Jeffrey L. Fisher, a 34-year old with two U.S. Supreme Court victories already under his belt, will address Harvard Law School (HLS) graduates today as their Class Day speaker.

The 2004 National Law Review’s runner-up for Lawyer of the Year, Fisher is a First Amendment and criminal-defense specialist at the Seattle-based law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine (DWT). He recently became partner after just five years there.

Two years earlier, Fisher argued and won Crawford vs. Washington and Blakely vs. Washington in the U.S. Supreme Court—two cases that significantly altered the federal court system’s procedures.

“In both cases, Fisher’s arguments transformed key aspects of criminal litigation,” says HLS Professor William J. Stuntz. “I don’t know of another example, in the past 30 years, of a lawyer having such an impact in two areas of law in a single year. The word brilliant is overused these days, but Fisher is truly a brilliant lawyer.”

INSIDE THE COURTROOM

Although Fisher works at a private law firm, he says that practicing corporate law never appealed to him. Instead, he says, wanted to pursue a career that would give him the freedom to do pro-bono work as well.

“DWT supported the fact that I took pro-bono very seriously and recognized that it would allow me to take on work that I wouldn’t be able to do for years at the firm,” Fisher says.

It was his pro-bono work that landed him in the Supreme Court in November 2003—just two years after he worked there as a clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.

His case, Crawford vs. Washington, involved a criminal trial in which a videotape was used as evidence against the defendant, Crawford. But because Crawford’s lawyer was not able to cross-examine the videotaped witness, they took the case to the Washington State Supreme Court. There they argued that the videotaped evidence violated Crawford’s right, under the Sixth Amendment, to confront witnesses against him, but the court ruled that the evidence was reliable.

Fisher read the court’s opinion and then asked Crawford’s lawyer whether he could help appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The lawyer didn’t want to appeal the case, in part because the criminal trial scene is so under-litigated and he didn’t have the time, but Crawford then told me to go for it,” Fisher says.

Although only one of out every 100 petitions for Supreme Court review is granted, Fisher was able to persuade the Supreme Court to make room for Crawford’s petition on the Court’s docket.

“In this case, one thing was unusual,” Fisher says. “In almost all Supreme Court cases you argue on precedent, but in this circumstance I argued that all its previous rulings that used the reliability framework were wrong and that there was an absolute right to cross-examine the witness.”

Those who worked closest with Fisher admired this fresh approach.

“Although many lawyers told [Fisher] to focus on a narrower issue that was specific to the Crawford case in his oral argument, he knew when to be bold,” says Richard D. Friedman ’73, who is Aigler professor of law at the University of Michigan. Friedman assisted Fisher with the case and sat with him during his oral argument.