Recent Developments in California Domestic Violence Case Law

Erin Smith, Cory D. Hernandez, & Helen Wang¹

Erin Smith is the Executive Director and a co-founder of Family Violence Appellate Project. Over the last 4-1/2 years, Erin has directed the organization from start-up to established legal services provider and an important part of the statewide network of service providers working to end domestic violence in California. Erin has been involved in almost all of the 27 new published cases on domestic violence issues in which FVAP has been involved since 2012. Before co-founding FVAP, Erin was a family law attorney, winning a unanimous appellate verdict in a child support case, and before that a civil litigator. She attended UC Berkeley School of Law, where she graduated order of the coif in 2004.

Cory Hernandez is a third-year student at UC Berkeley School of Law. Cory has served as a law clerk for FVAP for two terms after spending a term as a law clerk at the Family Violence Law Center in Oakland, and another term at the East Bay Community Law Center in Berkeley. After graduation, Cory plans to continue supporting and advocating on behalf of survivors of domestic and/or sexual violence. Prior to law school, Cory obtained a B.S. in political science and American studies and an M.S. in political science from MIT

Helen served as a law clerk for FVAP in the summer of 2016. After obtaining her LLB in China, she came to the United States seeking knowledge in the practice of common law. During her three years of school life at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, she has developed a strong interest in family and children’s law. She currently works as a domestic relations mediator at the Viola J. Taliaferro Family and Children Mediation Clinic, helping indigent people settle various family disputes.