Class Notes

“My parents immigrated from Mexico in the 1960s with very limited formal education and very limited English skills,” he says. “Government programs like Headstart, summer school, Pell grants, and student loans were critical lifelines toward limitless opportunities. I recognized early on the importance of those government programs in my life’s journey, which sparked my interest in giving back by dedicating nearly all of my professional career to public service.”

Pasadena’s city manager since 2022, Márquez oversees services provided to over 130,000 residents by about 2,300 city employees with a budget of $1.1 billion this year. Even before law school, he helped state and local governments as a management consultant providing financial and organizational analysis.

While he spent four years at two firms and four years as a California Court of Appeal associate justice, his career has mostly involved leadership roles helping cities and counties. Márquez has served as San Mateo County deputy county counsel, San Francisco deputy city attorney, San Francisco Unified School District general counsel, and Santa Clara County counsel and chief operating officer.

He relishes helping shape systemic changes to build a more just and equitable society, and helping residents obtain quality municipal services to improve their lives — and also their community’s collective wellbeing.

“Local government provides a tremendous platform to serve the public and bring about needed changes,” he says. “The biggest challenges are societal divisions, driven by both mainstream and social media, that preclude collective problem solving and foster hatred and blame instead. Communities working together to solve problems are unstoppable. Divided communities get nothing done.”

Confronting the January fires that ravaged greater Los Angeles became all-consuming, as Márquez directs Pasadena’s disaster emergency services and oversees its fire and police departments. The city-owned Pasadena Convention Center housed 1,000 evacuated residents within two hours of the Eaton fire starting, and the Rose Bowl was turned into a command center for 4,000 first responders.

“My team and I spent nearly every waking hour fighting fires, evacuating residents, and providing food, clothing, and shelter to those evacuated,” he says. “All of this work was undertaken alongside our federal, state, and county partners, our nonprofit and business partners, our partners in education, our faith-based community, and thousands of residents and volunteers both here in Pasadena and throughout the state and nation. The coordination and support has been extraordinary.”

Márquez recalls his law student days being marred by California passing Propositions 187 (which banned undocumented immigrants from using the state’s major public services) and 209 (which barred state and local governments from considering race, sex, or ethnicity when making decisions about public employment, contracting, and education). The UC Board of Regents subsequently changed the UC system’s admissions process, resulting in Berkeley Law’s Class of 2000 having only one Black student and a handful of Latine students.

“Nearly 30 years later, being part of a diverse and thriving California gives me hope for America’s future,” he says. “As goes California, so goes the nation.” — Andrew Cohen

“As a scientist, I enjoyed gathering data and analyzing it to put together a story,” she says. “Law is similar — you gather facts and put together a story to tell the jury. Marrying science and law seemed the best of both worlds.”

Sadasivan took a range of intellectual property courses and participated in the student-run Berkeley Technology Law Journal, then spent a semester working for a judge and another semester at the law school-affiliated East Bay Community Law Center. All of it confirmed her hunch that she was on the right track.

“The former two cemented my interest in patent law, the latter two in litigation and working with clients,” she says.

Litigation — with a focus on the life sciences — has formed the backbone of Sadasivan’s successful practice. Her work encompasses some of the sector’s leading-edge technologies, including recombinant DNA technology, pharmaceutical formulation, computer hardware, and software.

A partner at McDermott Will & Emery in the firm’s Silicon Valley office, Sadasivan has racked up a host of accolades. She was named the Daily Journal’s Top Intellectual Property Lawyer in 2023 and has been included on the lists of Best Lawyers in America for patent and IP litigation, the IAM Patent 1000 World’s Leading Patent Practitioners, and Lawdragon’s 500 Leading Litigators in America, among others.

Her clients include some of the industry’s heaviest hitters, including Amgen, Ambry Genetics, and Alnylam. Recently, Sadasivan helped close a three-year litigation on behalf of the cell-free DNA testing company Natera, which sued two competitors in the early cancer screening market for patent infringement in the U.S. District Court for Delaware.

A jury awarded the company more than $19 million in damages for royalties and lost profits as a result of the infringed patents, and a few months later a judge issued a permanent injunction against the competitors to stop using Natera’s patented technology — an unusual victory in the healthcare sector.

Sadasivan has co-authored several scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals, too. And she’s a board member and past president of the Asian Law Alliance, a nonprofit that strives to provide equal access to the justice system for Asian Pacific Islander and low-income populations in Silicon Valley.

Combining her scientific expertise with the rigors of practicing law is an ideal blend that offers deep professional satisfaction, Sadasivan says.

“Every case has a different technology to learn and a legal area to explore deeply,” she says. “It is never boring and keeps me on my toes.” — Gwyneth K. Shaw

Specializing in litigation against fossil fuel companies and other polluters, Dunlavey has helped government entities, consumers, small businesses, workers, and homeowners recover over $16 billion while prompting changes in various company practices.

As a law student, he never imagined absorbing so much science.

“Everything from metallurgy to fish migration, how emissions systems work, and how toxins are spread through ocean currents and the air,” says Dunlavey, a partner in the New York City office of plaintiff-side powerhouse Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein. “I also have to understand a lot of economics for the complex damages modeling that goes into my cases.”

His track record includes a $1.8 billion settlement with Sempra Energy Corporation arising from the largest methane leak in U.S. history, and around $500 million after a variety of coastal oil spills in California. He also helped steer a series of major settlements against Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi stemming from the 2015 “clean diesel” scandal for cheating on diesel-emissions tests.

Dunlavey currently represents the State of California against fossil fuel companies in what may be the most important environmental litigation to date: seeking to hold major oil companies accountable for decades of deception regarding the impact of climate change.

“As I grew up, I realized that the law best fit my skill set, and I could effectuate change best as a plaintiff-side lawyer,” he says. “Berkeley was the only law school I ever wanted to go to, in part because of its focus on environmental law, but also because of its public interest focus and embrace of plaintiff-side work.”

He has persuaded courts to certify classes of victims of environmental disasters by applying modern science to traditional theories of trespass, nuisance, and negligence law.

“You’d think it’s a no-brainer, but fossil fuel companies spend millions of dollars trying to convince courts that trying such cases on a class-wide basis is not appropriate under traditional tort law,” he says.

Dunlavey received a California Lawyer of the Year Award from the Daily Journal and was a finalist for Consumer Attorney of the Year by the Consumer Attorneys of California. Additionally, Lawdragon named him among its 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumer Lawyers in America the past two years, he’s been a Super Lawyers Northern California Rising Star five years running, and the American Antitrust Institute recognized him for outstanding private practice antitrust achievement.

“I take great satisfaction in getting companies to agree to change their corporate practices as part of a settlement,” he says. “Never in my wildest dreams would I imagine I would have played a part in changing corporate behavior and helping so many achieve justice.”

The biggest myth of environmental law?

“That you need to have a science background to succeed,” says Dunlavey, who also fathers two toddlers with his husband. “You just have to be willing to roll up your sleeves and learn the science.” — Andrew Cohen

Olson argued 65 cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, including the two Bush v. Gore cases arising from the 2000 presidential election and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Surprising many given his conservative pedigree, he also argued in favor of same-sex marriage in Hollingsworth v. Perry — which upheld the overturning of California’s Proposition 8 that banned such marriages — and successfully challenged the first Trump Administration’s rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Private counsel to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, Olson also served both in high-level Department of Justice positions. Among his many accolades, he twice received the Department of Justice’s top award for public service and leadership, and also received the Department of Defense’s Distinguished Service Award, its highest civilian honor, for his advocacy in U.S. courts.