This year, the Barristers Club was delighted to present Chief Magistrate Judge Donna M. Ryu with its Tara L. Riedley Barristers Choice Award at the 39th Annual Judge’s Reception which was held on June 14, 2023. Judge Ryu sits on the bench for the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Judge Ryu about her career as a civil rights attorney, a professor, and a Magistrate Judge on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Here are some of the highlights from our conversation.
Journey to the Bench
Judge Ryu is the daughter of Korean immigrants. She grew up in Monterey, California, where her parents owned a small motel. Judge Ryu and her four brothers often helped run the motel by cleaning rooms, gardening, and working in the office. From an early age her parents instilled in her the importance of hard work and education. Judge Ryu recalls her parents hoping she and her siblings would be either doctors or lawyers. Obviously, she chose the latter.
Judge Ryu graduated with honors from Yale University in 1982. She then earned her Juris Doctor from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law in 1986. While at Berkeley, she was one of the founders the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law and Justice.
Following law school, Judge Ryu started her legal career as an associate at McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen. After two years she followed her passion and pursued civil rights work. In 1988, she joined Saperstein, Seligman, Mayeda & Larkin, a small but mighty plaintiff’s side firm. The firm was at the forefront of handling Title VII discrimination class action cases. During her tenure, Judge Ryu had the opportunity to work on many interesting discrimination cases.
One case that stands out to her is Stender v. Lucky Stores, Inc., a federal class action lawsuit against Lucky Stores, Inc. brought on behalf of Black and female employees working in retail stores within Lucky’s Northern California Food Division. The female employees had no path to management and were often relegated to working as cashiers or in the deli or bakery sections, while male employees were assigned to jobs that were more likely to lead to management positions.
Stender was one of the most meaningful cases during Judge Ryu’s career for several reasons. First, the lawsuit challenged systemic sex and race discrimination and changed the face of the grocery industry today so that women and minorities could have meaningful career paths that lead to management positions. Second, she had great mentors and as a junior member of the team was given many opportunities throughout the life of the case to exercise and hone her legal skills. And lastly, she gave birth to her daughter the day before the pretrial hearing, and a few weeks later came back to participate in the trial and brought her daughter with her.
After six years at Saperstein, Seligman, Mayeda & Larkin, Judge Ryu decided she wanted to go out and build her own firm. In 1994, she co-founded Ryu, Dickey & Larkin, a female-owned civil rights firm in Oakland.
Later, Judge Ryu pivoted to teaching. She served as the Associate Director of the Women’s Employment Rights Clinic at Golden Gate law school for four years. She then moved to UC Law San Francisco (formerly UC Hastings), where she served as Clinical Professor in the Civil Justice Clinic for eight years. Additionally, Judge Ryu taught several courses, including Asian Pacific Americans & the Law, a course reviewing issues such as immigration, naturalization, citizenship, alien land laws, and reparations, and Roles & Ethics in Practice, an interactive course providing an introduction to legal ethics, as well as to some of the tasks, roles, and relationships of law practice.
Joining the Bench
Judge Ryu never considered being a judge until soon before she applied and was appointed to her current job. Although there were some Asian, female, and lesbian judicial pioneers, there was no well-trodden path to the bench. Because of the lack of representation, she never realistically pictured herself as a judge. Despite her reservations, people often asked her if she had considered applying to be a judge. She would respond that she loved being a litigator and a professor and could not see herself doing anything else.
This changed in 2009—President Obama was elected as President of the United States, minority legal organizations became even more active in their efforts to identify diverse judicial candidates, and her daughter graduated high school and was off to college. She began to reexamine her life and career.
Judge Ryu began to think she may have something to offer as a jurist. She also considered that such a position would be meaningful to her life—her main criteria for any job. Around this time, two positions opened on the magistrate bench for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, so she applied.
Judge Ryu was appointed to the bench on January 13, 2010. In March 2023, she was elevated to Chief Magistrate Judge.
Judge Ryu enjoys serving as a Magistrate Judge. After thirteen years on the bench, there are still statutes and laws that are new to her that she is called upon to interpret and apply. She says that her job is never boring, there is always a new case, new parties, and new issues. Her work is challenging, exciting, and a lot of responsibility, and she never sits around wishing she were doing something else.
With Many Firsts, Comes A Sense of Responsibility
Judge Ryu is the first Asian-American woman, first Korean American, and first lesbian to become a member of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
When she was a young attorney not many people who looked like her were in judicial positions, so it is important to her to be visible in the community and to encourage young students and lawyers who are interested in the judicial path to pursue it and to understand that it is achievable.
Advice to Young Lawyers
When asked whether she had any advice for young lawyers, Judge Ryu laughed and said she has “Lots!”. While I can’t list them all here, here are some of my favorites:
- Find good mentors and actually spend time with them. Find people who take an interest in you, and who are great professionals and lawyers. Pay attention to the professional you want to be.
- Be open. Do what makes you happy. Sometimes you get messages from law school about what a successful lawyer looks like but there are so many different paths. Don’t get cornered into the belief that big law is the only way to have a successful career.
- Your needs and interests will change over time. Your career doesn’t have to be a straight path.
- For lawyers of color, women, and LGBTQIA+, do your best to embrace your whole self. This can be hard in the legal profession, but the more comfortable you are with bringing your whole self to work, the more others will become comfortable interacting with you.
Legal Role Models
Judge Ryu has had many role models during her career but two people stand out—Herma Hill Kay and Brad Seligman.
Herma Hill Kay was a professor at Berkeley Law and later became Dean. Judge Ryu describes her as a quiet but hugely influential figure in the legal world, a visionary, a pioneer of gender equality and a champion for female students and lawyers. During law school, Professor Kay was Judge Ryu’s employment discrimination professor. She was one of the reasons Judge Ryu was inspired to pursue a career in civil rights.
Brad Seligman is currently a judge on the Alameda County Superior Court, and the founder and director of the Impact Fund. Judge Ryu worked with Seligman during her tenure at Saperstein, Seligman, Mayeda & Larkin. She describes him as a brilliant trial attorney, a champion of social justice, a master at developing young attorneys, and a thoughtful mentor. Besides learning how to use the law and develop a case, she says he taught her the importance of being a professional. She recalls he always treated opposing counsel with respect, was highly ethical, never lost his temper, and brought his smarts and humility to work every day.
Fun Fact You Can’t Find on Her Resume
Judge Ryu is a singer in The Recusals, the unofficial house band for the Northern District of California. The band includes eight judges and others. They play Motown and R&B, and love to get the crowd up and dancing.
What effect has the pandemic had on civil cases?
When Judge [Samuel] Feng was the presiding judge, he was sending the civil cases to a department. They weren’t single-assigned but given a department. We hoped that would work in the pandemic. Sometimes it did, and sometimes it didn’t; because, without a firm trial date, cases aren’t likely to settle.
I met with the civil judges and asked them to send back the cases they had scheduled out past June of 2023. So we got those cases back, and we are now able to get cases out on the civil side. We don’t have as many courtrooms, but the parties know that when they are ready and I have a courtroom, they will go out. If they’re on standby, we get them out within a week to two weeks. So I think that’s good news for the civil bar. The feedback I’ve gotten is they’re pleased to get back to a master calendar.
Let’s talk about technology. How are you incorporating it into the court’s operations and making things more efficient?
We have Zoom capability in all the courtrooms. That was set up during COVID. We still use it. For case management conferences, the time and money it takes to travel for something that may last 15 or 20 minutes doesn’t make much sense.
But what many people are learning is that Zoom has its limitations. People talk over one another, and you have to raise your voice. If it’s a really important argument, come in person if you can.
There’s another technology issue. It's called a hybrid courtroom. A statewide working group will be coming up with recommendations about hybrid proceedings. For months they’ve met with court reporters, clerks, and judges to find out how we can do these hybrid proceedings. Is it feasible? What resources do we need?
One of the limitations comes back to the issue of access to justice. When you have high-end proceedings, the titans of industry fighting one another, it's not an issue to have a hybrid trial, where you have some remote jurors or witnesses. But for someone who can't afford that sort of technology, it deprives them of access to the courtroom. So it's a balance. Hopefully, the community of lawyers will become involved and help us fine-tune those recommendations.