Jason Whitehead — Law School and Legal Career

Jason Whitehead — Law School and Legal Career

After graduating from CSULB, I went off to law school at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, where I earned my J.D. with honors, thanks to all the great undergraduate training I got here at the Beach.  While in law school, I worked at the Oregon Department of Justice’s Antitrust Unit, where I got some great experience working on cases like the multi-state lawsuits against the tobacco industry.  After graduating law school, I passed the Oregon bar exam and had the great pleasure of serving for two years as a judicial clerk to a panel of judges on the Oregon Court of Appeals.  During that time, I learned a lot about appellate procedure and I was able to help research and draft judicial opinions in cases involving labor law, environmental law, and many other areas.  After five years in Oregon, my wife and I decided to move back to southern California, where I worked for a while as a staff attorney for the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.  There, I got lots of experience working on habeas corpus cases involving state and federal prisoners appealing their criminal convictions based on the violation of a constitutional right, such as the right to effective assistance of counsel or the right to a fair trial.