Biography
United States Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler was appointed in 2010 to the Northern District of California. She has presided as a trial and settlement judge over hundreds of civil cases, including intellectual-property, employment, civil-rights, and commercial disputes.
Before joining the court, Judge Beeler was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Northern District, prosecuting complex white-collar cases with parallel civil components. She was the Office’s Professional Responsibility Officer and supervised the Criminal Division. She was a law clerk to the Honorable Cecil F. Poole, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She trained as a mediator with the Northern District’s ADR Program, the Federal Judicial Center, and Harvard Law School.
Judge Beeler has served as a member of the Ninth Circuit Conference Executive Committee, the President of the Edward J. McFetridge American Inn of Court, a board member of the Association of Business Trial Lawyers (Northern California), the President of the Federal Bar Association, a member of the Ninth Circuit’s Magistrate Judge Executive Board, a member of the Ninth Circuit’s Criminal Case Committee, a board member of the Northern District Practice Program, the chair (and founder) of the Northern District’s Criminal Practice Committee, the co-chair of the Conviction Alternatives Committee, a board member of the Bar Association of San Francisco (BASF), a member of BASF’s Criminal Justice Task Force, the co-chair of the Lawyer Representatives to the Ninth Circuit, and a member of the Ninth Circuit’s Jury Trial Improvement Committee. She is one of four judges on the U.S. Department of Justice/Office of Defender Services Joint Electronic Technology Working Group. She implemented the court’s reentry and diversion courts.
Judge Beeler was named one of the Recorder’s 2012 Women Leaders in Law and received the Northern District Judicial Conference’s 2006 Public Service Award, BASF’s 2015 Barristers Choice Award, the Federal Bar Association’s 2018 Inaugural Chapter Achievement award, the San Francisco Trial Lawyers Association’s 2018 Federal Judge of the Year award, and the Women Lawyers of Alameda County’s 2023 Jurist of the Year award.
Judge Beeler taught Civil Trial Practice at U.C. Berkeley School of Law and Criminal Procedure at U.C. Law San Francisco (former U.C Hastings College of the Law). She has led rule-of-law projects in Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Jordan, Ukraine, Turkey, and Thailand.
Judge Beeler graduated with honors from the University of Washington School of Law, where she was Order of the Coif and an Articles Editor on the Washington Law Review. She received her A.B. with honors from Bowdoin College.