Elise L. Bonine

Elise has extensive experience in a variety of complex litigation matters, including mass torts, class actions, commercial litigation, and criminal prosecution. In helping to develop and enact litigation strategies for clients, Elise has successfully drafted numerous dispositive motions and pleadings for federal and state courts, facilitated coordinated class action defense, conducted thorough liability analyses, and taken expert depositions. Her experience includes leading a joint demurrer for 10 counties in California and drafting joint motions for summary judgment in a 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 wrongful death lawsuit.

Prior to joining ArentFox Schiff, Elise was a litigation associate at a California-based law firm and an associate at a national plaintiff firm in the San Francisco Bay area. She also previously worked in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. She served as an Assistant District Attorney at the Kings County District Attorney’s Office, where she was a prosecutor in the Domestic Violence Bureau. Elise successfully indicted more than a dozen felony cases, negotiated felony and misdemeanor plea agreements, argued in front of the Appellate Division, conducted hundreds of investigations, and litigated almost 500 cases to resolution. 

While attending law school, Elise worked at the United Nations Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, prosecuting individuals who committed war crimes during the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. She also assisted asylum seekers through her immigration defense externship with the Legal Aid Society and volunteered for the International Refugee Assistance Project. As a member of the Advanced Mediation Clinic, she mediated issues ranging from alleged violations of the Equal Employment Opportunities Act to housing conflicts, and she conducted training for the United Nations, the Judicial Ethics Committee, and new mediators.