Anna graduated from U.C. Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law in 1981 and has been a practicing attorney for more than twenty-five years. Although she is still an active member of the California Bar, she is not seeking new clients at this time.

Anna went to law school with a goal: to bring litigation to reform the California foster care system. She had been a licensed foster mother of a child whose biological mother never visited her, whose parental rights were never terminated which would allow the child to be adopted. Anna found this outrageous since this child, and those similarly situated, were forced by this policy into a lack of stable family life, with an uncertain future, and often into homelessness. While Anna was in law school, the law was changed. After law school graduation, Anna served on the Alameda County Panel for many years representing abused and neglected children. She was sworn in as a Juvenile Court Commissioner by Hon. Wilmont Sweeney, former presiding judge of the juvenile court.

Anna has specialized constitutional law, what she calls “Justice Work”.

She has brought lawsuits against more than thirty public entities, in both state court and federal court, in efforts to enforce citizens’ civil rights.  These cases have centered around police misconduct, employment discrimination and other types of constitutional issues.
 
She has argued in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal.

She has been qualified and has testified as an Expert Witness in Constitutional Law at trial in the Alameda County Superior Court. 

She represented a local newspaper against both the University of California and the City of Berkeley in securing information under the California Public Records Act. 

She has represented literally thousands of demonstrators asserting First Amendment speech rights.

She was lead counsel for hundreds of persons arrested for protesting U.C. investments in apartheid South Africa, was trial counsel for several defendants.

She represented two women who were discriminatorily charged charged in the deaths of their children, winning one case on a Murgia motion, the other at the Preliminary Hearing. As a result, state law regarding the use of window bars was changed. 

She enforced the law against the City of Berkeley, requiring the Berkeley jail strip search policy to be changed.

She has represented the incarcerated who have been denied medical care.

She has represented numerous demonstrators for the rights of the homeless, the disabled, children, women and people of color. 

Anna served on the Board of the Street Law Program at U.C. S.F. Law School and founded the program’s implementation in Alameda County Juvenile Court as an alternative to incarceration for non-violent offenders. 

Anna has always put her legal skills to work to make the world a better place.