Shaleen Shanbhag (she/her) is Managing Attorney of Public Counsel’s impact litigation team, Opportunity Under Law, which aims to eliminate barriers to opportunity through community-based impact litigation. She provides leadership for Opportunity Under Law and helps oversee its litigation docket. This includes cases brought on behalf of individuals and communities confronting structural injustice and discrimination in areas like education, housing, and immigration.
Shaleen has over a decade of experience litigating impact civil rights cases. She has tried numerous cases to verdict in state and federal courts and successfully argued before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Prior to joining Public Counsel, Shaleen was the Director of the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. Shaleen is a former partner of the civil rights law firm, Hadsell Stormer Renick & Dai LLP and a former federal district court clerk. She began her legal career at the ACLU of Southern California.
For her early accomplishments, Shaleen has been recognized in the National Trial Lawyer’s Top 40 Under 40 and selected as a Rising Star by Super Lawyers. She is frequently asked to present at conferences and speak at law schools. Shaleen is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, Irvine School of Law.
