Julia Claire Shear Kushner

Julia has been practicing family law at both the trial and appellate level since she joined Leslie Ellen Shear’s practice in 2012, after a federal district court clerkship for Justice Cormac J. Carney in Santa Ana. She serves as lead counsel on family law appeals throughout California and regularly consults with trial counsel and or litigants to assess the viability of a potential appeal and advise as to the steps necessary to preserve appellate issues and prepare for a potential appeal. She has also written one amicus curiae brief for a matter in the Second District Court of Appeal and one amicus curiae letter in support of review in the California Supreme Court on behalf of the Los Angeles County Bar Association (LACBA) in two separate appellate matters relating to attorney professional obligations and the right to counsel of choice. She also successfully defended an attorney fee arbitration award as lead appellate counsel in the Court of Appeal. Her published opinion, Marriage of Dalgleish and Selvaggio (2017) 17 1172, rev. denied March. 14, 2018) was California Family Law Report’s (CFLR) Family Law Case of the Month.

Julia is the current Chair of the LACBA Appellate Courts Section (ACS). She is also the Vice Chair of the California Lawyer’s Association (CLA) Litigation Section’s Committee on Appellate Courts (formerly a standing committee of the State Bar) and a member of the Litigation Section’s Executive Committee. She is the managing editor for the CLA Litigation Section’s monthly Litigation Update (authored by Justice Eileen Moore of the Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division 3) and a co-Editor-in-Chief of the section’s annual California Litigation Review (as well as a contributing author for its Appeals and Writs article).

Julia regularly organizes and/or moderates CLA’s annual judicial advisor roundtable for CLA and ACS’s annual “Meet the New Justices of the Second District” program. She co-presented a program titled “Nuts and Bolts: Post-Trial Pitfalls in State Civil Cases” for CLA’s 2022 Litigation and Appellate Summit. She conceived of, organized, and moderated a program entitled “Brief It Like Brandeis: Using Social Science and Other Non-Legal Sources in Appellate Advocacy” for a 2021 LACBA webinar and for CLA’s 2023 Litigation and Appellate Summit. In May, for CLA, she will be co-presenting a webinar titled “Navigating Appellate E-Filing: From Errors to Excellence” with the Clerk Executive Officer of the Second District Court of Appeal and the Assistant Clerk/Administrator of the First District Court of Appeal. Julia has also lectured on appellate practice for the California Judicial Council and Public Counsel’s Second District Appellate Self-Help Clinic workshops at the Los Angeles Law Library, and on the Sanchez issue for a State Bar Family Law Section Webinar and the White-Zuckerman Orange County Study Group.

Julia graduated tenth in her class at UCLA School of Law and served as Chief Managing Editor of the UCLA Law Review. Her published law review comment, “The Right to Control One’s Name” is cited in an opinion from the Indiana Supreme Court, an opinion letter of the Tennessee Attorney General, and Witkin Summary of California Law. With Ms. Shear she co-authored an article on abduction risk and prevention for the Journal of Child Custody, and an article on whether People v. Sanchez governs child custody evaluations for the CLA’s monthly magazine—the Family Law News. 

Please do not send any confidential information to me and my office until I have done a conflict check and scheduled a paid consultation. I may have already consulted with the other side in your case. Please just send an email indicating that you would like a consultation and indicate whether it is for an appeal or trial court matter.