Elizabeth J. Cabraser

Elizabeth J. Cabraser (born June 23, 1952) is a Founding Partner of the San Francisco law firm Lieff Cabraser Heiman & Bernstein. Under her leadership, Lieff Cabraser has become one of the country's largest law firms serving clients seeking redress for financial and consumer fraud, anti-competitive practices, harmful drugs and products, and illegal employment practices. She has served as court-appointed lead, co-lead, or class counsel in over 80 federal multi-district and state coordinated proceedings. She has held leadership roles in cases that resulted in landmark settlements, verdicts, and precedent-setting rulings, including the Exxon Valdez disaster, breast implants, smoker and multi-state tobacco litigation, Fen-Phen (diet drugs), Holocaust litigation, Vioxx, Guidant defibrillators, and Bextra/Celebrex MDL litigations. Cabraser has been repeatedly recognized as one of the foremost litigators in our nation, including selection an unprecedented four times as one of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America by the National Law Journal, which has called her "a pillar of the plaintiffs' bar." Cabraser has written and lectured extensively on federal civil procedure, complex litigation, and substantive tort law issues. She is an American Law Institute Council member, has taught practitioners and judges at the Federal Judicial Center, publishes in scholarly journals, e.g., The Class Action Counterreformation, 57 Stan. L. Rev. 1475 (2005), Apportioning Due Process: Preserving the Right to Affordable Justice, 87 Denver U.L. Rev. 437 (2010). She has served as a visiting or adjunct professor at Columbia University Law School and Vanderbilt University Law School, and she lectures at the University of California, Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. She received the B.A. degree from the University of California, Berkeley and the J.D. degree from the Boalt Hall School of Law. In 2010, the American Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession honored Cabraser with its Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award - given to women who have achieved professional excellence in their field and influenced other women to pursue legal careers, opened doors for women lawyers in a variety of job settings that historically were closed to them, and/or advanced opportunities for women within a practice area or segment of the profession.. The award recognizes the accomplishments of women lawyers who have excelled in their field and have paved the way to success for other women lawyers. It is regarded by many as the highest honor in the legal profession for women lawyers. In 2003 she received the Berkeley Citation Award from Boalt Hall School of Law.