Mary Anne Mendenhall is a part-time lecturer at UCLA School of Law and will teach Trial Advocacy. She is the Director of Family Defense Initiatives, a collaboration between Partners for Justice and California's Office of the State Public Defender. Her background as a public defender was focused on representing indigent clients against the family regulation system. She has extensive experience in litigation, having conducted hundreds of hearings and trials in her years as a public defender. Alongside her trial attorney work, she trained and instructed many attorneys in their trial practice at The Bronx Defenders and its immersive trial training program, Defenders' Academy.

Ms. Mendenhall received her A.B. from Dartmouth College, and J.D. at Brooklyn Law School. She was an Assistant Managing Editor for the Journal of Law and Policy, a Carswell Merit Scholar, and an Edward V. Sparer Public Interest Fellow.