Tillman Breckenridge, currently a partner at Stris & Maher, LLP, is an experienced appellate attorney who has represented clients in every federal court of appeals and the United States Supreme Court. Breckenridge received his Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Law in 2001. During law school, he participated in UVA’s Appellate Advocacy Clinic, one of the first appellate clinics in the country, where he won his first appeal as a 3L. In that case, he appeared before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in a case of first impression. Since then, he has advocated for clients across the country and accumulated multiple honors, including being named to Savoy Magazine’s Most Influential Black Lawyers in America, and honorary member of the Order of the Barristers, a Washington, D.C. SuperLawyer, and a member of Virginia’s Legal Elite. Additionally, he was the youngest Fellow ever-and first under 40-admitted to the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
In addition to his busy legal practice, Breckenridge has spoken on numerous appellate topics and in 2011, he founded the William and Mary Law School Appellate and Supreme Court Clinic where, for nine years, he guided and educated his students on the value of appellate work and the usefulness of amicus briefs to the courts.
I sat down with Breckenridge to discuss his appellate career and his experience with amicus brief writing.
Your breadth of experience in the appellate world is extremely impressive. How did you get into this field?
“Well, thank you. I don’t know how far back into my life you want to go, but I was the nerd with the pocket Constitution in my backpack in elementary school. I always wanted to be a lawyer and a lawyer who engages in the law in a way that makes it fair for everyone. When I got to law school, it became clear to me that the number one way to do that was legislatively. Legislative work did not appeal to me, so appellate work was and is the next best way to serve the greater need. So, appellate work fit my personality better and was a win-win.”
You argued your first case before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in a case of first impression, as a 3L. What was that experience like?
“It was a valuable experience. I was with the Appellate Advocacy Clinic at UVA at a time where not every law school had such a clinic, so that clinic gave me a lot of experience I wouldn’t otherwise have had. Up until this case, a majority of the cases we received were prisoner rights cases. Then this case came in and it was an employment case on a sensitive topic. We represented the male employee who was being sexually harassed by his boss. The issue, one of first impression in the Circuit, was whether an equal opportunity harasser (one who assaulted both males and females) might be liable. The defendant argued that because he was also harassing female employees, he could not be liable. And the crazy thing is that that defense was successful in 2 to 3 circuits at that time. So, we took the case to the Fourth Circuit and argued that defendant did not harass equally, meaning the boss did not harass both male and female employees the same way. It was an extremely sensitive topic as we had to describe to the Court the different ways the defendant harassed his employees, but at the end of the day, the Court accepted our argument.”