County Counsel has put Alysson Snow in charge of its new Consumer Fairness and Public Protection unit, giving San Diego County a civil-enforcement office focused on unfair business practices. The assignment places the unit's design, staffing and priorities under a lawyer with more than two decades in consumer litigation and public service.
The authority is the important part. The county says its lawyers can now bring actions under California's Unfair Competition Law, a statute previously used locally by the San Diego County district attorney and at the state level by the attorney general. County Counsel's entry adds another public office able to pursue violations on behalf of the community.
The announced scope is broad: scams, hidden fees, unsafe products, unfair insurance denials and pollution that puts communities at risk. Those categories do not create automatic cases. The unit will still have to identify conduct, establish jurisdiction, select remedies and show how a business practice violates the law. Its value will be measured in filed actions, settlements, injunctions and money returned or protected, not the length of its mandate.
Snow most recently worked as a professor in practice at the University of San Diego School of Law. She founded and directed the Housing Rights Legal Clinic, where the work included consumer-protection and housing-enforcement matters. That background gives the new unit experience with disputes that reach households through rent, credit and access to legal help.
Before USD, Snow led the Consumer Protection Division at the Legal Aid Society of San Diego. The county credits her with work on predatory lending, consumer fraud and unfair business practices, along with collaboration involving federal agencies and national consumer organizations. She has represented more than 1,000 clients in litigation, trials and appeals.
The appointment also joins legal enforcement with elected municipal service. Snow is the mayor of Lemon Grove and previously served on its City Council. County Counsel's notice did not describe how those duties will be scheduled or separated, and it did not publish the new unit's staffing level, operating budget or first enforcement targets.
Those omissions leave the implementation test visible. A county serving about 3.3 million people can receive more potential complaints than a new legal team can pursue. Leaders will have to decide whether to concentrate on industry-wide practices, high-dollar harm, conduct affecting vulnerable residents or cases that fill gaps left by existing prosecutors and regulators. The recruitment materials called for building the office, setting strategic direction, establishing enforcement priorities and recruiting a team. Snow therefore inherits a start-up function inside an established government law office. Early administrative choices will determine how residents submit information, how cases are screened and when the county coordinates with the district attorney or attorney general.
Snow earned her law degree from Brigham Young University and received Consumer Attorneys of San Diego's Consumer Advocate of the Year award in 2019. Those credentials explain the selection. The public record that matters next is operational: who joins the unit, which matters it accepts, how quickly it acts and whether its new authority produces results that existing enforcement did not.