Newdorf Legal

I have been a civil trial lawyer in San Francisco for 14 years. Before law school, I was a daily newspaper reporter in California and Florida. This website represents the union of two dominant themes in my life: writing and the law.

I started my own law firm, Newdorf Legal, in July 2008.  The firm represents business and public entities in trials and appeals.  From 2001 until setting out on my own, I served as a Deputy City Attorney on the trial team of the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office.  At the City, I defended police civil rights claims, class actions and complex commercial disputes. I practice in both state and federal court at the trial and appellate levels.

Under former City Attorney Louise Renne, who hired me, and now Dennis Herrera, the City Attorney’s Office has been — and continues to be — an extraordinary public law office. I was lucky to work with such talented and committed lawyers.

I joined the City Attorney’s Office to get inside a courtroom on a regular basis and to try cases. Before joining the office, I was a litigation associate at O’Melveny & Myers LLP in San Francisco from 1994 to 2001.

During my years at the firm, only one matter I worked on went to trial, a class action against Ford Motor Company. I was, perhaps, lawyer No. 15 on the case and had a small speaking role in that trial — very small. In fact, though the jury never actually saw me, they heard my disembodied off-screen voice when videotaped depositions were played. That was all. (Plaintiffs won the trial, and the case ultimately settled.)

At O’Melveny, I managed to get myself lent out to the City Attorney’s Office to handle a trial — a high-speed motor vehicle collision involving plaintiffs and an S.F.P.D. patrol car responding to a shooting call. (The jury divided liability 60-40 between the parties. I forget who was tagged with the larger portion of fault.)

I got my first taste for trial work at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, where the late Bill Hobbs taught an intensive trial advocacy class. The class was followed by an internship at the East Los Angeles Branch of the L.A. District Attorney’s Office. I was able to personally handle, under the supervision of a deputy D.A., felony preliminary hearings (mostly small drug offenses) and one misdemeanor DUI jury trial. (Defendant was convicted.)

Very early in my career (1995-96), I took a one-year hiatus from O’Melveny to clerk for Judge Charles A. Legge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. It was there I got my first exposure to civil rights cases, which led to pro bono work at O’Melveny and more recently to my focus on police civil rights cases at the City. After court, Judge Legge would light up a pipe in chambers and regale the law clerks with trial stories from his days at Bronson Bronson & McKinnon (now defunct). The San Francisco legal community of Judge Legge’s early years seemed parochial and clubby compared to the bar today. These stories instilled in me an appreciation for local traditions, collegiality and a sense that San Francisco trial lawyers are part of a legal community with a proud history.