The Honorable Marsha J.  Pechman U.S. District Court Hon. Marsha J. Pechman has served since October of 1999 as a Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. She has served on the Ninth Circuit Jury Instruction Committee, currently sits on the Judicial Education Committee, and also served as a member of the Rules Committee which revised the Western District’s local rules. In 2004 and 2005, she traveled to Uganda and Malawi to instruct native practitioners in trial advocacy skills as part of a teaching team sponsored by the National Institute for Trial Advocacy.Prior to her appointment to the federal bench, she sat for eleven years as a King County Superior Court Judge, serving on the Executive Committee and as a member of Superior Court committees devoted to ethics, education, jury, mental health and personnel issues. She was the chair of the original Individual Calendaring Project which resulted in the current system of completely preassigned civil cases, and served as the first Unified Family Court Judge at the Regional Justice Center in Kent. She has authored articles on the Struck Jury Method of voir dire and has taught this method at the State Judicial College.Judge Pechman was formerly a partner in the firm of Levinson, Friedman, Vhugen, Duggan, Bland & Horowitz in Seattle. She has been a King County prosecutor. She has also been a public defender while supervising the criminal law defender clinic at the University of Washington Law School. Judge Pechman also supervised the University of Puget Sound (now Seattle University) Law School Clinical Law Program, and has served as an instructor for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy, at Judicial Orientations for Washington State judges and in many continuing legal education programs for the King County and Washington State Bar Associations. She received her J.D. from Boston University Law School in 1976 and graduated from Cornell University in 1973 with a B.A.In addition to her federal judicial duties, the judge has served on the Fred Hutchinson Committee on Patient Protection in Research Trials. In June of 2008, Judge Pechman was named the winner of the Betty Fletcher Judge of the Year Award for 2008 by the King County Washington Women Lawyers Association.