Marcia Canning, the former chief campus counsel at the University of California, San Francisco who served for more than 30 years as a legal officer in the University of California System, died in her sleep at her home on January 4. She was 69 years old.
A native of Oakland, Canning was a graduate of Holy Names University in Oakland, where she majored in sociology and French. After a brief term working as a secretary at the University of California, Davis Medical School, Canning enrolled at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law in San Francisco.
After earning her law degree in 1976, Canning worked for five years as a trial attorney for the National Labor Relations Board. She then joined the legal affairs team at the University of California System. She later served for more than a decade as general counsel at the Hastings College of Law. In 2001, Canning joined the staff at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was chief campus counsel until her retirement in 2013.