John
W. Keker has been named the 2001-2002 Distinguished Advocate in Residence and
will visit Santa Clara University’s School of Law February 26 & 27, 2002. He will
give a lecture entitled “Are Trial Lawyers Obsolete?” sit on a panel with the
law faculty to discuss “Civil Liberties and the War on Terrorism” and present
a career retrospective.
Mr. Keker, together with his Yale Law School classmate Bill Brockett, founded Keker & Van Nest in 1978. He graduated cum laude from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs of Princeton University in 1965. He then served as an Infantry Platoon Leader in Vietnam while a Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, until he was wounded and retired from the Marine Corps in 1967. He graduated from Yale Law School in 1970, where he was on the Board of Editors of the Yale Law Journal and was Chairman of the Legal Services Organization.
After graduation, Mr. Keker served as Law Clerk to Retired Chief Justice Earl Warren, United States Supreme Court, as Staff Attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Washington, D.C.; and as an Assistant Federal Public Defender, Northern District of California. He went into private practice in 1973.
Mr. Keker typically tries two or three cases each year, which range from patents to palimony, criminal defense to securities fraud, copyright and trademark to business torts. In 2001, California Lawyer Magazine identified him as most named by other lawyers as the person they would hire if trouble strikes. From 1998 through 2000, he was named one of California’s most influential attorneys by the Los Angeles Daily Journal. He has been listed in every edition of Best Lawyers In America in two categories, Criminal Defense and Business Litigation. He received the CACJ Significant Contribution to Criminal Justice Award, 1996, is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, the International Academy of Trial Lawyers and the American Bar Foundation.
Mr. Keker is a frequent lecturer on litigation to professional groups including the State Bar Litigation Section, Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference, N.D.Cal. Judicial Conference, PLI, ABA/ALI, California CEB, California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, Mississippi Bar Association, California Bar Association, Nevada Trial Lawyers Association, Hawaii CEB, ABA Section on Litigation.
He is the author (with William A. Brockett) of Effective Direct and Cross Examination California CEB.
