A litigator with 20 years of experience, Mary K. Back, Partner in Foley Mansfield’s Walnut Creek office, concentrates her practice on labor, employment, general and products liability. Ms. Back is actively involved with all aspects of litigation, including discovery and depositions, dispositive and pre-trial motions, trial preparation, and settlement in California state and federal courts. Before joining Foley Mansfield, she was a Partner at a national law firm where she represented a broad range of clients in the defense of employment disputes, including wage and hour and harassment suits. She also handled a substantial number of general civil litigation matters, including catastrophic personal injury and wrongful death claims, product liability claims, trucking and transportation claims, premises liability, professional claims, and governmental tort liability claims.

As previous national coordinating counsel for various companies, Ms. Back is skilled at developing defense strategies and themes, preparing and taking corporate and expert witness depositions, handling settlement negotiations, and trials. Prior to that role, she was a senior civil litigator responsible for the management of many high-profile state and federal toxic tort, medical malpractice, and mass torts-pharmaceutical matters.

She is admitted to practice in California and Massachusetts. She earned her law degree from Northeastern University School of Law and her undergraduate degree from Clemson University.
She clerked for the Justices of the Superior Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts immediately upon completion of law school. While in law school, she clerked for the Honorable Napoleon A. Jones, Jr. of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California and was also an editorial writer for the nationally published Lawyers Weekly newspaper. She actively volunteers with the Justice & Diversity Center of the San Francisco Bar, dedicating her time to pro bono cases since 2018.