Virtually

October 15, 2021, from 11-12 pm PST. 

Free for Law Students

What is a federal judicial clerkship?  What do federal judicial clerks do?  How do you apply for a federal judicial clerkship and what materials are needed?  The esteemed panelists aim to answer these and other related questions for you. RSVP.

Panelists

Judge Marcia M. Henry, Former judicial clerk for the Fifth Circuit and U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

Marcia M. Henry was appointed as a United States Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of New York on May 10, 2021.

Immediately prior to her appointment, Judge Henry was at the New York State Department of Financial Services in the Cybersecurity Division, where she supervised policy initiatives related to cybersecurity regulation and enforcement in the financial services industry.  Before that, Judge Henry served for over seven years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, where she prosecuted complex federal crimes, including international narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and wire fraud, and was the district’s first Opioids Coordinator.  Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Judge Henry practiced labor and employment law at Seyfarth Shaw LLP and Rao Tiliakos LLP in New York.  Prior to law school, she worked at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. in human resources and diversity program management.

Judge Henry earned her J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the New York University Review of Law & Social Change, and her B.A. in Psychology and Afro-American Studies, cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania.  She served as a law clerk to the Honorable Carl E. Stewart of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and to the Honorable Sterling Johnson, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

Judge Henry is a native of Brooklyn, New York, and the daughter of immigrants from Trinidad and Tobago.  She is a member of the Metropolitan Black Bar Association and the Federal Bar Council.  She has served as a Director of the Federal Bar Foundation and a Team Liaison for the Federal Bar Council’s American Inn of Court.

Professor Joseph Thai, Former judicial clerk for the Supreme Court and Tenth Circuit.

Professor Joseph Thai teaches and writes about constitutional law and the Supreme Court.

Prof. Thai served as law clerk to Justices John Paul Stevens and Byron White of the Supreme Court and Judge David Ebel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

He frequently engages in civil rights litigation and served on the legal team that successfully challenged Oklahoma’s same-sex marriage ban a year before the Supreme Court upheld marriage equality nationwide.

Prof. Thai has often been named outstanding professor by students at the law school and once by students university-wide.  He is consistently named outstanding dad by his goldendoodle, Bach.

Jorge Gonzalez, Former judicial clerk for the Federal Circuit

Jorge F. Gonzalez is a former judicial clerk to Judge Jimmie V. Reyna of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (2019-2020). After completing his clerkship, Jorge returned to Finnegan, LLP, in Washington, D.C., where he had worked as a patent litigation associate since 2015.

Jorge recently accepted an in-house position at AbbVie, Inc., where he serves as patent litigation counsel. Jorge manages biopharmaceutical patent litigations, both offensively and defensively, in courts and tribunals worldwide. Before attending law school, Jorge worked at Gilead Sciences as a formulations specialist developing pharmaceuticals to treat Hepatitis B and C and HIV/AIDS.

Jorge is co-chair of the Intellectual Property Law Section for the Hispanic National Bar Association, and his family is from Puerto Rico.”

Racheal M. White Hawk, Former judicial clerk for the Ninth Circuit

Racheal M. White Hawk is a former judicial clerk of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (2017-18) and the Arizona Supreme Court (2016-17).  Racheal graduated magna cum laude and Order of the Coif from the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University.

After she completed her judicial clerkships, Racheal practiced Federal Indian Law and Tribal Law as an Associate Attorney at Procopio, a law firm based in San Diego, California.

Racheal is currently an Associate Attorney at Earthjustice, the premier nonprofit public interest environmental law organization, where she advocates for the protection of endangered species and the environment on behalf of tribes and other clients.

Racheal is a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and she grew up in Grand Island, Nebraska.  Before attending law school, Racheal completed a Fulbright research grant in Chengdu, China.

Moderator

Jason Kurtyka, Current judicial clerk for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.

Jason A. Kurtyka is currently a judicial law clerk in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.  He was formerly an associate in the Philadelphia office of Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders, LLP.  Upon graduation cum laude from the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law, Jason completed a clerkship with the New Jersey Superior Court, Appellate Division.