JAMS announces the addition of Hon. Elizabeth D. Laporte (Ret.) to its panel. Judge Laporte joins JAMS after serving more than two decades as a United States magistrate judge for the Northern District of California, including as chief magistrate judge from 2013 to 2015.
Based in the San Francisco Resolution Center, Judge Laporte will serve as an arbitrator, mediator, special master/referee and neutral evaluator, handling disputes in antitrust, business/commercial, civil rights, employment, environmental law, insurance and intellectual property.
“Judge Laporte has a deep knowledge of the law along with extensive expertise in e-discovery,” said Chris Poole, JAMS president and CEO. “She has achieved great success throughout her career, and we are thrilled she’s joining our panel in San Francisco.”
Judge Laporte is known for helping to shape patent and other intellectual property case law and for advancing the court’s e-discovery procedures. Her colleagues and the legal community consider her among the leading legal thinkers on e-discovery issues. For her efforts, she earned the Judicial Leadership Award from the Electronic Discovery Institute in 2015. She also launched the Northern District’s Women Attorneys Advocacy Project, which seeks to promote gender equality in the legal community.
“As a magistrate judge, I conducted settlement conferences and presided over cases through summary judgement and trial, so becoming a neutral at JAMS felt like a logical next step for me,” said Judge Laporte. “I have worked extensively to resolve complex business disputes such as patent cases and employment matters over the years and look forward to helping parties resolve a variety of disputes as a JAMS neutral in the community that I’ve been honored to serve for over two decades.”
Judge Laporte received her B.A. from Princeton University, her M.A. from Oxford University and her J.D. from Yale Law School.