Wednesday, August 21, 2019
Yale Law '90: Michael Proctor
In law school, Mike Proctor was the kind of person who said the smartest, most incisive thing in a way that was disarmingly pleasant. I was fascinated by his truck, too-- an old pickup with a wooden bed, from what I remember. He came to Yale Law from California, with a degree from Berkeley. That in itself made him kind of exotic in a place dominated by people from the East.
After school, a lot of us became prosecutors, but Mike went in the opposite direction and became a legendary public defender in the federal courts of Los Angeles. I remember talking to someone at the time (a fellow federal prosecutor) who had lost a case to him and had the scars to prove it.
Mike has moved on to private practice, and now is a partner at a boutique firm in LA and SF, Durie Tangri. It looks like he is still a star, too- he has been a "Super Lawyer" in California every year since 2006, and is consistently named one of the top defense attorneys in the state.
But, importantly, he still has the conscience that led him to defending the indigent when most of us were working for big civil firms or becoming prosecutors.
Mike and I were two of the 27 classmates who signed a letter supporting our classmate Brett Kavanaugh when he was nominated to the Supreme Court. And we were the only two who pulled out of that letter when he testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee the second time. As someone in private practice without the benefit of tenure, it was much more of a risk for Mike than for me-- and I really admire that he took that risk to do what was right.
