Hon. Susan L. Greenberg (Ret.)

A former San Mateo County Superior Court Judge with 26 years on the bench and a legal career that spans prosecution, private civil practice, and one of the most wide-ranging judicial tenures in the Bay Area, Hon. Susan L. Greenberg (Ret.) joins Signature Resolution with a depth of experience that reaches into nearly every corner of civil dispute. Judge Greenberg brings an authoritative command of how courts evaluate cases and a firsthand understanding of what it costs parties, practically and personally, to remain in conflict. She approaches mediation with a rare combination of candor and deep curiosity about what is actually driving a dispute, and her tenacious pursuit of resolution keeps her working a case long after others may call the session stalled.

That unyielding commitment to closure is grounded in a belief that the stated gap between parties is almost never the real one. Judge Greenberg works to understand not the number on the table, but emotion or unspoken priority behind it. She reads every case closely before entering the room, speaks directly about litigation risk, and brings a genuine flexibility to how she works with each person across the table. She has taken cases others walked away from and stayed with them, across as many sessions as required, because she knows that movement becomes possible the moment a party feels genuinely understood rather than processed. Judge Greenberg’s instinct for the true drivers of a dispute, and her patience in waiting for them to surface, is what consistently produces resolution where it had previously been out of reach.

Judge Greenberg was elected to the San Mateo County Superior Court in 2014, having served as Commissioner since 2000. What distinguished her tenure was not just its length but its range: she held supervising assignments in Family Law, Civil, and Probate courts, presided over jury trials and complex civil matters, and led the court’s ADR programming in her final year on the bench, building a dedicated probate volunteer ADR panel from the ground up when she identified that parties in smaller probate disputes had no meaningful path to resolution. Judge Greenberg served two consecutive terms as Criminal Presiding Judge from 2020 through 2021, guiding the court through the COVID-19 pandemic by rapidly implementing remote proceedings while managing a significantly reduced staff. She also founded and chaired the court’s AI Committee from its inception in 2023 through 2025, championed the court’s transition to paperless processes, and developed the informal discovery conference program, one-day divorce initiative, and family-centered case resolution protocols, all of which reflected her governing conviction that the court system is genuinely hard on people, and any tool that can move them through it faster and with less stress is worth building.

Before the bench, Judge Greenberg served as a Deputy District Attorney in San Mateo County, conducting more than 30 jury trials as a prosecutor before transitioning to private civil practice, where she handled personal injury, breach of contract, family law, real estate, and probate matters and mediated family law disputes. Those early years informed Judge Greenberg’s belief that settlement, pursued honestly and with discipline, is nearly always the better outcome for all parties, and this tenet has guided every phase of her career since.

Now, Judge Greenberg offers attorneys and their clients a neutral who has stood on every side of a dispute, who understands from experience what courts do and what litigation costs, and who brings that understanding to bear with patience, directness, and an unwillingness to leave a case unresolved. For the Bay Area legal community she has served for more than four decades, her arrival at Signature Resolution is less an introduction than a continuation, backed by the full force of a career that was always pointed toward this work.