Hon. Roberta S. Hayashi (Ret.)

Hon. Roberta S. Hayashi (Ret.) joins Signature Resolution with experience that spans every dimension of employment and business dispute resolution. A pioneer in California employment law, she spent more than three decades trying cases to verdict, advising HR professionals, and developing substantive expertise in the law itself that gave her exceptional credibility with employer clients well beyond the courtroom. A veteran of the Santa Clara County Superior Court, and an active arbitrator and private mediator long before her appointment to the bench, Judge Hayashi brings a rare depth of knowledge, genuine attentiveness to the mediation table, and exceptional command of how disputes are evaluated, what litigation truly costs parties, and where the legal process reaches its limits.

Judge Hayashi approaches mediation with the same discipline and curiosity that defined her litigation career. She studies each case carefully before a session, identifies the specific decision-makers involved, and listens far more than she speaks in the early stages of a mediation. She is deliberate about creating an environment in which parties feel genuinely heard before they are asked to commit to anything, and she holds firm to the belief that people will not accept a resolution they did not feel part of reaching. When the moment calls for candor, she delivers it, surfacing litigation risk, tax implications, business continuity concerns, and other practical realities that shape what a negotiated resolution can accomplish. Culturally fluent and instinctively adaptive, she is particularly attuned to the ways that background, identity, and perspective shape what parties bring to the table and what they need from the process.

Appointed to the Santa Clara County Superior Court by Governor Jerry Brown in December 2014, Judge Hayashi presided over criminal, family law, and civil matters during her tenure. She presided over civil jury trials and served as a Civil Case Manager, earning recognition as the 2022 Jurist of the Year by the Santa Clara County Bar Association for her work in providing a safe courtroom environment while presiding over criminal and civil jury trials in 2021 and 2022. More than five years as a family law judge gave her substantial experience with custody, support, property division, and the dynamics of disputes between parties whose relationships do not end with the entry of judgment.

Before her appointment to the bench, Judge Hayashi was already an active neutral, serving on the American Arbitration Association’s Commercial and Employment arbitration panels and accepting court-supervised mediation assignments. That pre-judicial ADR experience reflects a genuine and self-directed commitment to dispute resolution that long predates her transition to full-time neutral work.

Judge Hayashi built her litigation career at Berliner Cohen in San Jose, joining in 1982 as one of the firm’s first women litigators. She rose to lead the firm’s Employment Law Practice, developing a practice that was distinguished from the outset by its dual character: she tried employment cases to verdict while simultaneously advising HR professionals, developing curriculum for SHRM, and consulting on the employment law questions her clients faced daily. That combination of litigation fluency and advisory depth gave her credibility with employer clients, and a command of the law itself, that defined her reputation in the Silicon Valley legal community for decades.

Now, Judge Hayashi’s work as a neutral draws on the full arc of that career: the pioneering litigator in California employment law, the trusted advisor who understood her clients’ businesses as well as their disputes, and the judge who presided over thousands of matters with clarity, patience, and an unwavering commitment to the people in her courtroom. Born and raised in Santa Clara County, and a past president of both the Santa Clara County Bar Association and the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, she brings to Signature Resolution not only exceptional legal depth, but the deep community roots and longstanding relationships that make her one of the most connected and respected voices in the Silicon Valley legal community.