Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte was appointed in 1998. She has presided over numerous civil cases through trial or other disposition, including patent, trademark, copyright, employment, civil rights and environmental cases. She also has conducted over 1000 settlement conferences, handled criminal matters, and resolved discovery disputes.
A 1982 graduate of Yale Law School and a Marshall Scholar, she clerked for the Honorable Marilyn Hall Patel in the Northern District of California. She was a partner at the boutique litigation firm of Turner & Brorby, and an Administrative Law Judge for the California Department of Insurance. In 1996, she began serving as Chief of Special Litigation for the San Francisco City Attorney=s Office, and was named a Lawyer of the Year by California Lawyer. She has authored articles on patent litigation and settlement in the Northern California ABTL [Association of Business Trial Lawyers] Report, and has written on e-discovery. Judge Laporte serves on the Board of Governors for the Northern California Chapter of the Association of Business Trial Lawyers and the Executive Committee of the Litigation Section of the Bar Association of San Francisco. She is also a judicial observer for the Sedona Conference Working Group on Electronic Document Retention and Production.
Judge Laporte has recently been appointed the Alternative Dispute Resolution Magistrate Judge for the Northern District of California, is a past chair of the Magistrate Judge Executive Board of the Ninth Circuit, and was a member of the Jury Trial Improvement Committee of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals from 2002 to 2009. She regularly speaks at legal conferences and judicial education programs on patent litigation, jury trials, e-discovery, employment law, settlement, and other topics.