#32 Tim Bechtold
Position: Bechtold Law Firm, PLLC
Law School: University of Montana
Bechtold focuses on environmental law and toxic tort cases.
Prior to establishing his own practice, Bechtold served as law clerk for the Chief United States District Judge for the District of Montana, and then spent several years at another firm in Montana.
#31 Rebecca Halberg
Position: Attorney at Collins and Lacy
Law School: University of South Carolina Law School
Through her work with workers' compensation lawsuits, Halberg tries to give back to families of people who were killed or injured on the job.
Halberg is the president of Kids' Chance South Carolina, a non-profit that offers scholarships to children of injured or disabled workers, and she's involved in her local rotary club, where she's served on the board of directors, been the foundation chair, and won an award for raising money for Alzheimer's research.
#30 Domenic Romano
Position: Romano Law PLLC
Law School: Columbia University School of Law, LL.M; Dalhousie University, LL.B
Romano's firm provides legal counsel on business, corporate and entertainment issues, advising companies, business owners, and creative people (producers, directors, writers and performers).
Before founding Romano Law in 2003, he was an international corporate attorney at a large Manhattan law firm, as well as an in-house attorney at a biotechnology company in Toronto, Canada.
#29 Tali Farhadian Weinstein
Position: Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York
Law School: Yale Law School
Tali Farhadian Weinstein is an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York in the Brooklyn office. She clerked for former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor from 2004 to 2006 and was a Rhodes Scholar, according to the New York Times.
Her husband is hedge fund trader Boaz Weinstein, founder of Saba Capital Management. The couple recently bought a luxurious $25 million apartment on the Upper East Side.
#28 Kenneth J. Gonzales
Position: United States Attorney for the District of New Mexico
Law School: University of New Mexico School of Law
Gonzales is the United States Attorney for the District of New Mexico, making him the top federal prosecutor in New Mexico.
He has also served in the U.S. Army Reserve since 2001, and currently holds the rank of Major.
#27 Preeya Noronha Pinto
Position: Counsel at King & Spalding LLP
Law School: Columbia University School of Law
Pinto works in the FDA & Life Sciences practice group at King & Spalding, an international law firm. She previously was Deputy General Counsel, Principal Deputy General Counsel and Acting General Counsel of the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
#26 Kyle McEntee
Position: Executive Director at Law School Transparency
Law School: Vanderbilt University Law School
McEntee is one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America, according to the National Law Journal.
While attending law school, McEntee realized law schools should be more transparent about their graduates' job prospects. His efforts have resulted in the American Bar Association requiring more detailed information about where graduates land after law school.
He previously has been involved with the Pro Bono Partnership of Atlanta.
In 2010, he was named Lawyer of the Year by Above the Law, and in 2013, he was named the fifth most influential person in legal education by National Jurist.
#25 Wendy Savage
Position: General Counsel at Splitzee
Law School: Boston University School of Law
The General Counsel of Splitzee, a web service that helps groups collect money, Savage was featured in the Beautiful Massachusetts Lawyer Calendar in 2009, according to Boston Magazine.
Back then she was corporate counsel for Liberty Mutual, the magazine reports, and focused on confidentiality agreements, private equity funds, and syndicated loans. Before Liberty Mutual, she worked at Goodwin Procter.
#24 Kaveh Kashef
Position: Clark Hill, PLC
Law School: Tulane Law School
Based in Michigan, Kashef specializes in construction, riparian rights, real property, automotive, banking, employment and commercial law for Clark Hill, PLC.
Before joining the firm, he clerked for federal magistrate judge William Webb in North Carolina.
#23 Goodwin Liu
Position: Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court
Law School: Yale Law School
Liu is an Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court who is known for his liberal views, especially on same-sex marriage and affirmative action.
Before his appointment to the California Supreme Court, Liu was an associate dean and law professor at Stanford Law School.
The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Liu studied biology at Stanford before attending Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, according to his official biography. After returning to the states, he helped launch the AmeriCorps community service program and worked for two years as a senior program officer at the Corporation for National Service. When he finished law school, he helped develop education policy as a Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of the Education Department. He also clerked for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
#22 Shawn Chapman Holley
Position: Partner at Kinsella Weitzman Iser Kump & Aldisert LLP
Law School: Southwestern Law School
Shawn Chapman Holley is a major lawyer in the entertainment world. She was a member of the O.J. Simpson defense team and worked closely on several high-profile civil and criminal cases with famous defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran. She was a managing partner at his firm, The Cochran Firm.
Holley began her career as a Los Angeles County public defender. Since then, she’s represented several celebrities, including Michael Jackson, Lindsay Lohan, Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, and Mike Tyson.
She’s also been the chief legal correspondent for E! Network and the on-air legal analyst for Today Show, Good Morning America, PrimeTime Live, Court TV, Fox News and CNN. And she is married to Dorian Holley, a singer in the house band for "The Tonight Show."
#21 John G. Roberts, Jr.
Position: Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
Law School: Harvard Law School
President George W. Bush nominated Roberts in 2003, and two years later, he became the youngest Chief Justice, at 50 years old, in the last 200 years.
Roberts grew up in Long Beach, Indiana, where his father worked for Bethlehem Steel. To pay his way through Harvard, he worked at the steel mill in Indiana during the summers.
After graduating from Harvard Law, where he was managing editor of the Law Review, Roberts clerked for Judge Henry Friendly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and then Justice William H. Rehnquist.
Then he served as Special Assistant to the Attorney General, Associate Counsel to Ronald Reagan in the Office of White House Counsel, and worked at the Department of Justice, according to his official biography.
He was also the Deputy Solicitor General under Kenneth Starr at the DoJ from 1989 to 1993. In his career at the DoJ and the White House, he argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court, winning 25 of them. After leaving government service, he spent a decade in private practice at Hogan and Hartson. He ran the prestigious firm's appellate division and earned more than a million dollars a year before he was tapped for the Supreme Court.
#20 Rebecca Eisenberg
Position: Founder & Principal, Private Client Legal Advisors (PCLA).
Law School: Harvard Law School
Eisenberg founded PCLA, a boutique law firm specializing in corporate transactions on behalf of successful individuals in the tech world. Her biggest accomplishment was closing the sale of Flip Video to Cisco approximately 2 weeks before the iPhone launched with video. More recently, she negotiated a successful spin off of reddit Inc. from its former parent, Conde Nast.
Before PCL, Eisenberg served as General Counsel of reddit Inc., Trulia, AdBrite and Flip Video. She's also an alumna of Paypal, having joined the company as its second lawyer in 2001. She was invited to be Harvard's first JD/MBA student in 1990, but said she decided against it because she didn't want to spend four more years in graduate school after college.
#19 Beau Biden
Position: Attorney General of Delaware
Law School: Syracuse University College of Law
The son of Vice President Joe Biden, Beau Biden has been the Attorney General of Delaware since 2006.
Previously, he was a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office and a partner at Bifferato, Gentilotti, Biden & Balick.
Biden is also a Major in JAG, and has served in Delaware's National Guard.
#18 Christina Evola
Position: Assistant Attorney General of the State of Ponhpei and Operations Support Manager at the Ian Somerhalder Foundation
Law School: University of San Diego School of Law
Christina works on corporate class actions with some of the nation’s leading antitrust and consumer protection firms and is the co-founder of an ABA listed legal “blawg,” Nerds in Court. Her well-known class action cases include the 2007 San Diego wildfire cases as well as Branning v. Apple Computer, Inc. and Roos v. Honeywell.
Currently, she manages an internal team of legal professionals, drafts licensing agreements and policies, and collaborates with outside counsel from various specialty practices in her pro bono work at ISF, an environmental non-profit.
She lives in Ponhpei, Micronesia and teaches criminal procedure and constitutional law at the College of the Federated States of Micronesia’s National Campus. Before attending law school, she worked as a tortoise monitor in the Mojave Desert.
In her spare time, she has danced with the San Diego Ballet, designs costumes, studies martial arts, and practices yoga. She has also been a fashion model since she was 14 years old, walked the runways of Japan and Las Vegas, and has been featured in fashion magazines.
#17 Dana Wagner
Position: General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for Square
Law School: Yale Law School
Dana Wagner never lost a trial in his seven years as a federal prosecutor in San Francisco.
He served as Google's lead antitrust lawyer for five years and oversaw the company's partnerships with Yahoo in North America and Japan. Now he's the General Counsel of Square.
He told us that he taught appellate advocacy at the University of California at Hastings and used to be a competitive chess player.
#16 Julie Celum Garrigue
Position: Celum Law Firm
Law School: St. Mary's University School of Law
Julie Celum Garrigue is a licensed patent attorney and litigator based in Dallas, Texas.
She's been named on several lists, including the "Top 40 Lawyers Under 40" by the National Trial Lawyers Association and the Texas Rising Stars list by the Law & Politics Magazine.
#15 Paul Vronsky
Position: General Counsel for Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Law School: Stanford Law School
Vronsky is responsible for the legal matters that may arise from KPCB's investments, fund operations, and regulatory compliance.
In the past, he has advised emerging growth companies, dealing with financing transactions, public offerings, and mergers and acquisitions.
#14 Bunmi Adeseun
Position: Attorney at The Bronx Defenders
Law School: University of Miami School of Law
Adeseun completed more pro bono hours than any student in her graduating class as a 3L at Miami.
She also served as a student attorney in the Juvenile Division of the Office of the Public Defender in Miami, a law clerk for the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, and a judicial intern for a United States District Court judge for the Southern District of Florida.
She now works for the non-profit Bronx Defenders, providing free representation to Bronx residents charged with crimes.
#13 Noah Feldman
Position: Professor at Harvard Law School
Law School: Yale Law School
Feldman clerked for Supreme Court Justice David Souter and joined the NYU Law faculty in 2001. He left for Harvard in 2007, where he became the Bemis Professor of International Law.
In 2003, Feldman advised the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Iraqi Governing Council on drafting an interim constitution, according to the New York Times.
He earned his PhD at Oxford after winning a Rhodes Scholarship, and he is also the author of five books.
#12 Martine M. Beamon
Position: Partner at Davis, Polk, and Wardwell LLP
Law School: University of Pittsburgh School of Law
Beamon has represented banks and pharmaceutical companies, and does pro bono work on the Criminal Justice Act panel for the Southern District of New York, where she represents indigent defendants in federal criminal proceedings.
She has represented several major companies when they face investigations by the DOJ, SEC, or FDA. Her most recent high-profile client was 83-year-old pharmaceutical baron Howard Solomon, the CEO of Forest Laboratories.
She is also a former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York.
#11 Anant Raut
Position: Antitrust attorney
Law School: Harvard Law School
Raut represented five Saudi Arabian nationals held in Guantanamo Bay Naval Station and was part of the trial team in the landmark Supreme Court case Boumediene v Bush (2008). In Boumediene, the court ruled that Guantanamo detainees were entitled to basic legal rights, such as the right to go before a judge, after being detained for several years without a legal hearing before a judge or jury.
In 2007, he received the National Legal Aid & Defender Association Beacon of Justice Award and the Frederick Douglass Award for his legal work with Guantanamo detainees.
Raut has practiced law on and off Capitol Hill in D.C. for several years. He has worked in enforcement with the Federal Trade Commission, on the legislative side as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, and more recently, as coordinator for voter protection at Obama For America's Virginia office.
#10 Pam Bondi
Position: Attorney General of Florida
Law School: Stetson Law School
As the Attorney General of Florida, Bondi was the lead attorney in the lawsuit seeking to overturn the Affordable Care Act (PPACA), Florida et al. v. United States Department of Health and Human Services.
Bondi has made guest appearances on Joe Scarborough's MSNBC show, "Scarborough Country," and worked for Fox News as a legal analyst. Before becoming attorney general, she worked as a prosecutor and an assistant state attorney for the 13th judicial district.
#9 David B. Rankin
Position: Law Office of Rankin and Taylor
Law School: New York Law School
Rankin has been involved with many First Amendment cases. In 2004, he helped lead the National Lawyers Guild’s legal response against police at the Republican National Convention by organizing 1,000 legal workers to combat the police's unconstitutional practices.
He also litigates cases against the New York City Police Department and defends people who have been arrested and accused of crimes.
#8 Elizabeth Malaspina Coe
Position: Director, Legal at Barclays
Law School: University of Virginia School of Law
Elizabeth Malaspina Coe handles all types of litigation from inception to resolution for Barclays. She is responsible for managing responses to regulatory inquiries and assisting with internal investigations.
Prior to working at Barclays, Coe worked at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP and Goulston & Storrs.
Before law school, she was a legal assistant in the U.S. House of Representatives.
#7 Mike Finnegan
Position: Jeff Anderson & Associates, PA
Law School: William Mitchell College of Law
Finnegan specializes in childhood sexual abuse litigation. He's involved in John V. Doe v. The Holy See, in which his firm is suing the Vatican for the Catholic Church’s concealment and protection of abusive priests. The case is currently moving into discovery and trial in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon.
He also published a law review article on "the statute of limitations for survivors of childhood sexual abuse" in Minnesota.
#6 Irina Khasin
Position: Assistant District Attorney at Fulton County District Attorney’s Office
Law School: Vanderbilt Law School
By day, Irina is an Assistant District Attorney, but by night, she’s a cheerleader for the Atlanta Falcons. Before arriving at the Fulton County DA’s office, she specialized in insurance litigation as an associate at Kilpatrick Townsend and Stockton. And after graduating from law school, she clerked for a district court judge in Alabama. She also worked as a legal extern for the U.S. attorney’s office in Tennessee’s Middle District.
#5 Tony West
Position: Associate Attorney General
Law School: Stanford Law School
West served in the Clinton administration as a special assistant to the deputy attorney general, before serving as assistant U.S. attorney in the Northern District of California.
Later, he became a partner at Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco. He represented a range of clients, from large corporations to a man who pleaded guilty to working with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Kamala Harris, the California attorney general, is his sister-in-law.
He was the president of the Stanford Law Review.
#4 Belinda Johnson
Position: General Counsel at AirBnB
Law School: University of Texas School of Law
Before AirBnB, Johnson spent 12 years at Yahoo, where she worked her way up to deputy general counsel.
She oversaw legal strategy for Yahoo’s global products, AllThingsD reports, and handled its advertising alliance with Microsoft. She came to Yahoo when the company acquired Broadcast.com, where she had begun her career as general counsel.
#3 Laura Wasser
Position: Partner in Family Law at Wasser, Cooperman & Carter
Law School: Loyola Law School
Wasser is a high-profile lawyer specializing in celebrity divorce cases. She has represented clients like Ashton Kutcher, Kim Kardashian, Angelina Jolie, Britney Spears, and Heidi Klum in their divorce cases.
Her father, also a high-profile divorce lawyer, started the firm where she's now a partner. She currently has 35 active cases, including Dennis Quaid and Kenny G, and is working on a book.
#2 Carter Stewart
Position: U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio
Law School: Harvard Law School
Before becoming the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio in 2009, Stewart served as an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, where he prosecuted a variety of cases including drug and gun possession, social security fraud, illegal immigration, environmental crimes, and the illegal distribution of steroids to athletes.
In addition to his regular duties as a federal prosecutor, he chairs the Attorney General's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Working Group.
He worked in private practice with Bingham McCutcheon LLP from 1999 to 2003, and then again with Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP from July 2005 until he was made a federal prosecutor. After law school, he clerked with Hon. Robert L. Carter, U.S. District Judge for New York's Southern District, and Hon. Raymond L. Finch, U.S. District Judge for the Virgin Islands.
#1 Kamala Harris
Position: Attorney General of California
Law School: University of California Hastings College of Law
Since becoming the California AG, Harris has focused on combating gangs that traffic guns, drugs, and people across California. She has also expanded prosecutions of mortgage-related fraud and secured $18 billion from the nation's banks to help combat the foreclosure crisis.
She began her career in the Alameda County District Attorney's office, where she specialized in prosecuting child sexual assault cases. She also spent several years in the San Francisco DA's office, where she led the Career Criminal Unit and headed the division on Children and Families.
