Claudia Cantarella
Associate Director for the Masters of Legal Studies Program and Adjunct Professor
Bio
Claudia Cantarella is the Associate Director of the Master of Legal Studies (MLS) Program and an Adjunct Professor of Law at UC Law San Francisco, where she teaches intellectual property, business and nonprofit law, applied contracts, compliance, and legal writing. She also teaches professional communication in Northwestern University’s Master of Science in Law program.
Before assuming her current academic roles, Ms. Cantarella practiced law in New York for more than thirty years, primarily in intellectual property, technology, and corporate law. She served as General Counsel and later Chief Legal Officer of Broadway Technology, a global fintech company, where she built and led the global legal function and served on the executive leadership team through the company’s acquisition by Bloomberg. Earlier in her career, she was a partner and Co-Chair of the U.S. Intellectual Property Group at Salans LLP and practiced at other leading law firms.
Ms. Cantarella is also an Affiliated Expert at the International Development Law Center (IDLC) at UC Law San Francisco. She has worked internationally on legislative drafting, regulatory design, and legal capacity building for developing and post-conflict jurisdictions. She has served as a Legal Consultant for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, lectured and advised for the World Intellectual Property Organization and the South Pacific Community, and has lectured at law faculties in Poland, Kosovo, and Ghana.
Ms. Cantarella is Chair of the Board of Marquis Studios, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing arts education to students in New York City public schools. In 2014, she was elected a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, an honorary distinction recognizing attorneys, judges, law faculty, and legal scholars for their professional achievements and contributions to the legal profession. Fellows are nominated by their peers and elected by the Foundation’s Board, with membership limited to one-third of one percent of licensed attorneys in each U.S. jurisdiction.
Ms. Cantarella earned her B.S. in Speech, with Distinction, from Northwestern University, where she received Departmental Honors in Communication Studies, and her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.