Sara Peters, a shareholder at Walkup, is an award-winning personal injury attorney who represents catastrophically injured plaintiffs throughout California and in nationwide litigation. She serves as a member of the court-appointed leadership team in the Uber Passenger Sexual Assault Litigation. She also serves on a leadership committee in the nationwide paraquat weedkiller litigation. She represents hundreds of current and former employees of the SFPD who were exposed to radiation at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Sara has been named one of the “Best Lawyers in America” since 2020 for her work in Personal Injury Litigation-Plaintiffs and Product Liability-Plaintiffs. In 2023 and 2024, she was selected to Lawdragon’s 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumer Lawyers in the nation. Sara has been peer-nominated one of Northern California’s “Super Lawyers,” and she is an AVVO top-rated lawyer.
When she isn’t representing clients, Sara is a lecturer at Stanford Law School, co-directing the Trial Advocacy course.
She is a contributing editor of the Rutter Group “Claims and Defenses” book, which is a leading practice guide for lawyers in California, and she has published original legal research in an peer-reviewed scholarly periodical, the Journal of Tort Law.
Sara is regularly invited to speak at local and national CLE (continuing legal education) conferences on litigation-related topics. She is a Sustaining Life Fellow of the American Bar Foundation – which supports evidence-based research seeking to advance justice. She is also a fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America, a close-knit, peer-selected society of trial lawyers. She is a former board member of SFTLA (San Francisco Trial Lawyers Association), current co-chair of SFTLA’s education committee, and an active member of CAOC (Consumer Attorneys of California), AAJ (American Association for Justice), and the Bar Association of San Francisco. She has also been featured as a guest speaker on podcasts, and is an invited guest speaker at Stanford Law School courses including Health Law & Policy, and Legal Ethics: The Plaintiff Lawyer. She also serves as Co-Director of ABC (Attorneys Backing the Community) a local nonprofit composed of attorneys who volunteer in a hands-on way.
Sara prosecutes and serves as lead trial lawyer for severely injured individuals in a wide variety of cases. She has extensive experience advocating for clients in cases involving defective products, toxic exposures, trucking accidents, transportation network companies like Uber and Lyft, aviation crashes, dangerous roadways, vehicular negligence, medical negligence, sexual assault, nursing home abuse, propane explosions, civil rights violations, and other wrongdoing, and this experience includes recovering well over $100 million for clients in jury trials, bench trials, arbitrations, and mediated settlements.
Sara received her undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Middle Eastern Studies at UCLA, and attended Stanford Law School, obtaining her J.D. in 2008. She joined Walkup the same year.