After a litigation career in public interest law that included work for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and California Rural Legal Assistance, Miguel A. Méndez entered academia and has become a foremost expert, scholar, and teacher in the field of evidence law. An author of leading works on the laws of evidence in California, he writes about reforms in the federal and California evidence codes and on emerging issues in state substantive criminal law.

He is a consultant to the California Law Revision Commission and an elected member of the American Law Institute. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1977, Professor Méndez was deputy public defender in the Monterey County Public Defender’s Office, deputy director of California Rural Legal Assistance, and a staff attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Early in his career he clerked for the U.S. Court of Claims and was a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Alan Cranston (BA ̕36). He is currently a professor of law at the University of California, Davis, School of Law.