Ann Taylor Schwing has happily combined her talent, passion and training into a unique career doing the things she likes most. And, in doing so, has earned widespread acclaim and an unparalleled reputation as the consummate professional.
Born the daughter of a professor in Berkeley, California, she developed a natural affinity for scholarship and writing. Not intending to pursue a career in law, she graduated with a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1968. Five years after her graduation, she decided that there was an enticing correlation between research, writing and the practice of law and attended
Boston University School of Law, where she distinguished herself on the Law Review staff and Editorial Board. Graduating cum laude in 1975, she received the Melville M. Bigelow Scholarship Award for her great promise as a scholar and teacher of the law.
While clerking for U.S. District Court Judge Thomas J. McBride, she saw a way to both define a niche for herself in the practice of law while still using her skills and training to fill the needs of that niche. She began refining her aptitude for research and writing and developed a specialty centered on preparing appeals, pleadings and motions. Since 1986, she has been Of Counsel to the Sacramento firm of McDonough Holland & Allen PC, specializing in her chosen area.
In addition to litigation documents, Ann Schwing has been a prolific and authoritative author on a variety of legal topics. Among her many outstanding contributions to the body of legal literature, she has authored California Affirmative Defenses and Open Meeting Laws. She has co-authored The Regulation of Money Managers and Securitization with Professor Tamar Frankel of Boston University School of Law. She is also a contributing editor of Black’s Law Dictionary.
Despite the time demands of keeping these works updated, she hopes to write a national treatise on the law governing fiduciaries and a book dealing with the recall of public officials.
True to the ideal of the Bigelow Award she received in law school, Ann Schwing has become a renowned legal scholar. Through her scholarship, she has written some of the definitive texts that have enlightened other practitioners across the nation. On a more local basis, she was a charter member of the Anthony M. Kennedy American Inn of Court in Sacramento and has been a vital and valuable contributor to the Inn’s mentoring and training since 1989. In her early years as program chair, she confesses that she often concealed the Foundation’s annual Program Catalog from the other Inn members. Believing that the effort to develop the team’s program from scratch lies at the heart of the team’s bonding together as colleagues and friends, her goal was to motivate them to develop original programs, rather than use the ‘canned’ ones.
Perhaps, thanks in part to her deceptive discipline technique, the Kennedy Inn’s focus on original program development has kept its many creative, entertaining and valuable programs in the highest percentiles during the annual judging and, over the years, among the most requested from the program library. Ms. Schwing considers it an integral part of her professional and personal responsibility to serve as a mentor and example for others in the Inn to follow.
Ann Taylor Schwing’s roots are, literally, deeply involved in the scenic beauty of Napa County. A family owned 380-acre tract, now known as the Archer Taylor Preserve has been donated to the Land Trust of Napa County or leased to The Land Trust. Since 1995, she has been a trustee and committeeperson in service to The Land Trust, serving over three years as its president, during which time, the total acres that were set aside for conservation purposes increased significantly. She continues to devote considerable time and effort as a volunteer to The Land Trust, which now protects some 34,000 acres nationwide.
Ms. Schwing is a member of the Sacramento County, Federal and American Bar Associations and has served as a member of the Ninth Circuit Task Force on Self- Represented Litigants; the Ninth Circuit Advisory Board; the Judicial Advisory Committee for the Eastern District of California, as chair of the Subcommittee on Local Rules; the Early Neutral Evaluation Panel for the Eastern District of California; and as the lawyer delegate to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference.
In 2003, she was the recipient of the Outstanding and Tireless Service to the Federal Bar and Judiciary Award from the Sacramento Chapter of the Federal Bar Association. Ann Taylor Schwing is the 2004 recipient of the American Inns of Court Professionalism Award in the Ninth Circuit. On July 1, 2005, she will begin a four-year term as the elected Ninth Circuit trustee of the American Inns of Court Foundation.