Hon. Lee Rosenthal

Rosenthal received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Chicago in 1974 and her Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago Law School in 1977, where she was an editor of the Law Review.

After law school, Rosenthal completed a one-year clerkship with Chief Judge John Robert Brown of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Rosenthal practiced with the Houston law firm Baker Botts from 1978 to 1992, becoming a partner in 1985. Rosenthal was elected to the American Law Institute (ALI) and in 2007 was elected to its council.

She currently serves on ALI’s executive committee as an Adviser on four of ALI’s projects: The Restatement of Employment Law; Privacy Law Principles; Aggregate Litigation; and Rules of Transnational Civil Procedure. She is a member of the board of editors for the Manual for Complex Litigation, published by the Federal Judicial Center.

Rosenthal is a member of the Rice University Board of Trustees and a member of the Duke University School of Law Board of Visitors and an adjunct faculty at the University of Houston Law Center.

In 1992, Rosenthal was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to be a US district judge for the Southern District of Texas to a new seat authorized by 104 Stat. 5089 and later confirmed. She became chief judge in 2016. and served until 2022. She assumed senior status on December 1, 2024.

Rosenthal chaired the Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, to which she was appointed in 2007 by Chief Justice John Roberts. The committee supervises the rule-making process in the federal courts and oversees and coordinates the work of the Advisory Committees on the Federal Rules of Evidence and of Civil, Criminal, Bankruptcy and Appellate Procedure.

Prior to 2007, Rosenthal was a member, then chair, of the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist appointed her to that committee in 1996, and as chair in 2003. Under her tenure, the discovery rules were amended to address the impact of changes in information technology in 2006. In 2007, the entire set of civil rules was edited to be clearer and simpler without changing substantive meaning. The work clarifying and simplifying the rules used in the trial courts won the committee the 2007 “”Reform in Law”” Award from the Burton Awards for Legal Achievement, an award issued with the Library of Congress and the Law Library of Congress.