Cynthia L. Zedalis spent the first twenty years of her legal career litigating complex civil cases on behalf of Fortune 500 companies at some of the premier law firms in the country, including Morgan, Lewis & Bockius and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, a firm consistently ranked among the best in litigation in the United States, and the largest firm in the world devoted solely to litigation. Ms. Zedalis was Quinn Emanuel’s tenth lawyer and litigated a broad spectrum of matters in both state and federal courts, including employment, intellectual property, consumer fraud, and unfair competition. Her clients included Mattel, Inc., Lockheed Corporation, and Hughes Aircraft Company. She also represented the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in disputes concerning its world-famous Oscar© statuette.
Ms. Zedalis later teamed up with Quinn Emanuel alums in Los Angeles, where she participated in high-profile, entertainment-industry employment discrimination cases and class action defense. She also worked in New York, New York for Hall, Dickler, Kent, Friedman & Wood, LLP (now Reed Smith LLP), representing such clients as Major League Baseball, The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, and Priority Records in advertising, intellectual property, and employment/labor matters.
Ms. Zedalis spent the last 15 years practicing in New Mexico, where she used her decades of corporate litigation experience in the successful pursuit of plaintiffs’ claims in personal injury, class actions, mass torts, products liability, medical negligence, and oil and gas royalty litigation in both state and federal courts.
Ms. Zedalis is also an experienced appellate attorney, having appeared in the Second, Third, Fifth, Ninth, and Tenth United States Courts of Appeal.
Ms. Zedalis was born in Pasadena, California, and grew up in Los Angeles. She graduated from Occidental College cum laude and attended the University of California, Davis, School of Law. At UC Davis, she co-authored Student Editorial Discretion, the First Amendment, and Public Access to the Campus Press, and served as an Executive Editor of the U.C. Davis Law Review and co-editor-in-chief of The Advocate, the law school’s award-winning student newspaper.
Ms. Zedalis is a member of the State Bars of New Mexico, California, and New York.
