It can be tough for young lawyers to get a significant role in a trial, let alone know how to conduct themselves when addressing the court. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Angela Bradstreet is working to make it easier. The Barristers Club—the San Francisco Bar Association’s group for lawyers in their first 10 years of practice—presented Bradstreet with an award on July 21 for her efforts to help new attorneys get experience. Bradstreet, who joined the bench in 2010, recently spoke with The Recorder about her tips for those new to the courtroom, her worst pet peeves and how her previous job as state labor commissioner shaped her judicial approach.
What do you do to encourage young lawyers? I remember how terrified I was when I had my first appearances in front of a judge as an associate. It’s a pretty daunting experience. So whatever I feel I can do to help ameliorate some of the fear factor I think is good for everyone. It’s good for the profession, generally, and it helps all of us. So earlier this year I came up with the idea of doing a “practical tips in the courtroom” program, an ongoing program for young associates and for inexperienced attorneys and worked with the Barristers Club. I worked with Kallie [Donahue], the president, to put on this program, and it was such a success. Judge [Suzanne] Bolanos did it with me. We did it here in my courtroom. We had a very large number of members of the Barristers Club here. It was just an informal dialogue with Judge Bolanos and myself giving our practical courtroom tips, the dos and don’ts, the pet peeves of judges, things like that. And to encourage the attorneys to ask us questions. We had a lovely dialogue, and we all learned something from it. And it was such a success that we decided to repeat it. So now I’ve arranged for Judge [Harold] Kahn and Judge [Joseph] Quinn to do a program for the Barristers Club in September. The idea being that we continue this, and I’m gonna continue with the program next year as well, so it’s going to be an ongoing thing.
