Rachel Helyar focuses on appellate and trial strategy in complex civil and financial restructuring cases. She has extensive experience authoring appellate briefs and writs and presenting oral argument in both federal and state courts of appeals. She has also briefed cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and in state supreme courts.
Before joining Akin Gump, Ms. Helyar was an associate at an appellate boutique firm in Los Angeles. Previously, she served as a law clerk to the Honorable Thomas G. Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
Ms. Helyar received a B.A. cum laude from Yale College and an M.A. in comparative religion and an M.F.A. in painting from Syracuse University. She received her J.D. in 1992 from the Boalt Hall School of Law and advanced to doctoral candidacy in jurisprudence and social policy at the University of California at Berkeley. While in law school, she was a Schurman International Law Scholar and articles editor of the Berkeley Women's Law Journal. She is a member of the California Bar and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous Federal Circuit Courts of Appeals.
Ms. Helyar is a member of the board of directors of the Constitutional Rights Foundation. She serves on the L.A. County Bar Association's Appellate Courts Committee, the ABA's Council for Appellate Lawyers and the ABA's International Courts Committee. She has been named a Southern California Super Lawyer from 2003-2009 inclusive.