Former Powell Clerk Julia Penny Clark to Deliver Powell Distinguished Lecture

By Peter Jetton
March 20, 2018

Julia Penny Clark, a partner at the law firm Bredhoff & Kaiser and former clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, will deliver the sixteenth annual Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Distinguished Lecture.

The event is scheduled for Thursday, March 29, at 5:00 p.m. in the Millhiser Moot Court Room, Sydney Lewis Hall on the campus of Washington and Lee University. The event is free and open to the public.

Clark joined Bredhoff & Kaiser in 1975. She has extensive experience in federal litigation, and focuses her practice in the employee-benefit area. Clark is counsel to a number of large multiemployer pension and health-benefit plans, as well as multiemployer 401(k) plans and funds that provide training or legal services to employee participants, and to a public-employee pension plan. She also represents labor unions and groups of employees in benefits litigation.

Clark is a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers, and a member of the National Association of Public Pension Attorneys, the American Bar Association, and the Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia. From 1990 to 1996 she served on the Committee on Admissions and Grievances for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

In addition to Justice Powell, Clark was a clerk to the Hon. J. Braxton Craven, Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. She obtained a J.D. with highest honors from the University of Texas Law School in 1973 and a B.A. with highest honors from the University of Texas at Austin in 1969.

The students at Washington and Lee University School of Law founded the Lewis Powell, Jr. Distinguished Lecture Series in 2002 in honor of Justice Powell ’29A, ’31L, who was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972.  Justice Powell’s judicial legacy was defined by a respect for both sides in a dispute and a desire to craft judicial opinions that struck a middle ground.  The student-run lecture series features nationally prominent speakers who embody Powell’s spirit in their life and work.