andrew@mlf-llp.com
(510) 500-9994
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Andrew Lah
Managing Partner
Andrew Lah is an accomplished civil and criminal litigator, having achieved compelling results in complex cases in both the public and private sectors as a prosecutor, civil rights litigator, and federal public defender. Andrew’s practice focuses on complex civil litigation, investigations, and criminal defense. He has also been retained as an expert consultant by governments across the country to conduct sensitive analysis and investigations of systemic issues within those jurisdictions.
Over the course of his 20-year career, Andrew has tried cases in federal and state courts, including white-collar fraud, civil rights, drug trafficking, and violent crimes. He has trained public defenders, prosecutors, and civil litigators on investigations and trial practice, including at multinational forums with lawyers from Jamaica, Ecuador, Brazil, South Korea, and Canada. He has advised numerous entities on civil rights and criminal justice issues, such as the Ministerio Publico in Rio de Janeiro and the Washington Task Force on Policing.
Andrew has led innovative litigation for government agencies. He was a Managing Attorney with the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, where he supervised a staff of prosecutors and investigators working on criminal civil rights cases, including overseeing police misconduct and hate crimes investigations and prosecutions. Andrew created the Community Lawyering and Civil Rights Unit at the Oakland City Attorney’s Office where he headed affirmative litigation in housing, wage theft, and human trafficking cases. He was also Associate Chief Counsel for the State of California’s civil rights enforcement agency, leading systemic investigations into violations of state employment and civil rights laws.
In the private sector, Andrew worked at Lewis, Feinberg, Lee, and Jackson, P.C. where he litigated complex civil rights and employment cases. There, he sued investment managers who were complicit in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme leading to a more than $200 million recovery, obtained a $40 million judgment in a complex multi-party fraud case following a several-month trial, and secured a landmark settlement regarding retiree health care benefits for his clients.
In addition to his legal practice, Andrew teaches courses on criminal procedure, evidence, and police use of force at University of California College of the Law, San Francisco (formerly UC Hastings), University of California, Berkeley School of Law, and Golden Gate Law School.
He has been recognized as a Rising Star and a Super Lawyer in the San Francisco Bay Area. Andrew received his B.A. from Cornell University, and his J.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, where he completed the Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy.