Joe Metcalfe, Attorney

Education

A Pacific Northwest native (I grew up in Spokane), I earned my bachelor's degree from Stanford in 1988. I then moved to the East Coast where I earned my law degree from Harvard in 1992. During law school, I was President of the Harvard Law School Civil Liberties Union, Executive Editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, and won first place in the 1992 ABA National Criminal Trial Advocacy Competition. I was employed my first summer at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. During my second summer, I worked at a boutique white collar criminal defense firm in Washington, D.C.

Work Experience

After graduating from law school, I was awarded an E. Barrett Prettyman fellowship in the Criminal Justice Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center. My first year as a fellow was devoted to representing indigent criminal defendants accused of misdemeanors and felonies in D.C. Superior Court. During my second year, I assumed primary responsibility for the training and supervision of third-year law students in the clinic.

In 1994, I started working at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, considered by many to be the premier public defending organization in the country. My work as a public defender included rotations through the juvenile, misdemeanor, felony, and appellate divisions. I was successful at both the trial and appellate level, frequently winning acquittals or reversals for my clients. I also trained attorneys and investigators on various topics of substantive criminal law, criminal procedure, and trial advocacy.

After six years as a public defender, I wanted to try something different. In 2000, I joined the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, Criminal Division, United States Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. In that capacity, I investigated and prosecuted cases involving computer intrusions, criminal copyright and trademark infringement, and the theft of trade secrets. In addition, I advised and trained hundreds of local, state, and federal prosecutors and law enforcement officers on the searching and seizing of electronic evidence, the theft of satellite and cable signals, and the scope of federal privacy laws and the Economic Espionage Act.

I have always enjoyed teaching and in 1996 started teaching trial advocacy as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown. I returned to the Northwest in 2002 when I accepted a teaching appointment at the University of Oregon School of Law. I taught courses in substantive criminal law, constitutional criminal procedure, and trial advocacy. In 2006, I was honored to receive the Orlando Hollis Teaching Award.

Anxious to return to the practice of law and representation of clients, I started my own law practice in 2009.