L. Ashley Aull

Ms. Aull litigates business-critical and crisis cases—including intellectual-property disputes, high-tech products-liability cases, and class actions. She has led over a dozen trials, arbitrations, or other high-stakes evidentiary hearings, and she has argued 45 cases at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Having served as a federal prosecutor for nearly a decade, she also counsels clients through government investigations and defends those charged with white-collar crimes.

Her recent representations include:

• Representing a Fortune 100 technology company as co-lead trial counsel in an over $1 billion arbitration involving contract and accounting disputes. Her team achieved a complete defense victory and won close to $100 million on counter-claims.
• Serving as co-lead trial counsel for Activision Blizzard in a complex class action involving parallel state and federal proceedings, in which the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing sought to represent every woman who ever worked for the company. After deploying an aggressive multi-front litigation strategy, Ms. Aull’s team helped settle the case for less than 5% of the agency’s initial settlement offer.
• Representing Electronic Arts in nationwide products-liability cases regarding the design of video games, in which the defendants defeated a petition to consolidate the cases before the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation.
• Representing Shimano in a nationwide class action regarding allegedly improperly designed bicycle parts.
• Representing Snap, Inc., in a wrongful death and products-liability case regarding the so-called “Speed Filter.”
• Arguing multiple Ninth Circuit appeals on behalf of Activision Blizzard and Blizzard Entertainment—in cases involving the Federal Arbitration Act and complex civil-procedural questions.
• Representing Intel, Google and PNC Bank in patent cases in the Eastern District of Texas, where she led the development of both non-infringement and damages theories for highly technical software and signal-processing patents.
• Leading investigations on behalf of an international government contractor facing potential False Claims Act liability.
• Serving as co-lead trial counsel for a creditor in a $4 billion bankruptcy—including deposing multiple witnesses, preparing expert reports, and leading a high-stakes evidentiary hearing within three weeks’ time.

Ms. Aull rejoined Munger, Tolles & Olson in 2021 after nine years at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California—the largest federal prosecutors’ office in the country—where she spent her last several years as Chief of the Criminal Appeals Section. In that role, she led a large team of other prosecutors, overseeing approximately 300 appeals per year; she was lead counsel in dozens of appeals before the Ninth Circuit; and she worked closely with prosecutors on high-profile cases in the trial court. She obtained convictions in multiple jury trials.  She also engineered a multi-year test litigation strategy to overturn an erroneous Ninth Circuit opinion about the organic chemistry of methamphetamine.

She received the EOUSA Director’s Award, the highest honor available specifically to federal prosecutors. She was also a member of the faculty of the Department of Justice’s national training facility, where she taught trial and appellate advocacy to other federal prosecutors.

Ms. Aull earned her J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School and her A.B., magna cum laude, in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard College. After law school, she served as a law clerk to Judge Sandra Ikuta of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Harriet O’Neill of the Supreme Court of Texas. She has served as a lawyer representative to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference, and she was selected by the Circuit as a member of its inaugural Law Clerk Resources Group.