Michelle Ghafar

Michelle Ghafar serves as a Lecturer at UC Berkeley School of Law while concurrently practicing as a senior attorney at Earthjustice in San Francisco. Her professional focus spans Administrative Law, Civil Procedure and Litigation, and Environmental, Natural Resources, and Energy Law, with active engagement in both academic instruction and high-impact legal advocacy.

Her educational foundation includes a J.D. from UCLA School of Law (2016), where she completed the Epstein Public Interest Law and Policy Program and Critical Race Studies Specialization, and a B.S. in Managerial Economics from UC Davis (2009). Admitted to practice in California, she integrates scholarly expertise with frontline legal work.

Ghafar's research and professional interests center on environmental regulation, particularly oil and gas litigation, clean air compliance, and clean energy transitions. She actively litigates in state and federal courts while engaging with regulatory bodies including the California Department of Conservation, State Water Resources Control Board, South Coast Air Quality Management District, and Port of Oakland. Her work bridges theoretical legal frameworks with practical advocacy in public interest law, emphasizing environmental justice and regulatory accountability.

Her prior experience providing reentry legal services at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights demonstrates commitment to intersectional legal issues. Though no formal academic publications are documented in the source material, her practice-driven expertise informs her teaching at Berkeley Law, where she likely translates real-world litigation challenges into pedagogical contexts for law students.