Professor Patterson has been lead counsel in over sixty appeals and has argued over forty cases in a wide range of civil litigation, including matters in the Supreme Court and most of the federal courts of appeals. She serves as a member of the Advisory Council for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. She clerked for Judge Raymond C. Fisher of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals after graduating from Harvard Law School, and is an Assistant Director at the Appellate Staff of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Division. She lives in the District of Columbia with her husband and three children.