Ariana Sañudo is an associate attorney in Gibson Dunn’s Los Angeles office. She is a full-time member of the Firm’s Pro Bono team, which manages and coordinates pro bono efforts across the firm. She works with groups and individuals inside and outside the Firm to increase access to legal representation, identify and rectify injustices, and connect attorneys with meaningful opportunities to give back to their communities.
Ariana also maintains a robust and broad pro bono practice of her own, primarily focusing on civil rights, criminal justice, and immigration. She was a lead member of the Jones v. City of Los Angeles trial team, which achieved an historic civil rights verdict in 2023 when a federal jury returned a unanimous verdict on behalf of her client, a peaceful protestor who was wounded by a Los Angeles Police Department officer in March 2023. She regularly represents incarcerated individuals in resentencing proceedings and other collateral routes to challenging convictions or sentences, with a particular focus on individuals sentenced for crimes committed as children. Ariana also has represented individual clients in a wide range of immigration proceedings, including affirmative and defensive asylum, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, humanitarian parole, and other forms of immigration relief. She has secured grants of asylum in highly-contested immigration court proceedings involving the cross-examination of government witnesses and unsettled areas of precedential law.
Prior to joining the Pro Bono team, her practice focused on complex commercial litigation, including defending some of the nation’s largest companies in precedent-setting class and representative actions and defeating “bet-the-company” lawsuits.
Ariana earned her law degree from the University of Southern California, Gould School of Law. During law school, she served as the Executive Submissions Editor for the Southern California Review of Law and Social Justice, in which her article Under ICE: The ‘Bed Quota’ and Political Rhetoric in American Immigrant Detention was published, and as a Supervisory Student Attorney in the Immigration Clinic. In her third year of law school, she received the Edward and Eleanor Shattuck Award, given to students who have demonstrated the greatest potential for becoming outstanding members of the Bar. She received Bachelor of Arts degrees in Political Science and English from Boston College in 2014.
Ariana is a member of the State Bar of California and is admitted to practice law before the U.S. District Courts for the Central and Northern Districts of California.
Capabilities
Credentials
Education:
- University of Southern California - 2018 Juris Doctor
- Boston College - 2014 Bachelor of Arts
Admissions:
- California Bar