Ms. Hufstedler, Senior Of Counsel to Morrison & Foerster, has focused her practice on civil litigation for over fifty years at all levels of state and federal judicial systems. Her principal work has been appellate litigation, as an appellate judge in federal and state courts for fourteen years and in private practice as an appellate advocate. As an advocate, Ms. Hufstedler has been frequently called upon to undertake complicated civil cases in a wide variety of legal fields, such as admiralty, antitrust, contracts, constitutional law, conflicts, copyright, insurance, intellectual property, inverse condemnation, municipal corporations, products liability, securities, torts, and innumerable aspects of state and federal statutes and procedures. Her clients have included the State of California, the City of Long Beach, the City of Laguna Beach, the City of Vernon, The Dow Chemical Company, Dow Corning Corporation, Exxon Corporation, MagneTek, Inc., Alamo Rent-A-Car, AT&T, MCA, and others. Prior to joining Morrison & Foerster in March of 1995, Ms. Hufstedler was a partner in the firm of Hufstedler & Kaus.

The first Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, Ms. Hufstedler is a former Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeals and Judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court. She is nationally known for her work in analyzing judicial systems, creating new procedures to improve the management of caseloads of trial and appellate court systems and in designing the first system to weight appellate court caseloads. Ms. Hufstedler held an endowed chair at Stanford Law School as a visiting scholar, has written widely in the fields of law, education and government, and has been a guest lecturer in law and government at many universities and colleges across the United States and abroad.

Ms. Hufstedler received her B.B.A. in 1945 from the University of New Mexico and her LL.B. in 1949 from Stanford University where she served as Articles and Book Review Editor of the Stanford Law Review. Ms. Hufstedler has also been awarded twenty honorary doctorate degrees and many medals from universities and colleges. She is the recipient of the American Bar Association’s 1995 Medal. Mrs. Hufstedler has been named a 2007, 2008, and 2009 Best Lawyer in America in the fields of Appellate Law, Bet-the-Company Litigation, and Commercial Litigation.