Christina Skinner is a clerk for Judge Barbara S. Jones of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York for the 2011–2012 term. Prior to that, she was a clerk for Judge Thomas L. Ambro of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Ms. Skinner received her A.B., cum laude, from Princeton University in 2006, majoring in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and also received certificates in Spanish Language and Culture and European Politics and Society. She received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 2010, after spending a year in Washington, D.C. working at a congressionally funded, non-partisan organization, in a center dedicated to international post-conflict stability initiatives. At Yale, Ms. Skinner was an executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and spent a semester as an extern at the U.S. Attorney’s Office. She was also a member of Yale’s Willem C. Vis team, an international commercial arbitration moot competition. She is admitted to practice in New York State and the Third Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.
Ms. Skinner’s award-winning essay is titled, “The Unprofessional Sides of Social Media and Social Networking: How Current Standards Fall Short.” In the essay, Ms. Skinner contends that “the trend among young lawyers to share and share alike on the Internet requires the profession to revisit its standards of professionalism in light of the social media phenomenon. In so doing, it should consider not only how to regulate social networking and media but also how to reshape professional norms.”
She goes on to write, “The ABA’s drafting, circulation, and implementation of a rule that targets the unprofessional ways in which lawyers use social media would serve an important gap-filling function and halt the consequences of unprofessional social networking…. Over time, the application of a model rule to specific scenarios and subsequent publication of advisory opinions would further solidify the lawyer’s duty to use social media and networks professionally.”
During summers, Ms. Skinner worked at Arnold & Porter, the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and Goldman Sachs. Her contributions have been published in Discovery Audits: Model Rule 3.8(d) and the Prosecutor’s Duty To Disclose and Stopping Wars and Making Peace.