ALEXANDRIA, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Christina Von der Ahe Rayburn has been selected to receive the prestigious 2017 American Inns of Court Sandra Day O’Connor Award for Professional Service. The award will be presented at the organization’s annual Celebration of Excellence at the Supreme Court of the United States on October 21, 2017. The event will be hosted by Associate Justice Elena Kagan.
Von der Ahe is a partner in the intellectual property practice of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP in Irvine, California, where she has litigated high-profile, high-stakes technology disputes involving such clients as Oracle, Facebook, and Apple. She counsels clients on commercial contracts, licensing and partnership agreements, acquisition, and cybersecurity. She also supervises a team of attorneys pursuing a constitutional challenge to California’s Proposition 66. Previous to joining the firm, Von der Ahe was a patent litigation associate at Weil, Gotshal & Manges in Redwood Shores, California. She has donated her time extensively to the housing program at Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto.
She is a founding member of the first intellectual property-focused Inn of Court in Orange County, California, the Howard T. Markey Intellectual Property American Inn of Court, which she has served variously as secretary, membership chair, and program chair.
Von der Ahe graduated from Stanford University with dual degrees in mechanical engineering and political science, where she also competed as a varsity pole vaulter. She earned her J.D. from Harvard Law School cum laude, and served as line editor of the Journal of Law and Technology. Upon graduating from law school, she clerked for the Honorable Andrew Guilford in the Central District of California.
The Sandra Day O’Connor Award for Professional Service is awarded each year to honor an American Inn of Court member in practice for ten or fewer years for excellence in public interest or pro bono activities.
The American Inns of Court, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, inspires the legal community to advance the rule of law by achieving the highest level of professionalism through example, education, and mentoring. The organization’s membership includes more than 30,000 federal, state, and local judges; lawyers; law professors; and law students in more than 360 chapters nationwide and more than 100,000 alumni members. More information is available at www.innsofcourt.org.
