The recently retired leader of the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps—who oversaw the U.S. Army’s 10,000 legal professionals across the globe—is now the leader of the Americans Inns of Courts.
For the next phase of his life, Lieutenant General Joseph B. Berger III, USA (Ret.) is dedicating himself to the Inns, an organization that upholds the qualities he has espoused his entire career: professionalism, ethics, civility, and excellence.
“The mission of the Inns is as important as ever, and for me, it was a different way to continue to serve something greater than self,” Berger says.
After 33 years in the Army, Berger officially retired as The Judge Advocate General on July 1, the same day he took the helm of the Inns. As the Inns’ new executive director, Berger brings a diversified and high-level set of leadership and organizational skills critical to this moment in time.
But despite his lofty career and military upbringing, he did not set his sights on the Army as a young boy, until a fortuitous visit to West Point. And, he didn’t actually become interested in the law until he was a lieutenant overseas.
Heading for an Army Career
Berger grew up in a military family, one of four kids and the only boy—he has one older sister and two younger sisters. Their father was a foreign area officer in the Army, which took them all over the world but also meant new schools and trying to make new friends every year or two.
“By the end of my junior year, I was in my fourth high school. There’s some greatness to that—I got to see some pretty neat stuff. I mean I got to graduate from high school in Egypt, which was pretty cool. But the ability to consistently be on a single sports team or consistently pursue friendships or hobbies and interests [was difficult]. … As I look back, I learned a lot from that in terms of flexibility and adaptability. In the moment, I was not a happy camper.”
Though he loved sports—playing soccer and tennis and running cross-country—he was more of an intellectually curious, introverted reader than an athlete. When he was a high school sophomore, he tagged along with his parents and some family friends to a football game at the United States Military Academy at West Point in New York. Friends of his older sister were cadets there, too. “I linked up with them and got some insights into cadet life, and I got the bug. I was hooked. It was the focus, it was the discipline, it was the appeal of the honor code.”
He also realized at that young age that West Point would be a great foundation for whatever he chose to do in life.
Finding the Law
After graduating from West Point in 1992, Berger found himself in Mogadishu, Somalia. He was a young lieutenant, and these were the days depicted in the book and movie “Black Hawk Down.” In 1992, the U.S. military and other United Nations-supported forces had been providing protection for relief agencies trying to distribute food to alleviate the country’s famine brought on by civil war. But efforts soon shifted to trying to stop warlords and bring about stability. This led to attacks on U.S. troops and eventually the Battle of Mogadishu in October 1993, when three Black Hawk helicopters were shot down. In the ensuing fight, 18 U.S. soldiers were killed and 73 wounded.
“When I was in Somalia, I was interested in the international aspects of the law: How is it we end up in a place like that and have the authority to do the things we did? How is it that our soldiers have the legal authority to use deadly force? All of those operational things about how the Army runs fascinated me,” Berger says.
After Somalia, Berger still wasn’t thinking much about law school, though. Then, about six months later, he received a notice that the Army was soliciting applicants for the Funded Legal Education Program (FLEP), in which the Army pays law school tuition and pays students while in law school. He knew he couldn’t pass up the opportunity. He was accepted into the FLEP program and started law school at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University at age 25. (He later earned a master of law degree in international law from the Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School and a master’s degree in national security strategy from National Defense University.)
Combining his West Point and FLEP commitments, he owed the Army eight years of service. “I was all in at that point in time,” he says. “It was the combination of looking for a different challenge in the Army, the spark that had been lit in Somalia, and then seeing the Funded Legal Education Program and realizing I might be able to put all three together.”
And that’s what he did, beginning a career as a Judge Advocate General in 1998. He worked first in soldier client services in Germany, then became more like “in-house counsel,” as an organizational attorney for the Army. After six months in Kosovo, he headed back to the States, where he became chief prosecutor at Fort Bliss, Texas, just before and after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
A few years later he became the lawyer for the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, which provides helicopter support for special operations forces. He spent most of those two years deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq with the 160th. In what would prove to be an atypical career move for an Army lawyer, he would go on to serve as the senior legal adviser for the Joint Special Operations Command, again spending significant time in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In 2014, he headed to Washington, DC, where he was the liaison to Congress, responsible for providing documents, answering questions, and finding witnesses for any investigations Congress had an interest in. He was also responsible for guiding senior Army officials through their confirmation process.
In 2017, Berger began a two-year stint as chief judge of the Army’s appellate court. Becoming a judge provided him a great perspective on the difference between trial work and appellate work. “Trial work is incredibly fast-paced; judges have to make near split-second decisions on the fly. Appellate work is all about the process,” he says.
He began to consider the role of process—and how deviation from process—affects organizations. Choose any policy an organization or company has. Then consider how you may deviate from it. “So, you’re breaking with policy; you’re breaking with process,” Berger says. “What’s the risk of that? What’s your legal risk? What’s your precedential risk in your organization? It gives you a perspective greater than the law, but a fantastic perspective in the law of truly understanding criticality of process.”
Berger continued to work his way up, becoming The Deputy Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Army in 2021, where he focused on management and budget in the daily running of the JAG Corps. In 2024, he became The Judge Advocate General, leading the nation’s oldest and most consequential practice of law. In his role, he was responsible for recruiting, educating, training, and employing the Army’s 10,000 legal professionals at over 100 locations around the globe. The role also made him the senior uniformed legal adviser to the Army Secretary and Chief of Staff, and their personal staffs, advising across the spectrum on complex legal and policy issues, focused on identifying and mitigating risk and providing solutions.
Leading the Inns
Berger’s varied roles, skills, and leadership positions throughout JAG have prepared him to lead the American Inns of Court. But equally, he has experience overseeing a geographically diverse organization. He points out that the individual Inns are spread across the U.S. and each has its own unique structure and culture. He has learned how to empower the smaller parts of a larger organization, based on their uniqueness.
“Every one of the Inns has its own personality,” he says. “They range from large to small. They range from longstanding to new. They range from highly specialized to general. They range from very active to less active. But it is local leadership that makes the difference. And the JAG Corps is all about that.”
He sees the role of the national headquarters as helping the Inns prioritize and resource, with the goal of ensuring the best possible membership experience for each person.
“First and foremost, it is about whether or not Inn members have a high quality member experience. Are they getting out of the Inn what they expect and what we expect—and that is increasing professionalism through a focus on ethics, civility, and excellence. How do we help the Inns do that as part of a bigger national movement?”
More specifically, Berger’s goals include better leveraging tools to spread the word about the American Inns of Court, especially to the next generation of lawyers. This will likely include improving the Inns’ social media and digital presence. He will also lead fundraising efforts to endow the Pegasus Scholarship and Temple Bar Scholarship.
At the macro level, Berger will work with the Board of Trustees to think strategically about the future: “My job is to step back and say, ‘Where does this organization need to be in five years or 10 years?’ As we come up, in a couple years, on the 50th anniversary, what does that look like? What do we want our mark to be at year 50? Where do we want to be at year 60? I view my job as helping the Board set conditions, define what that looks like, and then starting to put it into action.”
The Inns in Today’s Society
The Inns serve a critical role today in what is one of the most divisive times in modern U.S. history—and a time when many Americans no longer trust large institutions like the law, Berger says. “Credibility of the practice of law is going to be absolutely critical going forward.”
That’s why the Americans Inns of Court’s vision—dedicated to professionalism, ethics, civility, and excellence—is so vital. “Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, you want to believe that institutions are fair, are predictable, are equitable, are run by people who are trustworthy, who are professional—all of those things when it comes to ethics and civility and excellence that define professionalism,” Berger says.
“That’s why the Inns matters, because in an era when institutions are trusted less, the institution of the practice of law—and the courts—have to be above reproach. And they can only be above reproach if we, the players in the process, keep them above reproach.”
Berger believes the level of professionalism needed in the law starts with the law being a calling for people. “It’s one thing to treat being a lawyer as a job. It’s another thing to treat it as a calling. And, it’s only, I think, when you get to treating it as a calling that you can get to the level of professionalism that a profession requires.”