Health and Disability Litigation Department, Lissa A. Martinez specializes in disability insurance bad faith on behalf of individual and business consumers.

Her practice focuses on obtaining pre-trial resolution of bad faith actions and opposing insurers' efforts to utilize arbitration clauses and ERISA preemption to deprive plaintiffs of their right to a jury trial.

Ms. Martinez is co-author of "Disability Insurance: Individual Disability Dollars or Litigation Disaster," "Combating a Disability Carrier's Efforts to Dictate an Insured's Medical Care: Whose Body Is it Anyway," "Suing Health Care Providers and Insurers Bad Faith and Other Claims" and "How to Perfect Your Insurance Claim and What to Do if You Are Denied."

Before joining Shernoff Bidart & Darras in 1998 as a law clerk, Ms. Martinez sold and marketed disability insurance policies for Provident Life & Accident Insurance Company as a licensed insurance agent with a Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU) designation.

Ms. Martinez received her B.S. in Mathematics from the University of California, Irvine, in 1987. She earned her J.D. degree, summa cum laude, from Western State University College of Law in 1999, where she was class valedictorian and recipient of 15 American Jurisprudence Awards, the highest honor ever achieved by a Western State University student.