Justin C. Pfeiffer

Read the Lawyer Limelight Q&A with Justin C. Pfeiffer

Justin C. Pfeiffer offers clients extensive experience in litigating complex-commercial, securities, administrative, and criminal matters in federal courts throughout the country.  His federal experience derives from five years working as an attorney under some of the nation’s most prominent jurists.  He began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge William B. Shubb of the Eastern District of California in Sacramento, California.  Immediately thereafter, he served as a law clerk to Judge Priscilla R. Owen of the Fifth Circuit in Austin, Texas.  After private practice at San Francisco’s largest firm, he served for three years as a staff attorney to the Sixth Circuit, working directly with all the judges of that court.

His substantive federal experience includes the following areas of law: securities, constitutional, environmental and land use, administrative, patent, copyright, federal criminal, federal death penalty, habeas and death penalty, employment, immigration, bankruptcy, and civil and criminal procedure.

In private practice, he has represented a major mutual fund provider against class actions alleging claims under federal securities law and state law.  He helped achieve dismissal of the state-law claims and substantially limited the federal claims.  In a different matter for the same client, he helped achieve an interlocutory reversal, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b), of the district court’s conclusion that a federal securities statute provided a private right of action thereby saving the client from discovery.  Additionally, he helped draft an amicus brief filed in the Ninth Circuit on behalf of the National Disability Rights Network opposing California’s funding cuts to adult day health care programs for the elderly and the significantly disabled.

REPRESENTATIVE MATTERS

• In re Charles Schwab Corp. Secs. Litig., 257 F.R.D. 534 (N.D. Cal. 2009)
• Northstar Fin. Advisors v. Schwab Invs., 615 F.3d 1106 (9th Cir. 2010), reversing 609 F. Supp. 2d 938 (N.D. Cal. 2009)
• Cota v. Maxwell-Jolly, No. 10-15635 (9th Cir. July 2, 2012)

FEDERAL JUDICIARY EXPERIENCE

• Staff Attorney to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit, 2010-2013
• Law Clerk to the Honorable Priscilla R. Owen, U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, 2007-2008
• Law Clerk to the Honorable William B. Shubb, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, 2006-2007

OTHER ATTORNEY EXPERIENCE

• Morrison & Foerster LLP, San Francisco, 2008-2010

MEMBERSHIPS AND COMMUNITY

• Member, Board of Trustees, William Howard Taft National Historic Site, 2011-2013
• Judge, Civic Education Competitions, Ohio Center for Law-Related Education, 2011-2013

EDUCATION

• University of Michigan Law School,
  J.D., Order of the Coif, 2006
  • Associate Editor,Michigan Journal of International Law
  • Michigan International Trade Law Moot Court Team
  • The Representative for the Law School on the Michigan Student Assembly
• University of Virginia,
  B.A., Phi Beta Kappa, 2001
  • Distinguished Majors Program in History (Degree with Distinction)
  • Echols Scholar
  • Student Council Representative for the College of Arts and Sciences

BAR ADMISSIONS

• Texas, 2014
• California, 2007

FOREIGN LANGUAGES

• Spanish