Teri Stein has spent more than two decades combining her love of research, writing, and social justice into passionate advocacy on behalf of her clients. With a legal career that has spanned from working at a global law firm, to running her own consulting firm, to creating a volunteer legal services organization, Teri consistently takes a client-centered approach. She tackles every case — from nationwide class actions to individual asylum claims — with a perspective informed by her work in law and public policy. Teri is a problem solver who welcomes the challenge of finding creative solutions.

As a senior associate working at a multinational firm, Teri specialized in complex commercial litigation, handling strategy and managing teams engaged in “bet the company” litigation. Drawing on her experience as a law clerk with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, she also focused on appellate litigation in state and federal courts. After leaving the firm to spend some cherished time with her young daughter, Teri formed her own consulting practice, where she advised public entities and private individuals on a range of legal and policy matters. Teri also served for several years as a member of the East Los Angeles Area Planning Commission, which approved or rejected real estate development projects based on their impact on neighborhoods and local communities.

In January 2017, Teri founded the Legal Aid Pop Up Clinic, which paired lawyers and other volunteers with established community organizations to provide services to vulnerable populations. Teri trained hundreds of volunteers to staff clinics throughout southern California, with a particular focus on helping DACA recipients, undocumented individuals and mixed status families, and LGBTQ+ individuals who sought to legally change their names and gender markers. Teri also developed and presented “Know Your Rights” trainings to more than a thousand individuals who work with immigrant populations in educational and medical settings to help them protect and inform the people they serve.

Teri received her J.D. from Stanford Law School in 2003, and her A.B. with honors and distinction in Humanities from Stanford University. She served as a federal law clerk to the Honorable Kim McLane Wardlaw of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Teri has been honored by numerous state and local bar associations and public interest organizations. Teri received the California State Bar Association President’s Pro Bono Award and the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s Aranda Outstanding Public Service Award for her successful advocacy on behalf of a transgender, HIV positive woman seeking asylum from Mexico. She is also a five-time recipient of the Wiley Manuel Award for Pro Bono Service, and has been honored for outstanding legal advocacy by the California Habeas Project/Free Battered Women, HIV/AIDS Legal Services Advocates, and the Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project.

In addition to her lifelong pursuit of justice, Teri is also a writer of nonfiction. Her latest piece, Penumbra, was selected as one of the year’s most notable essays by The Best American Essays 2024.

Some of Teri’s representative cases are summarized below:

• Obtained a major federal preemption ruling, which protected her client, a national airline, from potentially inconsistent applications of state law to itsbusiness practices.

• Successfully defended a multinational corporation’s efforts to protect its intellectual property and trade secrets against a challenge by a competitor seeking to misappropriate trade secrets.

• Obtained a grant of asylum for an Anglophone Cameroonian who had been tortured by the Francophone government because of her nationality and imputed political opinion.

• Obtained a grant of withholding of removal for an HIV positive, transgender woman from Mexico who was the victim of sexual violence by local police because of her gender identity.