Rachel Barbour

Rachelle Barbour has worked as an Assistant Federal Defender at the Sacramento federal court for over 20 years. Growing up in Cleveland, Ohio in the 1970s gave her a life-long love of underdogs. She studied comparative literature at University of Michigan, then attended Michigan Law School, where she participated in civil rights and defense clinics, and took criminal justice classes with leaders like Bryan Stevenson and Andrea Lyon. Her first law job, as a law clerk for the Civil Law and Motion Judge at the San Francisco Superior Court, confirmed that she needed to work on criminal cases. She quickly moved to the Criminal Central Staff at the California Supreme Court, then came to Sacramento to work at the Federal Defender’s Office in 1999. Barbour teaches in the Federal Defender Clinic and Seminar at McGeorge School of Law.