In this week's episode, Am Law Litigation Daily editor and columnist Ross Todd interviews retired Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge LaDoris Cordell. Cordell was the first African American woman judge in all of Northern California. She recently published a memoir titled "Her Honor: My Life on the Bench…What Works, What's Broken, and How to Change It."

In the book, Cordell revisits letters she wrote to her parents in her last eight years on the bench about her decisions each week and how she felt about them. The judge also shares what it was like to be the only African American woman in her Stanford Law School class, how she started the nation's first clinical program for aspiring judges and her definition of an "activist judge."