Law Faculty for Orientation in U.S.A. Law
Diane Marie Amann is a professor at the University of California, Davis, School of Law. This past academic year, she was a professor invitée at the Université de Paris 1 (Panthéon - Sorbonne). In 1986 she earned her law degree cum laude from Northwestern University School of Law, where she was a note and comment editor for the Northwestern University Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif. She also holds a master's degree in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a bachelor's degree in journalism, with highest honors, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Immediately following law school, Amann served as a law clerk for United States District Judge Prentice H. Marshall in Chicago, and then for United States Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. She began her practice in San Francisco in 1989, first as an associate at Morrison & Foerster, then as an assistant federal public defender, and finally as a solo federal criminal defense attorney. At the UC Davis School of Law, Amann teaches criminal law and criminal procedure, evidence, international criminal law, and international human rights law. Her articles about international criminal law have been published in numerous journals, including UCLA Law Review and the American Journal of International Law.
Vikram David Amar taught at the University of California, Davis, School of Law faculty from 1993 to 1997. He is currently a professor at the University of California, Hastings School of Law. He has also taught regularly as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley and Los Angeles, Schools of Law. Amar received a bachelor's degree in history from the University of California, Berkeley, and his law degree from Yale University, where he served as an articles editor for the Yale Law Journal. Upon graduating from law school in 1988, Amar spent one year as a law clerk for Judge William A. Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and another year as a law clerk for Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court. He then spent two years at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, devoting half of his time to federal white-collar criminal defense and the other half to complex civil litigation. Amar teaches and writes in the public law field, including constitutional law, civil procedure and remedies. He is the co-author of a major constitutional law casebook, and a co-author of a prominent multivolume treatise on federal practice and procedure. He has published pieces in the Yale Law Journal, University of Virginia Law Review, Hastings Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, Stanford Law Review, California Law Review, William and Mary Law Review and Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly among other journals.
Michael G. Barth is assistant deputy director for legal services at the California Department of General Services. He is a 1987 graduate of the San Francisco State University Graduate School of Management and a 1991 graduate of the University of California, Davis, School of Law. Barth practiced for four years with the firm of Rothschild, Wishek & Sands, specializing in criminal defense and licensure law. Prior to entering law school, Barth worked for 10 years as an administrator at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in San Francisco. He also owned and managed a mechanical contracting firm in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a veteran of the United States Navy Nuclear Submarine force and served during the Vietnam War.
Alan Edward Brownstein is a professor at the University of California, Davis, School of Law. He has also taught as a visiting professor at the University of Texas, Austin, School of Law and at Dalhousie University School of Law in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Brownstein has been teaching law since 1981 when he joined the UC Davis faculty. He received a bachelor's degree in political science and psychology from Antioch College in 1969 and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1977, where he was a member and case comment editor of the Harvard Law Review. After receiving his law degree, Brownstein worked as a law clerk for Chief Judge Frank Coffin of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. He then practiced law for three years with Tuttle & Taylor, a corporate and commercial law firm in Los Angeles. Brownstein teaches courses on Torts and Constitutional Law. He has published numerous articles in the field of constitutional law. His areas of specialty include freedom of speech, free exercise and establishment clause issues, the protection of property rights and the rights of reproductive autonomy.
Chris Carlson has been a deputy district attorney for Sacramento County since 1991. He also teaches as an adjunct professor in the trial practice program at the University of California, Davis, School of Law. He is employed as a part-time instructor at Lincoln Law School and the Los Rios Community College District Public Safety Center. Carlson received his bachelor's degree in rhetoric and communications from the University of California, Davis, graduating with honors in 1985. He received his law degree from the UC Davis School of Law in 1990 and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi and the Order of the Coif honor societies.
Anupam Chander is on the faculty at the University of California, Davis, School of Law. He teaches courses on Corporations, International Business Transactions, Law and Economics, and the Law of E-commerce. A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, Chander began his legal career as a law clerk first for Judge William A. Norris of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and then for Chief Judge Jon O. Newman of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. He practiced private international law at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, based in the firm's New York and Hong Kong offices. During his years in private practice, Chander represented Ecuador and Guatemala in their first Eurobond offerings and the International Finance Corporation in the privatization of the Manila water system. Chander also worked on other major international securities offerings and privatizations. His publications include "Diaspora Bonds" in the New York University Law Review (2001), "Whose Republic?" in the University of Chicago Law Review (2002), "The New, New Property" (2003, translated into Portuguese as "Domínio no Espaço Cibernético, Minorities, Shareholders and Otherwise") in the Yale Law Journal (2004), and "The Romance of the Public Domain" in the California Law Review (2004).
Alice Choi is currently an assistant professor at California State University, Sacramento. She teaches upper division courses on criminal law and procedure. Before joining the CSUS faculty, Choi prosecuted misdemeanor cases as a deputy district attorney with the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office. She is also experienced as a civil litigator and has practiced employment and construction law with law firms in Sacramento, Fresno and Los Angeles. Choi earned her B.A. in history in 1990 and J.D. in 1993, both from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the treasurer and a member of the Board of Directors of the Asian/Pacific Bar Association of Sacramento. She is also the vice president and a member of the Board of Directors of the Asian Pacific Community Counseling.
R. Keenan Davis attended Whittier College, the University of Copenhagen and L'Abri Fellowship Foundation in Switzerland. He received his bachelor's degree in Russian from Brigham Young University, and law degree from University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law. From 1983-91 and from 1996 until present, Davis has been corporate counsel for Net-Linx Publishing Solutions, Inc., a Sacramento-based worldwide supplier of computer-aided publishing systems, and for 01 Communications, a telecommunications company. He has been the lead negotiator for more than a quarter of a billion dollars in large-scale technology licensing and sale contracts in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. His corporate legal experience includes the entire corporate lifecycle from start-up and early-round financings to going public and leveraging buy-out transactions. He has extensive negotiation and conflict resolution experience with international contracts, intellectual property, copyright and trademark matters, corporate securities and Internet issues.
Fred A. Galves has been a professor at the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law since 1993 teaching Civil Procedure, Evidence, Federal Courts, Banking Law and Regulation and a new course, Computer-Assisted Litigation. He has taught in the Orientation in U.S.A. Law program for many years as well as teaching Securities in the M.I.C.L. program in 2000. Galves received his bachelor's degree from Colorado College and his law degree from Harvard University in 1986. While a law student at Harvard, he also worked as a teaching fellow there, instructing undergraduate students in Principles of Economics. Galves also engaged in human rights work on behalf of Chilean citizens and political prisoners in the summer of 1985 in Santiago, Chile. In 1987, after serving as a judicial clerk for Judge John L. Kane (U.S. District Court, District of Colorado), Galves joined the law firm of Holland & Hart in Denver, where he specialized in complex commercial litigation and litigation against former directors and officers of failed banks and savings and loan associations. Galves testified in front of the United States Congressional Senate Banking Committee regarding reform legislation, has been a guest commentator on "Court T.V." and has written numerous articles.
Margaret Hastings is vice president of Law, Environmental Health & Safety and Human Resources for Aerojet Fine Chemicals LLC. Aerojet Fine Chemicals is a manufacturer of intermediate chemicals and active pharmaceutical ingredients for the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. Hastings was previously assistant general counsel at GenCorp, Inc., a publicly-traded company with segments in aerospace and defense, and real estate. Prior to working at GenCorp, Inc., she was the primary attorney for the Strategic and Space Propulsion Sector of Aerojet-General Corporation, a subsidiary of GenCorp, Inc. Before joining Aerojet, Hastings practiced law in the business department of Kronick, Moskovitz, Tiedemann & Girard, one of Sacramento's largest law firms. She received her bachelor's degree in languages from Purdue University and her M.B.A. and law degrees from Arizona State University. Prior to and during law school, Hastings worked in the patent department at Motorola as an international patent administrator and translator. Following law school, she worked as a law clerk for Justice Jack D.H. Hayes of the Arizona Supreme Court. Hastings is admitted to the State Bar in California and in Arizona.
Bill Ong Hing is a professor of Law and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis, and also serves as the director of Asian American Studies. He teaches Judicial Process, Negotiations, Public Service Strategies, Asian American History, and directs the law school clinical program. Throughout his career, Hing has pursued social justice by combining community work, litigation and scholarship. He is the author of numerous academic and practice-oriented books and articles on immigration policy and race relations. His books include Defining America Through Immigration Policy (Temple University Press, 2004), Making and Remaking Asian America Through Immigration Policy (Stanford University Press, 1993), Handling Immigration Cases (Aspen Publishers, 1995) and Immigration and the Law—a Dictionary (ABC-CLIO, 1999). His book To Be an American, Cultural Pluralism and the Rhetoric of Assimilation (New York University Press, 1997) received the award for Outstanding Academic Book in 1997 from the librarians' journal Choice. He was also co-counsel in the precedent-setting Supreme Court asylum case, INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca (1987). Hing is the founder of, and continues to volunteer as general counsel for, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco. He is on the board of directors of the Asian Law Caucus, the Migration Policy Institute, Asian and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, and the Association for Asian American Studies. He also serves on the National Advisory Council of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium.
James Hogan received his A.B. degree magna cum laude from Loyola University of Chicago in 1953 and his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1956. Hogan practiced as a trial lawyer in Washington, D.C. and Maryland from 1959-1967 and was a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center from 1956-1959. He has been teaching at the University of California, Davis, School of Law since 1967.
Edward J. Imwinkelried is a member of the faculty of the University of California, Davis, School of Law. He received both his bachelor's degree (magna cum laude in 1967) and his law (magna cum laude in 1969) from the University of San Francisco. After practicing law with both the San Francisco Neighborhood Legal Assistance Foundation and the United States Army Judge Advocate General's Corps, Imwinkelried began teaching in 1974 at the University of San Diego. His teaching career has taken him to Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Illinois, and finally to the University of California, Davis. Imwinkelried is a former chair of the Evidence Section of the American Association of Law Schools. In addition to publishing articles in more than 70 law reviews, he has authored or coauthored several books, including The New Wigmore: Evidentiary Privileges (2002), McCormick on Evidence (5th ed., 1999), Scientific Evidence (3rd ed., 1999), Pretrial Discovery: The Development of Professional Judgment (rev. ed., 2004), California Objections at Trial (1992), The Methods of Attacking Scientific Evidence (4th ed., 2004), Evidence: Teaching Materials for an Age of Science and Statutes (5th ed., 2001), Exculpatory Evidence: The Accused's Constitutional Right to Present Favorable Evidence (3rd ed., 2004), Contract Lawsuits: Trial Strategies and Techniques (2nd ed., 1989), Evidentiary Foundations (5th ed., 2001), California Evidentiary Foundations (3rd ed., 2000), Courtroom Criminal Evidence (3rd ed., 1998), and Uncharged Misconduct Evidence (rev. ed., 1999).
Kevin R. Johnson is the associate dean for academic affairs and a Mabie/Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Davis, School of Law. He received his bachelor's degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley and his law degree from Harvard University, where he served as editor of volumes 95 and 96 of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude. He served as law clerk to the Honorable Judge Stephen Reinhardt, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In 1993, Johnson won the law school's Distinguished Teaching Award and was the co-author of two amicus curiae briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in immigration cases. He is the author of several books and many articles on immigration and refugee law and policy, civil procedure and civil rights, including How Did You Get to Be Mexican? A White/Brown Man's Search for Identity (1999); Race, Civil Rights, and American Law: A Multiracial Approach (2001); Mixed Race and the Law: A Reader (2002); and The "Huddled Masses" Myth: Immigration and Civil Rights (2004). He was appointed associate dean for academic affairs in 1998. In July, 2000 he accepted a joint appointment in the Chicana/o Studies Program at UC Davis.
Dan Maguire is a lawyer in private practice, specializing in intellectual property and registered to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Maguire graduated with honors from Stanford University in 1989 with a degree in philosophy, and received his J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1992. After law school, he clerked for Judge Andrew Kleinfeld of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He then practiced at Holme Roberts & Owen LLP in Denver and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP in Sacramento before opening his own office in Davis in 2001. His law practice includes both litigation and transactional work related to intellectual property, with a special emphasis on patents. From 2001-02, Maguire taught patent law as a visiting professor at the School of Law, University of California at Davis. He is a frequent lecturer on various topics relating to intellectual property and technology law.
John F. McLean was with Pillsbury Madison & Sutro (now called Pillsbury Winthrop), a large full-service firm with offices in the U.S. and overseas, for 27 years until he started his own practice in 1999. His law practice principally involved antitrust counseling and litigation since 1974, although he litigated securities, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and environmental matters as well. He has represented clients in grand jury and civil antitrust investigations, and in industry-wide, price-fixing class action litigation. McLean's advisory work includes clients in the U.S. as well as Europe, Latin America, Japan, Malaysia and Canada. He has advised clients on merger and acquisition issues, and the domestic and international marketing and distribution activities for financial services companies; insurance companies; natural resource companies and their down-stream converting operations; manufacturers of heavy equipment, consumer, hi-tech and various other products; and providers of air, land and sea transportation services, as well as other services. A significant aspect of McLean's counseling practice has been antitrust compliance programs. He has created written antitrust policies and guidelines, and formal education programs to help companies implement their antitrust compliance programs. He has lectured extensively to business managers on the prohibitions of antitrust laws. McLean also consulted on the creation of a film for one client, which is used in an in-house antitrust education program. McLean started with Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro LLP in 1972 and was a partner from 1980-99. He received his B.A. degree in economics from Dartmouth College in 1965, and his J.D. degree in 1972 from the University of Wisconsin, where he was elected a member of the Law Review and to the Order of the Coif.
John K. McNulty is the Roger J. Traynor Professor of Law, Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. Born in 1934 in Buffalo, New York, he earned his bachelor's (A.B.) degree in psychology with High Honors from Swarthmore College, where he was elected to membership in Phi Beta Kappa. He received his law (LL.B) degree from Yale Law School in 1959, where he graduated first in his class, was elected as a member of Order of the Coif and an Article and Book Review Editor of the Yale Law Journal. During 1959-60 he served as Law Clerk for Justice Hugo L. Black of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. He then spent four years in the private practice of law in Cleveland, Ohio, with Jones, Day, Cockley & Reavis, after which he was invited to join the law faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. He has been a full professor there since 1967 and held the Traynor chair from 1991-2002. McNulty specializes in the law of federal income taxation, international taxation, estate and gift taxation and tax policy. He has written many articles and six books on U.S. income, international and estate and gift taxation, including casebooks on individual, partnership and corporate income taxation in the U.S., and a book on the taxation of S Corporations. His articles have been published in six foreign countries as well as the U.S.A. He has served as a visiting professor at Yale Law School, Universities of Cambridge (England), Edinburgh (Scotland), Leiden, Amsterdam, and Tilburg (The Netherlands), Tokyo, Hastings College of the Law, the University of Texas Law School and the London School of Economics. He has lectured in The Netherlands, Germany, the U.K., Austria, Switzerland, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Ireland, Belgium, Canada and elsewhere abroad, as well as in the U.S., on domestic, international and comparative fiscal law. From 1974-75 he was counsel to the San Francisco office of the international tax and trade law firm of Baker & McKenzie. McNulty is a member of the Council of the U.S.A. Branch of the International Fiscal Association. He is a life-member of the American Law Institute (ALI), and a member of the Tax Section of the American Bar Association. In 1977 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to conduct foreign and comparative research, abroad and in the U.S., on studies related to the structural reforms of the U.S. federal tax system. In 1987 he was appointed Norman A. Sugarman Public Lecturer in Taxation at Case Western Reserve University. He is a consultant and as a member of the bar of the State of Ohio (inactive) and of the U.S. Supreme Court. He has served as an expert witness in litigation and administration of the tax laws. From 1994-95 McNulty served as chair of the Ad Hoc Committee for the (UC Berkeley) Graduate Division Review of the Haas School of Business. He is a faculty associate of the Burch Center for Tax Policy, and is continuing his research on tax policy issues. He retired from full-time teaching at Berkeley in 2002, but continues to teach and lecture in the U.S and foreign countries.
Professor Mikos earned his J.D. summa cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School, where he served as an articles editor of the Michigan Law Review and was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Bates Memorial Scholarship. After graduation, he clerked for Chief Judge Michael Boudin on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. He returned to Michigan to teach for one year before joining the U.C. Davis law faculty in 2003. Mikos's teaching and research interests include law and economics, federalism, private precautions against crime and antitrust.
Millard A. Murphy is the director of the Prison Law Clinic at the University of California, Davis, School of Law. He also teaches a course entitled Community Education Seminar. He graduated in 1986 with a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law and in 1982 with a B.A. from Sonoma State University. From 1987 to the present, Murphy has been a staff attorney with the Prison Law Office in San Quentin, California.
Angela Onwuachi-Willig is a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law. She received her B.A. from Grinnell College, and her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School. Her special interests are racial identity, family law and employment discrimination. In law school, Onwuachi-Willig was a note editor of the Michigan Law Review, and an associate editor of the Michigan Journal of Race and Law. From 1997 to 1999, she clerked for the Honorable Solomon Oliver, Jr., United States District Judge for the Northern District of Ohio; from 1999 to 2000, she was an associate at Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, in Cleveland; and from 2000 to 2001, Onwauchi-Willig served as a law clerk for the Honorable Karen Nelson Moore, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Between 2001 and 2003, Onwauchi-Willig worked for Foley Hoag LLP. Onwauchi-Willig is the author of Moving Ground, Breaking Traditions: Tasha's Chronicle, 3 MICH. J. RACE & L. 255 (1997); The Verdict on Roberts v. Texaco, 15 HARV. BLACKLETTER J. 227 (1999); and When Different Means The Same: Applying a Different Standard of Proof To White Plaintiffs Under the McDonnell Douglas Prima Facie Case Test, 50 CASE W. RES. L. REV. 53 (1999).
Raul A. Ramirez, a United States district judge, opened his own firm in 1996 named Ramirez Arbitration & Mediation Services in Sacramento. He has been a jurist for 13 years, serving the last 10 years as a federal district court judge in the Eastern District of California (Sacramento division). Before his tenure as federal judge, he served as a judge on both the Sacramento Municipal and Superior Courts. Ramirez also sat by designation as a Ninth Circuit justice. As a district court judge, Ramirez presided over numerous trials, the most notable of which was Nelson v. Bennett ("Super-cow"), a securities and RICO case that involved two "big-eight" accounting firms and several investment companies. The litigation ultimately concluded by way of settlement, but only after a three-month trial on liability. Nelson v. Bennett was one of the first RICO cases in the United States to go to verdict before a federal jury. Ramirez published numerous opinions in the "Super-cow" litigation, one of which dealt with the issue of contribution and good faith settlements, 662 F.Supp. 1324 (1987). Other prominent cases presided over by Ramirez include: Bockman v. Lucky Stores, a 1986 Title VII class action on behalf of thousands of actual and potential employees alleging sex discrimination in hiring; U.S. v. Bonanno, a 1987 white-collar criminal case brought against members of a reputed mafia family; North Valley Baptist Church v. McMahon, 696 F.Supp. 518 (1988), a First Amendment case that upheld California's power to license and regulate religious daycare centers; and Natural Resources Defense Council v. Hodel, 618 F.Supp. 848 (1985), an environmental case that dealt with a challenge to the governmental policy permitting private livestock owners to graze livestock on public land. With one of the best records for case disposition in the Ninth Circuit, Judge Ramirez has been known as an outstanding settlement judge, especially in complex multi-party cases. He has been called upon by the Ninth Circuit to settle cases pending before appellate panels of that Circuit. On January 1, 1990 Judge Ramirez chose to accept the challenge of joining the litigation practice of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, a 600+ attorney law firm with offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Sacramento, Paris, London and Singapore. At Orrick, Judge Ramirez played a vital role as lead trial attorney, lending his expertise to cases involving securities, RICO, environmental matters, Title VII, trade regulation, copyright, trademark and white collar criminal defense. While at Orrick, Judge Ramirez lectured on trial practice and spent substantial time as an arbitrator/mediator. Judge Ramirez has devoted the last fourteen years of his distinguished 34-year legal career exclusively to mediation and is particularly skilled in resolving complex, multi-party disputes. As both a superior court and federal district court judge, he has successfully presided over 3,000 mediations with special emphasis on employment disputes, catastrophic personal injury and wrongful death cases, complex business and intellectual and anti-trust matters. Ramirez has lectured on subjects of trial practice and procedure for the California Continuing Education of the Bar, local and federal bar associations, trial lawyers associations and various law schools, including the University of California at Davis, School Law; the University of Northern California, Lorenzo Patino School of Law; Lincoln Law School of Sacramento; McGeorge School of Law, Sacramento. Ramirez received his B.A. from California State University at Los Angeles and his law degree from the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento. He is a past president and member of the Board of Governors of the McGeorge School of Law Alumni Association, and is a member of the American Bar Association, the Federal Bar Association, and the California and Sacramento Bar Associations.
Tim Schooley is the supervising attorney at the California Court of Appeal in Sacramento, where he has worked since 1991. He is also a lecturer at U.C. Davis School of Law where he teaches Appellate Advocacy and is the faculty adviser to the Moot Court Board. Schooley received his B.A. from U.C. Santa Barbara in 1982, and his J.D. from the U.C. Berkeley School of Law in 1986. He worked as a law clerk for the California Court of Appeal, Third District, from 1986 - 1988. Schooley practiced labor law on behalf of unions and employees from 1988 to 1991.
Michael J. Steel is a partner in Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP with headquarters in New York, California, Washington, D.C. and offices overseas. Steel's practice has an emphasis on federal, state and local regulatory compliance issues. He advises industrial companies, including automobile manufacturing, shipbuilding, communications, plastics and oil concerns in the area of hazardous substance handling, air quality and employee safety. He has extensive experience counseling on health and safety matters and has represented clients before both federal and state safety agencies. Steel has negotiated a number of cleanup agreements with state and federal authorities throughout the United States, pursuant to the federal superfund and its state analogues. Steel also frequently works with the firm's real estate, securities and emerging companies groups structuring the allocation of environmental liabilities associated with such transactions. He has provided such assistance in matters involving sale and acquisition of properties or companies in railroad, oil and chemical, shipbuilding, food distribution and retailing, winemaking, biotech and pharmaceuticals, among others. Steel is the author of "Control of Hazardous Substances," which appears in the California Environmental Law and Land Use Practice. He has also written for the California Real Property Law Journal concerning environmental liabilities. He is the former Northern California chair of the Environmental Law Committee of the State Bar Real Property Section, former chair of the Environmental Law Committee of the American Bar Association's Young Lawyers Division and a member of the Natural Resources Section of the American Bar Association. Steel graduated with high honors from the University of California in 1977 and with honors from the University of California, San Francisco, Hastings College of Law in 1982. He has practiced at Pillsbury Winthrop since graduation and is the former managing partner of the firm's home office in San Francisco.
Madhavi Sunder is professor of law at the University of California, Davis, School of Law. She earned her J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1997 and a B.A. magna cum laude in social studies from Harvard University in 1992. At Stanford Law School, Sunder was an articles editor on the Stanford Law Review. After graduating from law school, she worked for a year as a litigation associate at the law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York, New York. The following year she worked as a law clerk for the Honorable Harry Pregerson on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. At King Hall (UC Davis School of Law), Sunder teaches courses on Property, Intellectual Property, Intellectual Property in Culture, International Intellectual Property and Intellectual Property in Cyberspace. She also writes about the effect of law on cultural formation and conflict.
Nicholas Unkovic advises domestic and multinational technology and financial enterprises on corporate law. He has particular experience in strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, and emerging company representation. A substantial portion of his work involves international transactions, especially on behalf of Asian clients. Unkovic also has substantial securities law experience, including public and private offerings of equity and debt securities, both domestically and internationally. He has handled numerous public company acquisitions, including a tender offer for a NYSE-listed company. He advises on 1934 Act disclosure and corporate governance issues and has served as chair of a public company's audit committee. San Jose Magazine recently named him one of Silicon Valley's top corporate lawyers and Law & Politics Magazine included him among its 2004 Northern California Super Lawyers. Unkovic is a member of the firm's management committee and is the managing partner of the Palo Alto office. Unkovic is also a director of the British American Business Council Northern California and a former director of The San Francisco Company and its subsidiary, Bank of San Francisco. As well he is a former co-chair of the Partnership Committee of the State Bar of California's Business Law Section. He formerly chaired the board of a YMCA and served as a director of the California Council of International Trade.
Tobias B. Wolff received his B.A. in English (Renaissance literature) from Yale University in 1992 and his J.D. from Yale University in 1997. He specializes in Free Speech and the First Amendment; Constitutional Law; Sex, Sexuality and the Law; Civil Procedure and the Federal Courts; Class Actions; and Conflict of Laws. Wolff worked as a law clerk for the Honorable Betty Binns Fletcher, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 1997 and 1998 and for the Honorable William A. Norris, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 1997. He is the author of the ACLU's Amicus Curiae brief to the Hawai'i Supreme Court in Baehr v. Mi'Ike. He worked as a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, New York in from 1998 to 2000 and is currently a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law.
