lorna schofield recommended as federal district judge

This week in New York, Senator Charles Schumer recommended attorney Lorna Schofield to the White House as a candidate to serve as a federal district court judge for the Southern District of New York: LORNA SCHOFIELD SUGGESTED FOR SEAT ON THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK.

Schofield is a litigation partner at the firm of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP. If nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate, she would be the first Filipino American in the history of the United States to serve as a federal judge. Here's more on her background from NAPABA's press release:

For almost 20 years, Ms. Schofield has been a litigation partner at the firm of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, where she has focused on white collar criminal defense and general civil litigation. She became the firm's first minority partner in 1991 and since January 2012 has served as Of Counsel. Prior to joining Debevoise, she was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York (Criminal Division) for four years. In 2008, Ms. Schofield was named one of the nation's 50 most influential minority lawyers by the National Law Journal. She was the first Asian Pacific American to chair the Litigation Section of the ABA, which is the ABA's largest section with over 60,000 members, and has also served as a member of the ABA's Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary.

Ms. Schofield is a second-generation Filipino American whose life story is a testament to the American story of hard work and perseverance that beats the odds. She was the only child of a Filipina mother who came to the United States during the post-World War II reconstruction of the Philippines. Mother and daughter remained in the Midwest after Ms. Schofield's father left the family when she was only three years old. She grew up in a blue collar community and received a full tuition scholarship to attend Indiana University, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude in three years. She went on to attend New York University Law School, where she was an editor of the Law Review and a Pomeroy Scholar.

This is exciting news about yet another possible Asian American federal judge, and a historic one at that. Fingers crossed that this well-qualified candidates makes it through the nomination process.