As a Deputy City Attorney, Allison Ehlert primarily litigates the Office’s appeals and writs of mandate, as well as dispositive motions in the trial court. Before joining the City Attorney’s Office, she was a partner in a boutique appellate practice where she represented workers, consumers, and individuals in employment-discrimination, wage-and-hour, consumer-fraud, and civil-rights cases in dozens of appeals in the state and federal courts. She has prevailed in cases in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the California Courts of Appeal, and the highest courts of New York and Ohio. Ms. Ehlert has also filed amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court and the California Supreme Court. The amicus brief she authored on behalf of the U.S. Alcohol Policy Alliance in the U.S. Supreme Court case Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Assocs. v. Thomas, 139 S. Ct. 2449 (2019), was cited by Justice Gorsuch in his dissent.

In addition to her deep appellate experience, Ms. Ehlert has worked as a trial-level litigator at prominent San Francisco law firms Girard Gibbs, LLP (now Girard Sharpe, LLP) and Coblentz, Patch, Duffy, and Bass, LLP. Following law school, she clerked for Judge R. Guy Cole, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and Judge Algenon L. Marbley of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.

Ms. Ehlert is a past member of the National Employment Lawyers Association and the California Employment Lawyers Association, where she served on the Amicus Committee. She is presently Chair of the Appellate Committee of the Alameda County Bar Association. She has presented as part of several CLE panels and has served as a practitioner advisor to the Appellate Advocacy class at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

Ms. Ehlert earned her B.A. in Politics and Government from Ohio Wesleyan University, where she graduated Summa Cum Laude and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. She earned her J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.