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Judge Orrick says his career first truly began to dovetail with that of his father — who had served several years as an assistant attorney general during the Kennedy administration — in 2009, when he joined the Department of Justice as a deputy assistant attorney general.

“The one thing I did aspire to follow my father in is that he was able to serve a president that he admired greatly — President Kennedy — and work in Washington,” Judge Orrick says. “I thought that would be a terrific thing to be able to do, and I too was very fortunate to work for a president I greatly admire.”
Enjoying
During his time with the Obama administration, Judge Orrick supervised the DOJ’s office of immigration litigation, and says some of his proudest work came in helping to roll back notoriously strict state-level immigration laws that had cropped up in Arizona, Alabama, South Carolina and elsewhere.

The judge notes that his work shepherding cases with a real and immediate human toll through the court system helped illuminate for him the vital importance of issuing rulings in a timely manner — a lesson he’s sought to follow in his first year on the bench.

“When I was in Washington I realized that the decisions that a federal district judge makes are important to the government and to people playing the long game in the development of jurisprudence or of a particular case,” he says. “But mostly, those players are very interested in getting a decision.”

In 2012, on the recommendation of Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., Judge Orrick was nominated by Obama to the Northern District, a post he says he began looking into largely because he felt it would allow him to continue the public service work he had begun with the DOJ.

“I was so enjoying my work every day trying to the right thing for the government,” he says. “I thought: I would like to figure out how to continue doing this the rest of my life, and I have friends who are judges in this district and seem to be enjoying themselves quite a bit.”

The confirmation process was not exactly smooth sailing. Although Judge Orrick was approved by the Judiciary Committee, he was later blocked by Senate Republicans and had to be renominated in January 2013.

During the 10 months his nomination fight dragged on, Judge Orrick left the capital and took refuge at Coblentz, where he took up his old partnership until he was finally approved in May 2013.

“The good thing about that time was I was able to go back to my old firm with my old friends and partners, who were very kind to me, because I couldn’t do very much when I came back,” he says. “But I really was glad when that time period was over.”

The New Kid in Town

The judge says his freshman year on the court was inevitably one of constant education, noting that he has had to learn on the fly about a host of new fields he dealt with rarely in his prior career, including the sort of patent and intellectual property suits that make up a large relative proportion of the Northern District caseload.

He has certainly taken the lessons learned during his government days about the need for speedy resolution to heart, however, and says that one of the most useful habits he’s developed to keep his sprawling docket moving is to be as direct as possible at every hearing in demanding litigants focus on his critical concerns.

“I start off hearings by letting everybody know what I think about the motion before me, and I tell people what I think the right answer is and why I think it,” he says. “I really want people to address what I say and focus on that. And it is remarkable to me how often people pay little attention to what I’ve told them is important, and go on to talk about other things.”
Advice
The first year has also provided Judge Orrick with an opportunity to see firsthand the effects of the sort of legal injustice he’s been concerned with his entire career.

“The most surprising thing to me has been that one-third of my cases involve one side being unrepresented,” Judge Orrick says. “That is a huge issue when you have a system of justice that depends on the adversary system.”

That awareness has helped him to craft a bench demeanor that is focused first and foremost on the individual perspectives and concerns of the litigants before him

“It’s really important not to put the cart before the horse and try to figure out what law is before you understand what the context of the case really is,” Judge Orrick says. “I think the thing that I try to do and feel very strongly about on the bench is not only getting the issue right objectively but also to make sure that the people in the courtroom know that they’ve been heard by me.”

“That’s particularly important with people who are unrepresented,” he adds. “They need to feel that they’ve had their day in court, whether the judge agrees or disagrees with them.”

While Judge Orrick says that it’s an honor to be holding court in the same halls where his father once ruled, he dismisses the idea that fate had a hand, saying instead it is the product of remaining open to the opportunities that were presented to him.

“My big advice to young lawyers is to just say yes,” he says. “People leave law school with great plans for their careers, but where you get in life results from embracing what’s unexpected and running with it.”

http://www.law360.com/articles/559414/the-scion-of-san-francisco-judge-william-h-orrick-iii