Incoming Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Patrick Broderick is best known as the longest serving dean of Empire law school and for being an accomplished trial attorney.
But the 50-year-old Santa Rosa resident also has another title: singer.
He once mixed his musical talent with his passion for the law and sung his closing argument to a jury in a construction defect trial.
The panel was stunned by his a cappella performance but ultimately decided in Broderick's favor, said his former law partner, Michael Watters.
The question is, Watters said, will he reprise the performance on the bench?
"Maybe Pat will help us all by singing his decisions," Watters said at Broderick's ceremonial swearing in Thursday. "At least he has a day job to fall back on."
The revelation came during the county's third judicial investiture this week. On Monday, former commissioner Nancy Case Shaffer was sworn in as judge and on Tuesday Santa Rosa civil lawyer Brad DeMeo took the oath.
Criminal defense lawyer Jamie Thistlethwaite will be sworn in today
Friday
and two other judicial officers take the bench next week.
Broderick fills a vacancy created by the retirement of former colleague, Judge Elaine Rushing. He will move into her very courtroom next to Empire College and handle civil trials, at a salary of $178,780.
"It's a privilege to serve on such an outstanding bench," Broderick said after being sworn by Judge James Bertoli.
Broderick went to Cardinal Newman High School and Santa Clara University before completing law school in 1987 at McGeorge in Sacramento.
He clerked for state Sen. Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, who graduated six years earlier, and signed on with the Santa Rosa firm of O'Brien Watters & Davis.
He made partner in about five years. But Broderick had other interests. He began teaching political science at Santa Rosa Junior College and torts at the law school.
"We would tell him, &‘Hey are you going to be a lawyer or a professor?'" Watters said.
He left after being appointed the school's fourth-ever dean, a position he held from 1997 to 2010. Broderick helped maintain Empire's record of having the highest first-time state bar pass rate in the state, Watters said.
In recent years, Broderick has served as a temporary judge, gaining experience and displaying fairness, intelligence, integrity and community involvement, Presiding Judge Gary Nadler said.
"Pat Broderick possesses the best of all these qualities," Nadler said.
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: