Catherine Fisk teaches Employment Law, Labor Law, Civil Procedure, and Understanding the U.S. Legal Profession. She is a Faculty Director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Work and the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology.
Professor Fisk is the author of several books. Her first, Working Knowledge: Employee Innovation and the Rise of Corporate Intellectual Property, 1800-1930 (University of North Carolina Press, 2009, 2014), won prizes from the American Society for Legal History and the American Historical Association. In her next book, Writing for Hire: Unions, Hollywood, and Madison Avenue (Harvard University Press, 2016), Fisk explored the law and norms of credit and compensation for writing, contrasting the writer-protective rules negotiated by unionized writers in film and TV with far less protective norms developed in non-union advertising. Fisk is the co-author of four books for use in law school and legal studies classes: Labor Law in the Contemporary Workplace (3d ed. 2019), The Legal Profession: Ethics in Contemporary Practice (2d ed. 2019), What Lawyers Do: Understanding the Many American Legal Practices (2020), and Labor Law Stories (2005). Her next book will examine the professional identities of lawyers who represented activist, multi-racial, and politically progressive unions in the mid-twentieth century.
Fisk’s scholarship has appeared in many leading law reviews. Her recent works explore innovative ways to improve labor standards, labor and social movement lawyering, free speech at and about work, and reforming police labor relations.
Professor Fisk’s current public service and pro bono legal work includes filing amicus briefs on various labor and employment law issues, service on the Advisory Board of the Berkeley Labor Center, the board of directors of the American Society for Legal History and the boards of directors of two Bay Area workers’ rights nonprofits, and occasional service as an arbitrator under collectively bargained labor contracts. Before joining the Berkeley faculty in 2017, she was on the law faculties at UC Irvine, Duke University, the University of Southern California, and Loyola Law School of Los Angeles. Prior to entering academia, Fisk practiced civil appellate litigation and union-side labor law in Washington, D.C., and clerked on the Ninth Circuit. Fisk received an AB summa cum laude from Princeton University and a JD from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was elected to Order of the Coif.
Education
AB, Princeton University (1983)
JD, University of California, Berkeley (1986)
LLM, University of Wisconsin (1995)
Catherine Laura Fisk is teaching the following course in Fall 2024:
• 200F sec. 002 - Civil Procedure
Courses During Other Semesters
| Semester | Course Num | Course Title |  Teaching Evaluations | Spring 2025 | 210 sec. 004 | Legal Profession | 227 sec. 001 | Labor Law | Fall 2023 | 200F sec. 003 | Civil Procedure | Spring 2023 | 211.11 sec. 001 | Understanding the U.S. Legal Profession | View Teaching Evaluation | 227 sec. 001 | Labor Law | View Teaching Evaluation | 227.32 sec. 001 | Current Issues in Work Law | View Teaching Evaluation |
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San Francisco Bans Discrimination of Workers With Covid-19
Professor Catherine Fisk weighs in as San Francisco passes an emergency ordinance that temporarily bars employers from taking adverse action against employees and job applicants who tested positive for Covid-19 or who are or were isolating due to Covid-19 symptoms or exposure
How police unions became so powerful — and how they can be tamed
Professor Catherine Fisk looks at the history of police unions and examines steps police departments can take make reforms
How We Can Reform Police Unions To Address Systemic Racism
Professor Catherine Fisk discusses the ways police unions and cities can work together to make meaningful reform
US police torn between shame and pride for their badge
Professor Franklin Zimring discusses the history of police violence, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd
Amazon Hiring Spree Bolsters Its Workplace Safety Team
Professor Catherine Fisk discusses occupational safety and health as Amazon faces litigation over alleged unsafe work conditions
Some Tesla factory employees say they’re being pressured to return to work
Professor Catherine Fisk weighs in on the struggles employees face as they weigh their protections under law against the pressure to return to work, as Tesla reopens their factories
Tesla’s reopening may be a spectacle, but it’s also a warning for Silicon Valley
Professor Catherine Fisk looks at Tesla’s reopening and predicts the same factors that led to massive unionization in the 1930s could result in 21st century versions of unions.
‘It’s a Clusterf-ck’: Musicians Struggle to Get Pandemic Assistance
Professor Catherine Fisk looks at the outdated policies that make it difficult for independent contractors to receive unemployment assistance during the pandemic.
Professors: COVID-19 Highlights Major Holes in America’s Social Safety Net
Professors Catherine Albiston ’93 and Catherine Fisk ’86 explain how the lack of paid leave in the U.S. reflects a growing inequality among Americans stoked by the COVID-19 crisis.
How will plaintiffs prove where they caught coronavirus?
Professor Catherine Fisk explores the complexities of employer liability during the pandemic
Bridging the Pay and Protections Gap for Essential Workers
Professor Catherine Fisk, talks workers rights and breaks down how essential workers are faring during the pandemic.
Coronavirus and labor law: Know your rights, from paid sick leave to working from home
Professor Catherine Fisk & Seema Patel, Clinical Director for the East Bay Community Law Center, explain workplace rights during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Music Industry Is Flush With Cash. Why Aren’t Dancers Getting Their Fair Share?
Professor Catherine Fisk told Rolling Stone a new bill makes it harder to classify workers as independent contractors and the impact that may have on dancers in music videos.
Berkeley Law Launches New Era under Dean Erwin Chemerinsky
Highlights include new faculty, flourishing programs, high-impact research, and expanding student opportunities.
Professor Fisk: A Passionate Advocate for Workers’ Rights and Economic Justice
Catherine Fisk ‘86, an expert in labor law and legal history, is Berkeley Law’s newest faculty member.