Judge Consuelo B. Marshall began her career as a Deputy City Attorney in Los Angeles where she was the first woman hired as a lawyer by the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office. She later entered private practice at the Los Angeles law firm of Cochran & Atkins (Johnnie Cochran and Nelson Atkins) and left private practice for the bench, serving as a Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner, Inglewood Municipal Court Judge, and Los Angeles Superior Court Judge. Judge Marshall was appointed to the United States District Court for the Central District of California in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter. In 2001, she became the first woman to serve as Chief Judge of the Central District of California (and the first woman of color to serve as Chief Judge in any federal district west of the Mississippi).

Judge Marshall has been a faculty member of The Rutter Group and the Trial Advocacy Workshop at Harvard Law School. She has lectured in Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Yugoslavia, Italy and Greece. She is an active member of the International Association of Women Judges, and was a delegate to the Pacific Judicial conferences in Vanuatu, Tonga, French Polynesia, the Solomon Islands, and New Zealand. Most recently, Judge Marshall spoke and presented a paper on “Self-Represented Litigants and Access to Justice” at the International Organization for Judicial Training in Bordeaux, France, and at the Pacific Judicial Conference in Honiara, Solomon Islands. She chairs the Ninth Circuit Pacific Island Committee, which oversees judicial training for the Pacific Islands of Guam, Saipan, Palau, American Samoa, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. She currently serves on the RAND Institute for Civil Justice Board of Overseers and as a board member of Equal Justice Works.

Judge Marshall has also been active in the local non-legal community, serving on the Board of Directors for the Weingart Center, a non-profit facility for the homeless, and the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. She has been a recipient of many awards, including the Los Angeles County Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Award, Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Thomas Bradley Distinguished Citizen Award, Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles Ernestine Stahlhut Award, Langston Bar Association Bernard S. Jefferson Jurist of the Year Award, American Bar Association Litigation Section, ABA Women Business & Corporate Advocates Subcommittee, Los Angeles County Bar Association Outstanding Jurist Award, California Women Lawyers’ Joan Dempsey Klein Distinguished Jurist Award, and induction into the Langston Bar Association Hall of Fame and the City of Los Angeles Hall of Fame.

Judge Marshall is an avid reader and enjoys activities such as walking, hiking, biking and traveling.