Perspectives on Litigation Best Practices (San Francisco)

MCLE: 1 hour

The Practice Program for the Northern District of California invites you to an informal program that will provide an opportunity for attorneys to hear from Northern District Judges, in-house counsel, and a private practitioner regarding Litigation Best Practices. The Panel will include:

Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler was an AUSA in this Court, prosecuting complex white-collar cases with parallel civil components, was Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division, and was the Professional Responsibility Officer. She was law clerk to the Hon. Cecil F. Poole, US Ct. of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, and the Civil Appeals Division Chief at the 9th Circuit’s Office of Staff Attorneys. She trained as a mediator with this Court’s ADR Program, the Federal Judicial Center, and Harvard Law School and was named one of The Recorder’s “2012 Women Leaders in Law.” She graduated with honors from Bowdoin College and the Univ. of Washington School of Law, where she was Order of the Coif and an Articles Editor on the Law Review.

Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley was appointed to the Court in 2011. She was a partner at Kerr & Wagstaffe, LLP in San Francisco as a civil litigator with an emphasis on federal practice, representing individuals, government entities, and institutions as plaintiffs and defendants in wide range of matters. She served as a career law clerk to the Honorable Charles R. Breyer and on the Northern District’s ADR mediation and early neutral evaluation panels from 2006 through her appointment. She earned her undergraduate degree from U.C. Berkeley, and her J.D. from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude, where she was an editor and Articles Chair of the Harvard Law Review.

Makesha Patterson is Senior Litigation Counsel at Google, Inc., San Francisco, handling a wide variety of matters, including defamation, consumer class actions, trademark, copyright, privacy, commercial, and environmental litigation. Previously, Makesha was a litigation associate at Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis in San Francisco. She earned her bachelor’s degree in architectural engineering from Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo and her law degree from U.C. Davis School of Law.

Nora Puckett is also Senior Litigation Counsel at Google Inc., handling regulatory and litigation matters, such as class actions, trademark, copyright, and commercial disputes. Prior to joining Google, Nora was counsel at O’Melveny & Myers in San Francisco, where she defended patent infringement, insurance coverage, and employment classification class action cases. Nora began her career as an associate in New York in Dewey Ballantine’s litigation department, after graduating from NY University School of Law.

Justina Kahn Sessions is an associate at Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP, focusing on antitrust and IP litigation, representing established companies and startups in complex matters in the Northern District and across the US. Tina graduated from Yale University and received her law degree magna cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School. Before joining KVP, she clerked for the Honorable Claire V. Eagan of the Northern District of Oklahoma and the Honorable Mary Beck Briscoe of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Program will include opportunities to learn:

• The expectations of judges, in-house counsel, and private practitioners regarding discovery, briefwriting, oral argument, and more, as well as the nuts and bolts of getting these done, and
• From each other by asking questions of the panelists and sharing your own experiences

New attorneys and summer associates are especially encouraged to attend.

There is no charge for this Program; however, since space in the courtroom is limited,
please register online in advance. If you have questions, call Daniel Bowling, Executive Director of the Practice Program at 415-331-5158.

The Northern District of California Practice Program is a State Bar of California
Approved MCLE Provider.