William J. Lafferty, III

Hon. William J. Lafferty, III is a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Northern District of California in Oakland, appointed in April 2011. He also serves on the U.S. Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the Ninth Circuit, to which he was appointed in 2016, and served as a member of the Federal Judicial Center’s Bankruptcy Judge Education Advisory Committee from April 2015 through April 2021. Prior to his appointment to the bankruptcy court, Judge Lafferty served as the first law clerk to Hon. Thomas E. Carlson of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California. He joined Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin (now Arnold & Porter) in 1987, and served as a director in the firm’s Bankruptcy and Corporate Reorganizations Department from 1993-2011. Judge Lafferty’s past affiliations include vice president of the California Bankruptcy Forum, past president of the Bay Area Bankruptcy Forum, and past president of the Bar Association of San Francisco’s Commercial Law and Bankruptcy Section. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley with honors in general scholarship, and his J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, where he served on the Constitutional Law Quarterly.