Erin E. Meyer

San Francisco

Commercial Litigation

Erin Meyer has spent nearly 17 years in litigation, the last 14 at Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP, where she has built a practice around preparing complex cases for trial.

Her appetite for trial work traces back to her first year at Yale Law School. "I knew I wanted to be a trial lawyer since my 1L year at Yale Law School, when I stood up in court for the first time representing an elderly woman in a foreclosure case through a Community Legal Services clinic," Meyer said. "Advocating for a client, telling their story and doing my best to achieve their goals resonated with me in a way that no other professional endeavor has."

At Keker, she found a firm that matched that instinct. Meyer has never been siloed into a single practice area, instead moving across industries and legal questions with a consistent objective: positioning clients for success at trial. "The guiding principle of my practice is that no matter the facts, if you develop trial themes that are compelling and persuasive to a jury early on, you will set your client up for success -- whether that's through an early favorable settlement, summary judgment, or ultimately a trial win," Meyer said.

Two recent trials illustrate the range. In 2023, Meyer took first chair in a seven-week bench trial defending Sutter Health against a qui tam action under the Insurance Frauds Prevention Act. State of California ex. rel. Duncan and Hulbert v. Sutter Health et al., RG17846895 (Alameda Super. Ct., filed Jan. 25, 2017). Relators sought over $500 million, claiming Sutter committed insurance fraud through anesthesia and recovery room billing. "My team and I had to quickly develop expertise in anesthesia, hospital operations, and the mechanics of negotiations between hospitals and health insurers," Meyer said. "We then had to distill that knowledge, and all of the evidence, to explain why Sutter should win on the facts and the law -- and we were successful on all counts." In June 2024, Judge Stephen Kaus ruled in Sutter's favor on all counts.

In fall 2024, she served as lead trial counsel for a Fortune 500 networking company facing fraud and breach-of-warranty claims tied to a 2017 equipment purchase involving SD-WAN technology. "I am so proud of the team I put together in a short amount of time (we were hired seven months before trial), and of our ability to translate complicated technical concepts into a cohesive narrative the jury understood," Meyer said. The jury returned a complete defense verdict, rejecting nine-figure compensatory damages and additional punitive damages. In summer 2025, the court issued an eight-figure fees and costs award to Meyer's client.

Some of her most significant work in 2025 has been pro bono. After filing habeas petitions that secured the release of two unlawfully detained asylum seekers, Meyer joined attorneys from the ACLU of Northern California and Centro Legal de la Raza to file a class action challenging ICE's practice of re-detaining individuals without legal basis. In December 2025, the court certified the class and stayed the policy. "Defending the rule of law, and the most vulnerable in our community who are being targeted by the government, is something all lawyers should be stepping up to do," Meyer said.