Bio
Adjunct Professor John Dean has practiced law in the Bay Area for over thirty-five years. He initially established a criminal defense practice in Oakland, CA, eventually focusing primarily on major felonies including controlled substances and violent crimes. He then served eleven years as President of a large wholesale/retail bakery, where his duties included negotiating collective bargaining agreements with five unions and negotiating agreements with major suppliers and customers, including national hotel and restaurant chains, hospitals and educational institutions.
After representing “management” in labor negotiations, Professor Dean moved “across the table”. Beginning in 1998, he served as an attorney with the Air Line Pilots Association, International, a nationwide labor union representing nearly 60,000 professional airline pilots at over forty airlines, eventually holding the position of Senior Labor Relations Counsel for the union. In that capacity he trained hundreds of pilot negotiators and negotiated numerous airline pilot labor agreements, and also conducted continuing education programs for staff attorneys. He assisted in the development of the National Mediation Board’s award-winning online grievance mediation program. He has served as lead attorney on numerous arbitrations (both interest arbitrations and disciplinary matters). In addition, because of his extensive criminal trial experience, he regularly represented pilots in contested administrative hearings before the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board, including numerous “high profile” cases involving accidents, serious operational incidents and allegations of substance abuse. Professor Dean left ALPA in Fall 2016 after serving the union for over eighteen years.
John has been an Adjunct Professor of Law at Hastings since 2006.
Professor Dean regularly serves as an instructor/panelist in continuing education programs for lawyers, with a focus on negotiation, mediation and alternative dispute resolution, and ethics, including programs sponsored or endorsed by the American Bar Association, California Continuing Education of the Bar, the Practising Law Institute, and state bar organizations in New York, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, Arizona, and elsewhere. He also regularly serves as a negotiation consultant to law firms.
Mr. Dean currently serves as a court-appointed and private mediator and arbitrator, and has successfully mediated commercial disputes, employment and harassment claims, and personal injury claims.
He is a graduate of Hastings and UC Berkeley, and resides in San Francisco with his wife of forty years, Susan, a registered nurse/MBA and retired manager with a major national health organization. Son Michael (a Hastings grad) is an attorney in Silicon Valley with a prominent Bay Area-based law firm. Daughter Melissa is an attorney in New York City with a major sports league.