the general curriculum. 

While in law school he served as an...

Adjunct Professor Jerome A. Hawkins is a trial lawyer and civil litigator at Hawkins Injury Law based in Solano County, California. His firm works with the seriously injured and those who have had their civil rights violated to help them successfully obtain justice for the harms they have endured.

Prior to law school, Jerome spent a number of years studying and working as a professional theater and film actor. During this phase of his life, he learned the power and importance of storytelling...

Justice Teri L. Jackson was first appointed to the California Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, Division Three, in November 2019 by Governor Gavin Newsom. The Commission on Judicial Appointments confirmed her appointment in January 2020. In August 2021, Justice Jackson was elevated to Presiding Justice of the First Appellate District, Division Five.

Before joining the First Appellate District, Justice Jackson served as a Judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. She is the first...

Through May of 2023, Seth Jaffe was Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer of Levi Strauss & Co., leading the global legal department in its support of businesses operating in over 110 countries. He was responsible for all aspects of legal, ethics and compliance, global security and resilience, including enterprise risk management, and governance matters. Seth acted as counselor to the board of directors and executive leadership and was a member of the company’s Executive Leadership...

Melissa R. Karlsten is a shareholder of Aaron, Riechert, Carpol & Riffle, and has been practicing in the area of Estate Planning, Trust and Probate Law since 2002. The State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization has certified Ms. Karlsten as a specialist in Estate Planning, Trust, and Probate Law. She has also trained as a mediator.

Ms. Karlsten is a native of the Bay Area. She attended St. Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco. After high school, she earned a B.A. in...

Professor Kinyon is the director of the Office of Academic & Bar Success at the Santa Clara University School of Law, where he teaches Legal Analysis, Advanced Legal Writing: The Bar Exam, Property, and Community Property.

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.

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 advisor...

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...

Jay Lee serves as a program director at OneJustice, where he leads the organization’s Healthy Nonprofits Program. Jay is responsible for developing nonprofit management trainings for the OneJustice Executive Fellowship Program, and oversees the organization’s technical assistance and consulting work, which provides training, coaching, and other resources for California's Qualified Legal Services Projects (QLSPs) as well as OneJustice’s national network of nonprofit legal organizations on a...

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...

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 law...

Jesse Mainardi is the founder of Mainardi Law, a firm specializing in election and governmental ethics law. His clients include candidates for public office, elected officials, lobbyists, nonprofits, and political committees.

Before starting his firm, Jesse was the Deputy Director of the San Francisco Ethics Commission, a partner at a political law firm in the Bay Area, and enforcement counsel at California’s Fair Political Practices Commission. He was also a business litigation associate for...

Kevin Milne has over 20 years of experience in the area of health law, and for the last 10 years has held several senior leadership positions at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). He currently serves as the Associate Deputy General Counsel for HHS. Before coming to HHS, Kevin was a Deputy Assistant General Counsel for the U.S. Government Accountability Office in Washington, D.C., where he provided legal support to congressional investigators and Members of Congress with...

Candis Mitchell serves as Chief Assistant Federal Public Defender for the Northern District of California. She has worked as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in the Northern District since 2012, and held the same role in the Southern District of California beginning in 2005. She represents indigent clients in all stages of federal criminal prosecution, from arraignment through petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court. As a career public defender who has tried over 20 federal jury...

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 in...

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...

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...

Lisa Reinsberg is the founder and executive director of the International Justice Resource Center (IJRC), a nonprofit organization that provides information and guidance on international human rights protections. With IJRC, Lisa has created educational materials used by advocates and educators around the world, and has assisted advocates and survivors in pursuing human rights complaints, participating in country reviews and country visits, and engaging in other advocacy before regional and...

Lorenzo is the Legal Director, Head of Privacy, at DoorDash where he leads the company’s global privacy team. The team’s responsibilities include incorporating privacy into new business initiatives, developing controls that align with domestic and international privacy laws, and partnering with the company’s cybersecurity team.

He was previously Privacy Counsel Senior Manager reporting to the SVP of Worldwide Privacy (former FTC Commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour) at Herbalife, where he...

Adjunct Professor Richard Roos-Collins is the principal in the Water and Power Law Group PC, based in Berkeley. Since 1991, he has represented conservation and fishing groups, public agencies, and property owners in cases to restore aquatic ecosystems in a manner that contributes to sustainability of our power supplies and economy. He emphasizes settlements and other collaborative solutions. He was a lead drafter and negotiator of the Klamath Agreements (February 2010), and he represents...

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.

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 judicial...

Christiana State has advised multi-national corporations and emerging companies for over 18 years in the areas of intellectual property, technology transactions, privacy, product counseling and global litigation management. She holds electrical engineering (cum laude) and law degrees from Santa Clara University. Ms. State is a certified CIPP privacy professional (US and EU), a trained mediator and registered to practice before the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Ms. State is a frequent...

Adjunct Professor Deborah Wald is the founder of the Wald Law Group, a boutique family law firm whose practice areas include adoption, guardianship, assisted reproduction, parentage and custody. She speaks regularly on contemporary family issues and participates in numerous professional organizations, including the National Family Law Advisory Council for the National Center for Lesbian Rights; the Association of Family & Conciliation Courts (AFCC); the Family Law Section of the American Bar...

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...

Professor Wiese is a tax consultant in the San Francisco Office of Deloitte Tax where he focuses on administrative tax controversies and income tax compliance. Prior to law school, he served as an officer on frigates and destroyers in the United States Navy.

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...

Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Linda Henderson, Ph.D. has been a leader in departmental and program development at USF in her roles as department chair and director in project management and organizational behavior. She continues her programmatic leadership for the undergraduate management major. Her work as a senior level consultant for clients including Visa International, Hewlett-Packard, Dell Computers, Blue Shield of California, and Genentech informs her teaching and research on...

Professor Peter Jan Honigsberg’s current research focuses on the rule of law and human rights violations that occurred in the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and on the study of terrorism and other post–9/11 issues.

Honigsberg is the founder and director of Witness to Guantanamo, which began in fall 2008. He has filmed over 158 full–length and in–depth interviews in twenty countries of former detainees and others who have worked in or are associated with the prison in Guantánamo...

Professor Emeritus Paul L. McKaskle, who served as dean of the law school from 1975 to 1980, twice served on the staff of the California Supreme Court as chief counsel for the Special Masters on Reapportionment. He has been a visiting professor at Boalt Hall School of Law at UC Berkeley and a visiting fellow at St. Catherine's College, Oxford University.

Professor Sharon A. Meadows was the director of the Criminal Juvenile Justice Clinics. She was appointed by Chief Judge Robert Peckham of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California as the compliance monitor for a Title VII Consent Decree in the construction industry. In 1994, she assisted in the establishment of a Criminal/Juvenile Law Clinic at the University of the West Cape in South Africa, and returned to South Africa in 1998 and 2002 to assist in the...

Professor Ronald H. Micon was the founding director of USF's Criminal Law Clinic, the law school's first in-house clinical program, which later became a part of the USF Law Clinic. He has served as a consultant and expert on contract law matters and was a consultant to the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse. Micon served as associate dean for academic affairs at the USF School of Law for 20 years before stepping down in 2013 to return to the faculty.

Professor Emerita Suzanne E. Mounts was the founding director of the law school's Intensive Advocacy Program and was a co–director of the Criminal Law Clinic. While on leave she was a senior trial attorney in the Criminal Section, Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. Mounts has served as the law school's associate dean and as a visiting professor at UC Berkeley.

Professor Emeritus C. Delos Putz served as dean of the law school from 1971 to 1975. His courses included Civil Procedure, Remedies, Complex Civil Litigation, and Administrative Law. He has served as a mediator, evaluator, and arbitrator for the U.S. District Court in San Francisco since 1988. He also served as an accreditation inspector for the American Bar Association for many years. He has been a member of the State Bar of California Committee on Continuing Legal Education, vice chair of the...

Professor Emeritus Eldon H. Reiley retired in 2006 after 47 years of teaching law, including 35 years at the USF School of Law where he taught courses in constitutional law, contracts, commercial law, and international law. He was the founding director of the law school's LLM program for foreign lawyers. He negotiated the establishment of a faculty exchange agreement with East China Institute for Politics and Law (1989) and USF summer abroad programs in London (University of Warwick, 1978)...

Professor Emeritus Steven F. Shatz taught at USF from 1972 until his retirement in 2015. During that time, he was also a lecturer at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall, a visiting professor at Hastings College of Law, and a visiting professor the East China Institute of Politics and Law, in Shanghai, China. Shatz created, and for 12 years directed, USF’s Keta Taylor Colby Death Penalty Project, whose goal is to involve law students in the interim reform, and ultimate abolition, of the death penalty in the...

Visiting Professor Judge Lynn Duryee teaches Evidence and Civil Procedure. She is a neutral at JAMS where she serves as a mediator, arbitrator and special master. Judge Duryee served as a Superior Court judge in Marin County for 21 years (1993-2014), where she specialized in managing civil cases and conducting settlement conferences. She successfully implemented settlement programs and processes in the civil, criminal, and family law assignments. Outside of her duties at court, Judge Duryee has...

Juan Carlos Ibarra is a Visiting Professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law and a Senior Affiliated Scholar at UC Hastings’ Center for Racial and Economic Justice (CREJ).

In his law teaching, Professor Ibarra helps students develop advanced critical thinking and analytical skills using a student-centered approach. His courses emphasize the intersection between law and racial equity. Professor Ibarra's current courses include Property Law and Wills and Trusts. 

Professor...

Mohammad Amin Mamnoon joined the USF Law community as a Visiting Scholar in December 2022. He previously served as a Senior Legal Specialist in the Administrative Office of the President of Afghanistan, working on policies related to private investment in the country. Prior to that, Mamnoon worked in the Afghanistan Ministry of Finance, where he developed the rules of procedure for public-private partnerships. An expert in juvenile justice and international human rights law, Mamnoon worked for...

Michele Benedetto Neitz is a Visiting Professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law and the Founding Director of the Blockchain Law for Social Good Center, the first of its kind in the United States. She teaches Blockchain and the Law, Business Associations, Legal Ethics, and other classes. Prior to joining USF Law, Professor Neitz was voted “Most Outstanding Professor” by the graduating class of GGU Law six times, most recently in 2022.

Professor Neitz was appointed to advise...

Prior to teaching, Professor Williams was a civil litigator at the largest law firm in San Diego. In 2017, his duties expanded to become more heavily involved in bar preparation, which has since informed his teaching of 1L and 2L courses.