We are thrilled to announce our two panelist speakers for our upcoming Opening Doors to Justice 2021 event, Associate Justice Goodwin H. Liu of the California Supreme Court, and Tirien Steinbach.
Moderated by Anand Upadhye, Host of The Modern Lawyer Podcast, our speakers will touch on topics relating to equity and inclusion, racial biases, retention and activism within the legal community.
Continue reading to learn more about our exceptional panelists:
Associate Justice Goodwin H. Liu
Justice Goodwin Liu is an Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court. Nominated by Governor Jerry Brown, Justice Liu was unanimously confirmed by the Commission on Judicial Appointments and sworn into office on September 1, 2011. He was retained by the electorate in 2014. Before joining the state’s highest court, Justice Liu was Professor of Law and Associate Dean at the UC Berkeley School of Law. His primary areas of expertise are constitutional law, education law and policy, and diversity in the legal profession.
The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Justice Liu grew up in Sacramento, where he attended public schools. He went to Stanford University and earned a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1991. He attended Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship and earned a masters degree in philosophy and physiology. Upon returning to the United States, he went to Washington D.C. to help launch the AmeriCorps national service program and worked for two years as a senior program officer at the Corporation for National Service.
Justice Liu graduated from Yale Law School in 1998, becoming the first in his family to earn a law degree. He clerked for Judge David Tatel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then worked as Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education. He went on to clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during the October 2000 Term. From 2001 to 2003, he worked in the litigation practice of O’Melveny & Myers in Washington, D.C.
Justice Liu continues to teach constitutional law as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Law Institute. He serves on the Council of the American Law Institute, on the Board of Directors of the James Irvine Foundation, and on the Yale University Council. He has previously served on the California Commission on Access to Justice, the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Science, Technology, and Law, the Board of Trustees of Stanford University, and the governing boards of the American Constitution Society, the National Women’s Law Center, and the Public Welfare Foundation.
Tirien Steinbach
Tirien began her legal career as an Equal Justice Works fellow in capital appeals, and then received a Berkeley Law Foundation fellowship to develop the Clean Slate Clinic at the East Bay Community Law Center, which is the community-based clinical program for Berkeley Law School and one of the largest provider of free legal services and policy advocacy in Alameda County.
Tirien went on to serve as EBCLC’s director for 11 years, and expanded the clinic to include reentry, immigration, economic, consumer, and juvenile justice clinics. In 2017. Tirien launched the Coalition for Equity and Inclusion in Law, a Bay Area cohort of law and policy organizations dedicated to advancing greater cultural equity, inclusion, and diversity in the sector.
For the last two years, Tirien served as the Chief Program Officer at the ACLU of Northern California, and in January 2021, she began a “self-care sabbatical” to rest, write, and consult. Tirien received her bachelor’s degree from UC Santa Cruz and her law degree from U.C. Berkeley Law School.
Our Opening Doors to Justice panel discussion will be moderated by long-time OneJustice Strategy Council member Anand Upadhye, Host of The Modern Lawyer Podcast. Anand regularly chats with giants in the American legal industry about the changes we are seeing in the practice of law, legal technology, and knowledge management.