Capital Center for Law & Policy

Erin O'Neal is a graduate of Stanford Law School with significant practice experience as a federal civil litigator for both a national law firm in San Francisco and a boutique law firm in Sacramento. She also served as a judicial clerk for federal district Judge Jon P. McCalla in the Western District of Tennessee. Prior to attending law school, Professor O’Neal was a California Senate Fellow and legislative consultant in the office of Senate President Pro Tempore Bill Lockyer.

Professor O’Neal combines her legislative and litigation experience to teach Capital Lawyering & Policymaking, Professional Responsibility, Leadership in Organizations, and Global Lawyering Skills. She works to provide in-depth instruction on persuasive written and oral advocacy in both the policymaking and courtroom arenas to prepare McGeorge graduates to be practice ready as they begin their careers. Professor O’Neal also serves as a coach for McGeorge’s nationally ranked Moot Court team.

As Director of McGeorge School of Law’s Capital Center for Law & Policy and Capital Lawyering Concentration, Professor O’Neal focuses on strategizing with those interested in government and policy, legislative work, lobbying, and other careers in and around the Capitol. McGeorge is located in Sacramento, California’s diverse capital city. This location, combined with the skills, experience, and networking opportunities available in our Capital Lawyering curriculum, provide McGeorge students and graduates with an unsurpassed opportunity to become involved in policy, advocacy, and government at the state, local, and regional level.

Professor O’Neal also serves as Director of the Justice Anthony M. Kennedy Learning Center and Faculty Director of McGeorge’s MSL in Government Law & Policy. Additionally, she is Director of the Pacific Legal Advantage Program at the University of the Pacific, which provides an immersive pre-law educational experience designed to expose students to the legal field and prepare them for the rigors of law school.

While at Stanford Law School, Professor O’Neal was Editor in Chief of the Stanford Law & Policy Review. She graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a BA in Political Science. Professor O’Neal is a member of the California Bar and is licensed to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, Ninth Circuit, and the Eastern, Northern, Central, and Southern Districts of California. She served as Vice President of the Sacramento Stanford Alumni Association and Chair of the AALS State & Local Government Section and is currently Treasurer of the AALS Election Law Section.

Professor Leslie Gielow Jacobs has been a Professor at McGeorge since 1993. During this time, she has authored a substantial and important body of scholarship on constitutional doctrine, governance and national security, and particularly on government speech. Professor Jacobs' articles have appeared in law journals at Yale, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio State, UC Davis, Rutgers, Tulane, Florida and Indiana. Her separate pieces of scholarship on bioterrorism and national security have appeared as invited submissions to Homeland Security: Law and Policy (William Nicholson, ed. 2005), Encyclopedia of Bioterrorism Defense (J. Wiley, 2005), the Journal of National Security Law & Policy, and the interdisciplinary journal, Biosecurity & Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice & Science. Professor Jacobs is co-author of law review pieces addressing law reform in Indonesia and two volumes in the McGeorge Global Issues series designed to bring international and comparative law into core law school classes, Global Issues in Constitutional Law and Global Issues in Freedom of Speech and Religion. Jacobs has served as the Associate Dean for Scholarship since July 2024.

Currently, Professor Jacobs serves as Executive Director of the McGeorge Capital Center for Law & Policy, dedicated to studying issues of federalism and government structure and aiding government policymakers who must navigate their complexities. Before this appointment, Professor Jacobs served as Director of McGeorge's Institute for Development of Legal Infrastructure. Located within the McGeorge Center for Global Business and Development, the Institute generates scholarship on development issues and provides service to developing nations seeking to strengthen their legal systems. In February 2008, Professor Jacobs taught a course at Zhejiang Gongshang University in Hangzhou, China, as part of a USAID legal education grant administered by the Institute. Professor Jacobs has also led the McGeorge Bioterrorism and Public Health Initiative, which focused on introducing issues related to those topics into the law school curriculum. Professor Jacobs received her BA from Wesleyan University, graduated magna cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School, and served as a law clerk to United States Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

"Nothing makes me happier than when I hear from a student or recent graduate who has found her or his niche in the legal community and is out using the skills they learned in my classes to solve legal problems. I love that as a professor I get to have a role in supporting people at a critical juncture in their professional, and often personal, journey to a satisfying career."

News: Mary-Beth Moylan was interviewed on Capital Public Radio's Insight program on Oct. 23, 2018, about the 2018 ballot measures.

Mary-Beth Moylan is an Associate Professor of Law at McGeorge School of Law. She was a founder of the Global Lawyering Skills (“GLS”) program at McGeorge. GLS is a nationally recognized, required two-year skills program that introduces students to a broad range of core lawyering skills that include, legal research, writing, and oral advocacy, as well as client interviewing, client counseling, negotiation, and drafting. Professor Moylan is also the co-author of Global Lawyering Skills (West 2013) and Global Lawyering Skills: Second Edition (West 2018), a legal skills textbook that is unique in the market for its focus on cross-border and cross-cultural considerations in lawyering skills and practice. In addition to her experiences in the GLS program, Professor Moylan has been engaged with McGeorge’s Clinics, Externships, and Pro Bono work. She also has been involved with the Advocacy and Dispute Resolution Center and the Capital Center for Law and Policy. In addition to these areas of interest, she teaches Civil Procedure. Moylan served as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Experiential Learning from 2019-2024.

Professor Moylan has a long-standing passion for and expertise in politics and government. Since 2003, she has supervised the publication of the California Initiative Review, an online journal providing objective and neutral analysis of each statewide ballot proposition. The California Initiative Review is published in advance of every California statewide general election. Professor Moylan and her students also hold a public forum for explanation and discussion of the statewide ballot propositions, and Professor Moylan regularly provides a summary of the propositions to Capital Public Radio’s Insight program in advance of each general election. Her expertise in politics and government is not limited to the initiative process, and Professor Moylan is often looked to by local news media for expert advice on state constitutional issues, conflicts of interest, and other election related topics. She was chairperson of the inaugural Sacramento Ethics Commission in 2018.

Professor Moylan is also an expert in legal skills education. She was President of the highly respected and influential Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) in 2014-2015, and she regularly presents at conferences. In May 2018, she was a panelist for ALWD’s first Leadership Academy and she presented at the ALWD conference in Boston, Massachusetts. In 2016, she presented on a mediation panel at the Global Legal Skills Conference in Verona, Italy, and the Legal Writing Institute Conference in Portland, Oregon. During her tenure as GLS director, McGeorge has hosted the ALWD Conference (2011) and the Western Regional Legal Writing Conference (2016). She continues to serve on ALWD’s ABA Task Force, and as an advisor to its ALWD Guide Committee.

Although Professor Moylan was raised in New England, and attended college and law school in the Midwest, she launched her legal career in Sacramento as a law clerk for the Honorable Lawrence K. Karlton of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California. She then practiced election law with Olson, Hagel, & Fishburn, and general civil litigation with Downey Brand LLP, both highly regarded Sacramento-based law firms. She maintains her connections to the Sacramento legal community and keeps abreast on changes to legal practice through her involvement with the Anthony M. Kennedy American Inn of Court. The Kennedy Inn brings together judges, lawyers, and law students to promote ethics, civility, and professionalism in the practice of law. Professor Moylan is a member of the executive committee of the Kennedy Inn, and she ensures that student members of the Inn are active participants in this organization.

"A successful policy solution must be grounded in more than good intentions or sound-bite rhetoric. My goal is to help McGeorge graduate students develop the skills to understand the legal framework within which policy operates, so that they can develop solutions that are reflective of the complex world in which those solutions must be implemented. My courses in water and government provide insights into the history and social context of legal principles, and offer opportunities to apply those principles to today’s real-world problems. Ultimately, my passion is to help students realize their dreams of professional success, personal growth, and public service to their communities."

Expertise

Professor Harder's expertise includes water, environmental, and administrative law.

Biography

Jennifer L. Harder is a professor at University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, where she teaches courses in water, environmental, and administrative law. She also serves as Co-Director of McGeorge’s Water & Environmental Law Concentration and as McGeorge’s Faculty Director for Online Learning. Professor Harder is coauthor of the water law textbook, Cases and Materials on Water Law, 10th ed. (West American Casebook Series, 2020). Her research focuses on integration of classic water rights principles into contemporary regulatory systems, water and growth, and issues of water justice. From 1999-2008, Professor Harder was an attorney and partner in the water practice group at Downey Brand LLP, in Sacramento, where she practiced water rights and environmental compliance, and served as general counsel to public agencies. Before joining Downey Brand, she served as a law clerk to Justice Alexander O. Bryner at the Alaska Supreme Court. She is a member of the Research Network at the Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy Center, a member of the Executive Committee for the Environmental Law Section at the California Lawyers Association, and a graduate of the Water Leaders program at the Water Education Foundation.

Chris Micheli is a founding partner of the governmental relations and advocacy firm of Snodgrass & Micheli, LLC located in Sacramento, California. He has been a lawyer-lobbyist for the past 30 years.

During the last 25 years, he has published hundreds of articles and editorials in professional journals, newspapers and trade magazines, whose diverse subjects range from tax incentives to transportation funding. He wrote a bi-monthly column on civil justice reform for five years for The Daily Recorder, Sacramento's daily legal newspaper, authoring over 100 columns. He has served on the editorial advisory boards for CCH's State Income Tax Alert, a nationwide publication, as well as State Income Tax Monitor, another national newsletter, and Sacramento Lawyer, a monthly legal journal.

In addition, he has been the Editor-in-Chief of CCH’s Property Tax Alert Practitioners' Perspectives, and has published practitioner comments in the CCH 4-volume treatise California State Tax Reporter. He serves as a Contributing Editor to the CEB California Business Law Reporter in the area of California taxation, and has been a California Correspondent for State Tax Notes, the premier national weekly state tax journal.

Micheli has been an attorney of record in several key cases, having argued before the Supreme Court of California (just two years out of law school), as well as the Court of Appeal several times. He has filed more than fifteen amicus curiae briefs in California courts. He is admitted to practice law before all of the state and federal courts in California.

Additionally, Micheli has been qualified as an expert witness on California's knife laws in superior court, and has appeared as an expert witness before the State Board of Equalization in several key tax cases. His writings and work have been cited in amicus curiae legal briefs, books, and law review articles, as well as by the Congressional Research Service.

He has published six law review articles and is the co-editor and co-author of the book “A Practitioner’s Guide to Lobbying and Advocacy in California,” as well as the author of “Understanding the California Legislative Process,” “An Introduction to Legislative Drafting in California,” and “Introduction to California Government.” Most recently, he has published two casebooks: “The California Legislature and Its Legislative Process: Cases and Materials” and “Cases and Materials on Direct Democracy in California.”

Micheli has over 900 explanatory videos on his YouTube channel dealing with the California Legislature, its legislative process, bill drafting, statutory construction, political and election laws, the rulemaking process and lobbying at the State Capitol. His blog contains more than 450 posts on similar topics.