Allyson N. Ho

Partner

Allyson N. Ho is a partner in Morgan Lewis's Litigation Practice and co-chair of the firm's U.S. Supreme Court and Appellate Litigation Practice. Named in the National Law Journal's 2010 Appellate Hot List and listed in Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business, Ms. Ho is an accomplished appellate and constitutional lawyer with a distinguished record of government service. She has successfully argued cases in trial and appellate courts across the country and has successfully litigated in both federal and state courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, the Texas Supreme Court, and numerous federal and state intermediate courts of appeals nationwide. She also regularly represents clients in government investigations and other adversarial settings outside of formal litigation proceedings.

Ms. Ho has served at the highest levels of government, including senior positions in both the White House and the U.S. Department of Justice. As special assistant to the President, she was responsible for briefing the President on a wide range of legal issues. As counselor to the Attorney General, she oversaw the Justice Department's homeland security and immigration enforcement efforts on behalf of the Attorney General. She also served as a law clerk to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Jacques L. Wiener Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

In private practice, she successfully represented former high-ranking U.S. and foreign government officials in federal court and counseled U.S. Senators and Presidential candidates on a variety of legal issues. She also regularly advises the Texas Supreme Court and other members of the state judiciary as a member of the Texas Judicial Council, a gubernatorial appointment requiring Senate confirmation. Her practice spans a wide range of matters, including federal preemption, First Amendment, RICO, antitrust, punitive damages, class actions, and labor and employment.

Ms. Ho is actively involved in a variety of national and statewide bar organizations and has served on numerous boards and committees, and is a nationally recognized expert on appellate and constitutional legal issues. She is a recent presenter at programs sponsored by the Harvard Journal of Legislation, the State Bar of Texas, the Center for Politics & Governance at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, and the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy.

Ms. Ho received her J.D., with high honors, from the University of Chicago Law School, where she was named to the Order of the Coif. While in law school, she was a member of The University of Chicago Law Review, articles editor of The University of Chicago Legal Forum, editor-in-chief of the symposium issue of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and a recipient of the Anne Watson Barber Award for Outstanding Service and the Caspar Platt Award for best paper written by a law school student. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Rice University, where she was a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities and a Vaughn Fellow. Ms. Ho received her B.A., magna cum laude, from Duke University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Ms. Ho is admitted to practice in Texas and the District of Columbia and before the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eleventh, and District of Columbia Circuits; the U.S. District Courts for the District of Columbia and the Northern, Southern, and Western Districts of Texas; and the U.S. Supreme Court.