Settle Cases for the Court: Volunteer Opportunities

Mr. Connon is the Managing Partner of Connon Wood LLP. For nearly 35 years, Mr. Connon has represented multinationals, major corporations, and businesses, partnerships and executives in a wide variety of industries, including the entertainment, defense, financial services, energy and chemicals, and manufacturing sectors. His practice includes significant civil litigation matters. Mr. Connon has litigated in a variety of arbitral, judicial, and governmental forums and jurisdictions throughout the United States and abroad.

Mr. Connon is the founder and Managing Partner of the Firm and also serves as Chair of the Firm’s Middle East Practice Group, recognized as 2015 Middle East Litigation Law Firm of the Year in California. He has frequently traveled to the Middle East and Europe to assist with legal and business matters abroad. He has been actively involved in a number of international bar associations and is the former Chair of the International Law Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association.

Prior to establishing the Firm, Mr. Connon worked at the international law firm Proskauer Rose LLP.  The breadth of Mr. Connon’s litigation experience is reflected by the variety of litigation and counseling matters that he has handled during his career. 

Fatemeh Mashouf has extensive, hands-on experience resolving complex employment matters across a wide range of industries. Now leading Mashouf Mediation, she helps parties move from conflict to resolution through a tailored blend of facilitative empathy and evaluative realism. She mediates employment disputes at all stages—pre-litigation through post-trial—and across the U.S., including single-plaintiff wrongful termination claims and complex, multi-party class and representative wage-and-hour actions.

Before launching her mediation practice, Fatemeh served as Head of Employment at GOAT Group, where she oversaw all facets of employment matters—domestic and global—including litigation, compliance, policy development, and workplace investigations. She is well-versed in employment law across the U.S. and in more than a dozen jurisdictions throughout EMEA and APAC.

Previously, Fatemeh practiced at top-tier law firms—Littler Mendelson, Sheppard Mullin, and Reed Smith—where she represented Fortune 500 companies in high-stakes matters involving wage and hour disputes, discrimination, PAGA, and class/collective actions throughout California.

Her mediation work spans the full spectrum of employment issues, including termination, harassment, wage and hour, PAGA, severance, and collective claims. She is fluent in Farsi and also offers pro bono mediation services as part of her commitment to access and equity in dispute resolution.

Fatemeh earned her J.D. from UC Hastings and her B.A. from UC San Diego. A California native, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their three rambunctious boys.

Kerry Bigornia is Senior Administrator for the Los Angeles Superior Court’s Alternative Dispute Resolution Office. She oversees civil settlement programs with community and legal partners and worked with the Judicial ADR Committee to revitalize the ADR Office to serve as an information hub for ADR programs and resources in several litigation areas. Ms. Bigornia developed the Court’s Mediation Volunteer Panel, which received more than 2,000 civil case referrals in its first six months. Ms. Bigornia previously managed community programming and events for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, serving as chief of the District Attorney’s Public Affairs Division for 10 years. Ms. Bigornia has a master’s degree from the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communications and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Denver.

Judge Michele E. Flurer is currently a civil trial Judge in the Los Angeles Superior Court. After graduating from Rutgers University Law School in 1986, and in the 20 years before taking the bench, she was first an active civil litigator and later general counsel of an international company, based in Los Angeles. She first became certified as a mediator in 1989 and extensively volunteered as a settlement officer for the LASC. In 2004 she also became a settlement officer for the 2^nd appellate district. She is currently the chair of the Los Angeles Superior Court’s ADR Committee and also teaches judicial education programs on ADR.

Judge Lawrence P. Riff, Supervising Judge of Civil, Los Angeles Superior Court. Judge Riff was appointed to the Los Angeles Superior Court in 2015. His assignments have included criminal misdemeanors, civil trials, and family law “home court” and long cause trial departments. Before judicial service, Judge Riff was a partner of the international law firm Steptoe & Johnson LLP where he served as the firm’s Managing Partner for its Los Angeles office for 17 years and Practice Group Leader for the firm’s U.S. Toxic Tort and Environmental Litigation Practice Group.

Marta Alcumbrac is certified as a specialist in legal malpractice law by the State Bar of California. She has successfully represented lawyers and law firms in numerous legal malpractice and breach of fiduciary duty cases. She regularly identifies strategy for early resolution by quickly obtaining and accurately analyzing the relevant facts and developing a litigation plan for bringing the case to conclusion.

Marta brings the same creativity and determination to the practice of law that she used as a principal founder of the Los Feliz Charter School for the Arts, a public school started when Marta realized that parents in her community wanted another educational option for their children. Before joining Robie & Matthai, she practiced at Bonne, Bridges, Mueller, O’Keefe & Nichols, where her practice focused on the defense of medical malpractice cases. When medical issues are relevant (as they often are in legal malpractice cases arising out of personal injury cases), her medical malpractice expertise is an invaluable asset.

Marta currently is the President of the Association of Southern California Defense Counsel.

Genie Harrison is a top employment and women’s rights lawyer handling sexual harassment, equal pay, and other employment cases. With over thirty years of experience, she has obtained significant compensation for her clients and created systemic change to benefit thousands who will never know her name, but whose lives are better as a result of her work