Krista S. deBoer has been teaching negotiation, advanced negotiation, and difficult conversation courses to corporate, public, and nonprofit clients in the U.S. and abroad for more than a decade, including through the Harvard Negotiation Institute.  She previously taught negotiation to law students as an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown Law School, and was a lecturer on law at Boston College, where she taught environmental law.  

When she is not teaching, Krista is a partner at the Los Angeles firm, Morrison & Foerster, LLP. Her practice has a dual focus on healthcare and environmental law. As a healthcare attorney, she represents medical groups, independent practice associates, healthcare systems, hospitals and physicians in litigation in state and federal court.

Her environmental work focuses on contaminated site cleanup, water disputes, environmental litigation, and regulatory compliance in California and the Pacific Northwest.   As part of her practice, Krista has worked with clients to remediate legacy sites and to satisfy natural resource damages liability by collaborating with Tribes and local, state, and federal agencies to develop habitat restoration projects.  She takes pride in fostering productive relationships between her clients and regulators, and gets the most satisfaction out of her job when working side-by-side to achieve desirable results for her clients that also better the environment and protect human health and ecosystems. 

 Krista is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, where her coursework centered on negotiation, dispute resolution, and environmental law and policy.  She believed then—and still does now—that solving complex environmental issues requires a multi-faceted approach, which in addition to legal tools, also includes policy-making and seeking creative and just solutions through negotiation.  During her tenure as a student, she was a teaching assistant for Harvard Law School’s Negotiation Workshop and for the Harvard Negotiation Institute, she did consulting work for the Office of Government Information Services through the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program, and she was an editor of the Harvard Environmental Law Review.   Krista served as president and founding member of the Harvard Food Law Society through which she facilitated dialogue regarding food justice issues created by agriculture, labor, nutrition, food distribution, and environmental laws and policies. In that role, Krista organized and directed Harvard Law School’s first Food Law Symposium. While in law school, Krista also conducted a two-year long study on the ways in which gendered learning styles effected student experiences in a pilot program required for first year law students.  

Prior to law school, Krista spent a decade as a public educator, and she is still a credentialed teacher and administrator.  As a high school English teacher and speech & debate coach, she was awarded San Dieguito Union High School District Teacher of the Year and recognized as one of San Diego County’s top ten teachers.  Krista’s debate team consistently ranked among the top 1% in the nation, and she twice earned the National Forensics League diamond coach award for excellence in coaching.

Krista graduated from the University of Washington magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Speech Communication and English.  Krista was awarded undergraduate honors for her research in mass persuasion and crowd manipulation.  She later earned a Master’s in Education from Antioch University in Seattle, where she focused on inter-disciplinary curriculum development.  Krista is a member of the bars of California, Washington and Oregon.