Christine Helwick

After serving many years in-house in higher education institutions, I have a good feel for client needs and expectations, and can provide advice that is practical in a complex environment.

Christine Helwick is of counsel in the San Francisco office. With over 20 years of senior leadership experience, she provides a broad range of advice to higher education clients, does investigations, serves as a hearing officer, and coaches high-level managers.

Christine is the General Counsel Emeritus for the California State University system, where she served for 16 years as a part of the Chancellor’s executive team and provided leadership for the 23 attorneys responsible for legal services at every campus within the CSU. She created unique metric points to keep her staff accountable to the Board, and a series of handbooks to give information to lay clients on substantive legal topics. To celebrate her retirement from the CSU, Christine walked the 500-mile pilgrimage trail in Spain, the Camino de Santiago. Before her service at CSU, Christine served as the head of Litigation at the University of California system. She was also the Berkeley campus counsel during the period of anti-apartheid demonstrations and violent PETA protests.

Since joining Hirschfeld Kraemer, Christine has provided general campus advice and served as investigator, hearing officer, and appeal hearing officer in campus Title IX matters. She has twice been embedded as an investigator in the Title IX office at Stanford University, filling in for attorneys on leave.

Christine has served on two ABA accreditation teams at the University of Maine and the Appalachian School of Law. She is on the Board of the Center for the Collaborative Classroom and previously served on the Board of the African Library Project. She is a member of the Board of Regents for Samuel Merritt University in Oakland. She is partnered through the Community Committee for International Students to serve as a language partner and general community guide for international graduate students at Stanford. She mentored an under-served high school student through Operation Jumpstart in Long Beach, and also was a resource attorney for Shortstop, a juvenile diversion program sponsored by the Long Beach Bar Association. She volunteers for Days for Girls in Palo Alto and Second Harvest Food Bank in San Carlos.

As a respected higher education leader, Christine has been quoted in USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Corporate Counsel, the Los Angeles Daily Journal, Inside Counsel, Inside Higher Education, General Counsel California, and Business Officer magazine.

Christine’s personal interests include bicycling, cooking, traveling, and reading. She has two grown children and two grandsons.