Lisa Ells

Practice Areas

Appeals

Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

Land Use and Fair Housing

Commercial Litigation

Career

Lisa Ells is a partner at Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP. She assists clients in difficult and complex matters involving actual or potential litigation. Ms. Ells maintains a diverse practice, successfully representing clients in a variety of First Amendment, commercial, constitutional law, disability access compliance, land use, attorneys’ fees, legal malpractice, civil rights, and intellectual property disputes.

Ms. Ells is particularly experienced in appellate law. She serves as a member of the Ninth Circuit Advisory Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, previously served as a Ninth Circuit Appellate Lawyer Representative from 2022-2025, and is an elected member of the California Academy of Appellate Lawyers.

Ms. Ells has briefed numerous appeals, writs, and dispositive motions in the United States Supreme Court, the Ninth and Federal Circuit Courts of Appeals, and the California Supreme Court and Courts of Appeal. She has argued more than a dozen times before the Ninth Circuit and the California Courts of Appeal. Ms. Ells’s appellate matters have addressed constitutional law, commercial real estate and land use disputes, disability access compliance, employment law, attorneys’ fees entitlements, and complex questions involving the scope of federal courts’ equitable powers, jurisdiction, and procedural and statute of limitations issues.

Ms. Ells has played a key role in some of the most significant civil rights class action cases on behalf of prisoners and parolees in California. She was a member of the legal team that successfully proved after a contested trial that California’s extreme prison overcrowding violates prisoners’ Eighth Amendment rights to adequate medical and mental health care, and that required California to take steps to reduce the level of crowding. The Supreme Court upheld that ruling in 2011 in Brown v. Plata. Ms. Ells was also instrumental in securing a Ninth Circuit ruling in 2014 requiring California to take steps to ensure the federal rights of prisoners and parolees with disabilities are accommodated when the state chooses to house them in third-party county jail facilities.

Ms. Ells is a graduate of Columbia Law School, where she was an Editor of the Columbia Law Review and a James B. Kent and Harlan Fiske Stone scholar, and of Duke University. Prior to joining RBGG, she served as a law clerk to the Honorable James R. Browning of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and to the Honorable David O. Carter of the United States District Court for the Central District of California.

Ms. Ells received California Lawyer Attorney of the Year (CLAY) awards for 2018 and 2020, and was selected by the Daily Journal for its Top Women Lawyers list for 2021-2026. Ms. Ells was named to the Northern California Super Lawyers list for 2018-2026, and as a Rising Star from 2012-2016. She serves as Treasurer of the Board of Directors for the First District Appellate Project, and as a Grants Co-Chair and Board Member for the Berkeley Law Foundation.

Professional Memberships

Ninth Circuit Advisory Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure

Ninth Circuit Appellate Lawyer Representative (2022-2025)

California Academy of Appellate Lawyers

Bay Area Appellate Inn of Court

Treasurer and Board Member, First District Appellate Project

Grants Co-Chair and Board Member, Berkeley Law Foundation

Experience

Law Clerk to the Honorable David O. Carter, United States District Court for the Central District of California, 2005-2006

Law Clerk to the Honorable James R. Browning, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 2006-2007

Education