Editorial Lead & Reviewing Attorney
Sarah Mitchell, J.D.
California-licensed attorney (State Bar No. 248,xxx), civil litigator, and legal-tech writer with more than 15 years of experience calculating, verifying, and defending procedural deadlines in state and federal court. Sarah leads editorial review for every statute, rule, and calculation on Deadline Calculator.
15+
UC Berkeley Law
20+
CA · 9th Cir.
About Sarah
Sarah Mitchell began her legal career in 2010 as a civil litigation associate at a mid-size defense firm in Los Angeles, where she quickly discovered that a missed filing window can dismantle an otherwise winning case. That early lesson shaped a 15-year practice built around procedural rigor — the boring, high-stakes calendar work that decides motions, discovery disputes, and summary judgments long before oral argument.
After making partner at a boutique employment and business litigation firm in 2018, Sarah began writing for practitioner publications about the compounding traps hidden in the California Code of Civil Procedure — the two-court-day electronic service bump under §1010.6, the “roll backward” rule in §12c, and the summary-judgment exception in §437c(a)(2). Those articles became the foundation for Deadline Calculator, where she now serves as the reviewing attorney for every statutory citation, holiday table, and calculation rule the site publishes.
Sarah is a member of the California Lawyers Association, the ABA Section of Litigation, and the Los Angeles County Bar Association. She has taught continuing legal education (MCLE) courses on motion practice and e-service, and she has been quoted by the Daily Journal and Law360 on procedural reform. She is not currently accepting new clients; her editorial work here is her primary public-facing role.
“Deadlines aren’t clerical. They are the outer edge of your client’s rights. A calculator that gets §1005 wrong by a single court day can end a case before the merits are ever heard — so every rule on this site is one I would stake my own calendar on.”
Credentials & Experience
Every calculation and citation on Deadline Calculator is reviewed against Sarah’s practice notes and the current statutory text.
Education
- J.D., UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) — 2010
- Order of the Coif; Senior Editor, California Law Review
- B.A., Political Science, magna cum laude — UCLA, 2007
Bar Admissions
- State Bar of California — active, good standing since 2010
- U.S. District Court, Central District of California
- U.S. District Court, Northern District of California
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Practice Focus
- Civil motion practice (CCP §1005, §437c, §473)
- Discovery disputes and sanctions (CCP §§2016–2036)
- Responsive pleadings and default calendars (§412.20)
- Federal deadlines under Fed. R. Civ. P. 6, 12, 26, 56
Selected Writing & Speaking
- “The Two-Day E-Service Trap” — L.A. Lawyer, 2022
- “Counting Backward: §1005 in Practice” — CEB Daily News, 2023
- MCLE speaker, CLA Litigation Section Annual, 2024
- Contributing editor, DeadlineCalculator.org, 2023–present
Editorial Process
Sarah applies a four-step review to every deadline rule, statute reference, and calculator output on this site.
Statute-first drafting
Every rule begins with the current statutory or rule text — CCP, FRCP, or the applicable local rule — pulled from the official source, not a secondary summary.
Independent recalculation
Each calculator scenario is hand-computed against a printed court calendar before it is committed to code, including federal and state judicial holidays.
Cross-jurisdictional check
State-specific pages are compared against the Judicial Council forms and the equivalent federal rule to flag any place a practitioner might confuse the two.
Annual review
Statutes, holiday tables, and e-service rules are re-verified every January and whenever the Legislature or Judicial Council amends the underlying rule.
Not legal advice
Sarah’s editorial oversight is intended to make this site’s calculations trustworthy — not to create an attorney-client relationship. Always confirm any court deadline with the current statute, local rules, and, when the stakes warrant it, counsel of record.
