Office of Legal Affairs

Assistant Secretary/General Counsel, Donald Currier

Chief Deputy General Counsel, Alberto Roldan

Chief Legal Policy, Bruce M. Slavin

Office of Legal Affairs

The Office of Legal Affairs manages all litigation involving the Department; provides legal advice and assistance to the Secretary and staff of the Department; and represents the Department in administrative proceedings.

The legal work of the Office of Legal Affairs (OLA) is divided among nine separate units: the Business and Infrastructure Legal Team, the Court Compliance Legal Team, the Employment Advocacy and Prosecution Team, the Health Care Legal Team, the Institutions and Parole Operations Legal Team, the Labor and Human Resources Team, the Legal Access Team, the Liability Assessment and Litigation Management Team, and the Parole Hearings Team. 

• The Business and Infrastructure Legal Team addresses primarily transactional law issues such as Contracts; Intellectual Property; Construction and Real Property .  There is also a significant workload of environmental law matters.
• The Court Compliance Legal Team is responsible for overseeing the management of post-trial class action suits against the Department as well as developing and implementing strategic plans for reaching substantial compliance with several class action court orders. 
• The Employment Advocacy and Prosecution Team has implemented a Vertical Advocacy Process handling employee discipline issues (including drafting and training of discipline policy; litigation of employee appeals before the State Personnel Board, and defense or prosecution before the appellate courts for employee discipline, petitions for writ of administrative mandamus, requests to file charges, or whistleblower retaliation complaints).
• The Health Care Legal Team focuses its efforts on matters related to inmate health care:  from Keyhea hearings to coordination with Attorney General's Office on inmate class actions related to health care (Plata, Budd, Coleman  and others) and inmate habeas petitions involving correctional health care.
• The Institutions and Parole Operations Legal Team tackles inmate issues ranging from gang validation; mail and visiting; religion, inmate discipline and so on.  Attorneys in this unit coordinate with the Attorney General's Office on class actions and inmate habeas petitions involving conditions of confinement.
• The Labor and Human Resources Legal Team Labor Law; Personnel and Personnel Policy; Employee Medical; Disability Retirement; DFEH/EEOC; CalOSHA; Employee Litigation; Workers’ Comp
• The Legal Access Team serves as an over-arching point for coordination of all the various teams – triaging requests for assistance to an appropriate team(s)/attorney(s).  The Access team also fields requests for third party discovery and other records issues, and coordinates OLA-generated  training and outreach efforts.   Office administrative and support functions are also an integral part of this team.
• The Liability Assessment and Litigation Management Team manages inmate/ward and parolee/citizen civil litigation – including representation and indemnification issues.  It liaisons with the Office of Risk Management providing briefings on operational and policy issues rendering the Department vulnerable to liability exposure. 
• The Parole Hearings Legal Team not surprisingly concentrates on parole hearing issues – from advice and opinion work on, to parole revocations, to decision review and executive summary of suitability findings for life term inmates.  It facilitates the work of the Attorney General's Office on class actions and inmate habeas petitions involving hearing decisions.

For more detailed information, please click on the links to read information about our Teams.
Thank you for your interest in our office. To contact us directly please call us during normal business hours at 916-445-0495.
Our mailing address is Office of Legal Affairs, P.O. Box 942883, Sacramento California, 94283-0001.