Richard Marcus, Horace O. Coil ('57) Chair in Litigation

Professor Richard Marcus was born and raised in San Francisco. He attended Pomona College, where he lettered for four years on the track team, engaged in a variety of 1960s-era political activities and spent a year as president of the student body.  He then attended UC Berkeley (Boalt Hall), where he was research editor of the California Law Review and elected to Order of the Coif when he graduated in 1972.

Both before and after graduation from law school, Professor Marcus served as law clerk to Justice Raymond Peters of the California Supreme Court.  After an around-the-world expedition went awry in a bus accident in Afghanistan, he spent a summer working on the Wounded Knee Legal Defense Committee in Rapid City, South Dakota.  Then during 1973-74 he served as an associate-in-law at Boalt Hall and, in 1974-75, as a law clerk to U.S. District Court Judge Alfonso J. Zirpoli in San Francisco.  In 1976 he got a real job, as a litigation associate at Dinkelspiel, Pelavin, Steefel & Levitt (since disbanded) in San Francisco, where he became a partner in 1980.

In 1981, Professor Marcus left practice and entered teaching as an associate professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, becoming a full professor in 1984.  He was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan Law School in 1986-87.  He joined the Hastings faculty in 1989, became a Distinguished Professor in 1997, and was awarded the Horace O. Coil ('57) Chair in Litigation in 1999.  His teaching has focused on litigation-related areas such as civil procedure, complex litigation, conflicts of law, and evidence, and he has also taught contracts, corporations and remedies.  Professor Marcus' writing has focused on litigation-related topics.  He is a co-author of the West casebooks Complex Litigation (5th ed. 2010) and Civil Procedure: A Modern Approach (5th ed. 2009).  He is also a co-author of several volumes of the Federal Practice & Procedure treatise and serves on a variety of committees dealing with practice issues.  Since 1996, he has served as Associate Reporter to the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules of the Judicial Conference of the U.S. 

Professor Marcus is married to a law school classmate who maintains an appellate practice mainly representing local government agencies.  He and his wife have one daughter.  Although he is a technophobe, he has gotten involved in the various uses of digital technology in litigation.

Courses Taught: Civil Procedure, Evidence, and Complex Litigation