Jaime A. Santos

Jaime A. Santos is an associate in the firm’s Appellate Litigation practice. Her work focuses on appellate matters and complex civil litigation in federal courts, and she has experience in a wide range of areas including ERISA litigation, patent litigation, constitutional law, environmental law, and product litigation. Ms. Santos has been the primary author of more than a dozen briefs filed in the Supreme Court, many more briefs filed in federal courts of appeals and federal district courts, and she has presented oral argument in both trial and appellate courts. Ms. Santos also co-hosts the Supreme Court podcast Strict Scrutiny.

Ms. Santos’s practice also includes ethics and compliance assessment and guidance. Since 2013, Ms. Santos has worked on an independent monitoring team focusing on the domestic ethics program of one of the largest publicly traded companies in the United States.

Ms. Santos maintains an active pro bono practice. She has been counsel of record in numerous criminal, immigration, and civil rights appeals in the Fourth, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits. She has also advocated on behalf of transgender litigants asserting constitutional claims before the Fourth Circuit and the Supreme Court, and represented a criminal defendant challenging his sentence before the Supreme Court. In 2015, Ms. Santos was honored by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights for her commitment to pro bono civil rights work.

In addition to her pro bono practice, Ms. Santos has been a thought leader in preventing and addressing bias and harassment in the legal profession. She speaks at conferences across the country and has published several articles on the topic and, since January 2018, has advised the Ninth Circuit, the D.C. Circuit, and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts’ Federal Judiciary Workplace Conduct Working Group to improve the policies and processes governing inappropriate conduct in the workplace.

Before joining Goodwin in 2013, Ms. Santos served as a law clerk to the Honorable George H. King of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, and to the Honorable Raymond C. Fisher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In law school, she was a supervising editor for the Harvard Law Review.