James Santel is a law clerk at Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP, resident in the DC office.
Prior to law school, James served in the U.S. Department of Justice as a speechwriter to Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch. He also held staff writing roles at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. His interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Robert Caro was collected in Caro's 2019 book, Working.
James received his J.D. from Stanford Law School, where he was a member of the Moot Court board, the Stanford Law & Policy Review, and the Environmental Law Clinic. During law school, he interned at the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform. James received his Masters of Philosophy from the University of Cambridge and his B.A., summa cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania.