Legal Research and Writing Faculty. Ms. Ricks earned her J.D. at Yale Law School in 1990, where she cofounded the Yale Journal of Law & Feminism. She earned her B.A. summa cum laude in 1985 at Barnard College, Columbia University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. After clerking for the Honorable Thomas N. O`Neill, Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, she joined Pepper, Hamilton & Scheetz in Philadelphia as a litigation associate. From 1995 to 2001, she was an appellate and legislative attorney for the City of Philadelphia Law Department, where she litigated federal and state appeals and argued before the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court. She represented the City of Philadelphia in its public school desegregation litigation and its litigation challenging the Pennsylvania system of funding public education.
