Judge John Owens MS ’85, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and is a member of Harker’s board of trustees, visited the lower school yesterday to speak to third graders at the request of teacher Heidi Gough. Owens discussed his career, told entertaining anecdotes about cases he worked on and took questions from the students. Interestingly, Sarah Leonard, primary division head, was Owens’ teacher while he attended Harker.

Formerly a partner at Munger, Tolles & Olsen LLP, Owens’ practice focused on representing individuals and corporations in government investigations, and conducting internal investigations into allegations of corporate misconduct, according to the firm’s website. Prior to joining Munger Tolles in 2012, he was a federal prosecutor for 11 years. Owens graduated first in his class from Stanford Law School in 1996. He served as a law clerk to Judge John Clifford Wallace, former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court.