Golden Gate University

Title:

Adjunct Professor

Patricia Kern is an attorney with an extensive background in complex criminal and civil litigation and in state agency and non-profit law office management. She is admitted to the New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and California Bars.  After obtaining her law degree and completing an appellate clerkship, she worked as a criminal defense lawyer with the New Jersey Office of the State Public Defender in 1984. She practiced post conviction capital defense work for six years, before accepting a position as a Deputy Attorney General for the Civil Division of the New Jersey Attorney General's Office. There she litigated consumer rights issues for the Department of Insurance and public fiscal matters for the Department of Treasury, before being appointed as the Deputy Director for the Department of Treasury's Division of Purchase and Property. In 1997, she moved to California and resumed capital defense work at the California Appellate Project. At CAP, she assists attorneys appointed by the California Supreme Court to represent defendants on California's death row with their capital appeals and habeas corpus cases while executing all aspects of office management. She also has been a member of the Board of the Northern California Innocence Project since its founding in 2001, and has taught the Capital Post Conviction Defense Clinic at Golden Gate University School of Law since 2007.