Erica Brody’s Interview with Judges Kobick and Murphy – January 12, 2026
Interview By Erica Brody
Erica Brody: Thank you, Judge Kobick and Judge Murphy, for joining me today, and for your willingness to share your respective journeys to the bench with our legal community. So, what were your paths to the bench?
Judge Kobick: I started my career as an elementary school teacher in New York City. I taught second and third grades for two years before law school. And I went to law school thinking that I wanted to have tools to address some of the systemic issues I saw my children and their families struggling with in the classroom. But I found that, when I got to law school, I was interested in all of it, especially how the state interacts with individuals. I was lucky to clerk for three different judges after I graduated law school. I was also lucky to get my first job as a lawyer at the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, and I stayed there for my entire career until I came to the bench. I had wonderful colleagues and loved my time there.
Judge Murphy: My path to the bench began out of college. I was working in an agency whose goal was to try to reduce homelessness in Massachusetts. I saw the people who were able to effectuate change most effectively were lawyers, and so I wanted to become one. But then I went to law school and pretty quickly realized that I wanted to be a public defender. I graduated and became a public defender for a few years. I used to say it’s the best job I’ve ever had—though I am partial to my current job. It was an incredible learning opportunity, representing people who are charged with crimes, who often have nobody rooting for them except for you. It also was an incredibly humbling experience. I then eventually spent a little time at a law firm in Boston and then opened my own firm for about the last 15 years, doing primarily criminal defense.
Erica Brody: Were there particular mentors who influenced you or experiences that motivated you to become judges?
Julia Kobick: I would answer this question by talking about the three judges I was lucky enough to clerk for, and how each one molded the way that I think about my job as a judge. The first judge was Chief Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV on the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. He was my introduction to getting to see litigation, and he encouraged his clerks to come to court for every single session. I really admire how he manages a courtroom, and his humility in approaching the job. He’s an excellent writer: he’s very clear and direct, and you understand why he’s ruling the way that he is. And then Chief Judge Michael A. Chagares on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit is just this wonderful, gregarious, bridge-builder type of judge. He uplifts everyone. He loves oral argument, he loves the give and take of questioning, and is an example of joy in judging. And then, Justice Ruther Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court of the United States is my model of a judge with an incredible moral compass and a steely determination and vision for the job. Even at the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, she was always very focused on the people who would be affected by the case, the individual litigants and the case. I try to take a little bit of all three of them in thinking about how I want to be as a judge.
Judge Murphy: As a criminal lawyer, you’re in front of judges all the time. I was in court three or four or five days a week. I’ve spent a lot of time in front of judges, and absorbing what I think is to be emulated and what is not to be emulated. The way judges make the experience of being in court for the litigants is very different. That doesn’t mean necessarily that litigants leave happy: the nature of an adversarial system is that basically half the people are unhappy half the time. But I think about the judges who maintained an understanding that being a trial lawyer—the day-to-day practice of litigating—is hard. The judges who remember that and try to make sure that the experience in court is humane and fair, not just for the litigants but for the lawyers, too, are the people I’m going to try to emulate.
Erica Brody: What advice do you have for young attorneys who appear before you?
Judge Kobick: First, I want to say to all of the more experienced attorneys that I really encourage them to give younger attorneys the chance to appear in court. I am here today, I think, because my bosses and mentors at the Attorney General’s office gave me that chance when I was a young attorney. I want to especially call out Bill Porter, who was my first boss at the Constitutional and Administrative Law Division: he got me in court right away, and I grew to feel comfortable in court, and it just makes a huge difference to newer attorneys to get those chances.
I view oral argument as a conversation between the judge and the attorney. I interrupt a lot; I ask a lot of questions. I don’t like it when people come in and read from a script. The other thing I would say is when a lawyer is willing to acknowledge a weakness in their argument, or concede a point that might not doom their case, but is a minor point that should be conceded in my eyes, that builds credibility and makes me feel like, okay, your other arguments are probably stronger because you’re willing to acknowledge the weaknesses on some of the subsidiary issues. I think that can be hard for newer attorneys to know in the moment when it’s appropriate to acknowledge weakness or concede a point.
Judge Murphy: I would pick up on that last point as probably the most common mistake I see. People will often feel they need to argue every possible theory in their briefing and at oral argument (but mostly I’m talking about in their briefing). If you have five arguments, and three of them are not going to carry the day, then those three arguments shouldn’t be made. And I think it’s hard for a young attorney to say, well, this one has a 5% chance of winning, I’m going to include it just in case this is the 5%. That actually undermines the persuasiveness of the whole undertaking. You also don’t have to file a sur-reply in every case. And if the page limit is 25, it needn’t be 24 and three-quarters. Oftentimes, young attorneys feel the need to take every possible page, every possible minute, every possible sentence to expand on an argument. But, in fact, brevity is the soul of wit, right? And brevity will oftentimes make you much more persuasive.
And at oral argument, when I’m asking questions, they’re genuine questions. I’m asking questions because I am on the fence about something. It’s really helpful if you can answer those questions. For me, the biggest mistake is when you insist on doing your 15-minute presentation, and don’t pay attention to the fact that I have different questions other than those.
Judge Kobick: I agree with that. That’s why I ask questions, too. It’s not to try to trip people up. I often learn a lot from asking questions. I will say that it’s okay for the advocate to say they don’t know, too. I mean, you should come prepared, you should know your record inside out, you should know the case law, but sometimes something will come up and an advocate just doesn’t know the answer. I’d always prefer that answer, and then a follow-up saying, you know, with the court’s permission, I could file a supplemental letter, or a brief, or something like that, rather than trying to make up an answer on the spot.
Erica Brody: What has been the most challenging or the most surprising aspect of being a judge?
Judge Kobick: I’m someone who likes to read things and think about them, research them, and feel like the research is exhaustive before I make a decision, and sometimes you can do that, but sometimes you can’t. When you’re on trial and you’re making decisions on the fly in response to evidentiary objections, you just need to decide and move on. So that has been challenging to get comfortable in that role.
I think the other thing that’s been challenging is sentencing; it’s just such a weighty and solemn proceeding, and the sentence must be fair, just, and reasonable under the law. But there’s also the hearing itself, where the judge has an opportunity to speak directly to the defendant, maybe his family, to the victim, their family, and to try to shape how the defendant thinks about the question of, “After I’ve served my sentence, what next?” I put a lot of thought into each sentencing, what I want to say to the defendant during the sentencing, and what the appropriate sentence should be, but it’s that piece of it that has felt challenging to try to get it right each time.
Judge Murphy: I was a criminal lawyer and thought sentencing was sort of right up
my alley, and I thought I’d be able to do that pretty routinely. But it is very different to advocate for a sentence than to impose one. Trying to come up with the right answer, in terms of what the sentence should be, is and should be hard. I hope it continues to be hard.
Also, the sheer breadth of questions that are before us is both amazing and overwhelming.
We’re switching from topic to topic, and most of the topics are very new to me; it has been a big transition. And the breadth of areas that we have to become experts in has certainly been a real challenge.
Erica Brody: What motivated you to seek a judicial appointment, and do you have any advice for attorneys who may one day wish to pursue a judgeship?
Judge Murphy: The idea of becoming a federal judge is just so inherently random that I don’t think it can really be part of a plan, and so it certainly was never part of mine. It was only because I was called up by somebody who was on the selection committee and encouraged to think about applying that the idea even became a possibility. To be honest, up until the day I was sworn in, I didn’t really think it was going to happen. I don’t operate under the delusion that I’m the only person qualified for the job. It’s right place, right time, and you happen to get hit by lightning at the right time. And that’s how I found myself here.
I don’t know how you pursue a federal judgeship; it’s like saying, ‘How do you get hit by lightning?’ Even if you want to, it’s hard to do. I think the advice that I would give to people who want to generally move up in the legal community is to remember that it is a community of which you are a part, and that you should treat people with respect along the way. But I think, more importantly, it is necessary to be a good lawyer, to be a good person, and to be someone, frankly, who enjoys being a lawyer. There are some people in the legal community who view litigation as war, and “If you don’t hate your opponent, then you’re not doing a good job;” I don’t think that’s true. I think we want people in these positions who understand the importance of civility and treating people with humanity. I think optimism, as opposed to cynicism, about the state of the legal community goes a long way towards making our legal community the community you want to live and work in.
Judge Kobick: My story is very similar to Judge Muphy’s I had no plan or thought that I would become a judge. But same thing, a good friend knew that there was a committee that was soliciting applications for our court, and he called me up, and he said, “Hey, you know, there’s this application, you should consider putting it in,” and I said, “No, that’s silly,” and we talked about it, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought, ‘Well, it’s a great job, I’m sure I would love doing it, I’m certainly not going to get it, but I’ll just put my application in and see what happens.’ And I was actually going to use the same metaphor that Judge Murphy did: sometimes lightning strikes, and you get very lucky, and I’m just incredibly grateful to be where I am now.
The more general advice for folks who want to have a career in law would be just to do whatever work feels meaningful and rewarding to you in the moment, because I don’t think that you can choose a career path thinking, okay, this is the path that’s going to get me to the bench. There are some skills that I think are certainly helpful. Having a litigation practice and appearing in court and having the experience of writing briefs, doing trials, standing up in court is helpful, but within that, there’s a huge range of areas you could practice in the law. You can find many different paths to the federal bench, but, for all of us, our time on Earth is short, and you have to use your time in a way that you’re proud of what you’re doing, and what you’re doing matters, and allows you to reflect back and think, ‘I did what felt meaningful and important to me at the time.’
On the whole, my experience as a practicing lawyer has been that the bar in Massachusetts is quite civil and respectful of one another, and that’s also been my experience on the bench. In the vast majority of cases, lawyers are courteous to one another and respectful and do honor to the system of justice that we have here. I just encourage the bar to keep up that model, because we’re in an era, I think, of waning civility across the country. But when you have a community that’s committed to treating each other respectfully and with dignity—and we need to do our part on the bench to foster that—I think the bar is doing a pretty good job right now, and I encourage everyone to keep that up.
Erica Brody: Thank you both so much for joining me today, and for sharing your thoughtful and insightful perspectives.
Born in Columbia, Maryland, Judge Brian Edward Murphy graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 2002 and from Columbia Law School, where he was a James Kent Scholar, in 2006. Judge Murphy began his career as a public defender at the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services. After three years as a public defender, Judge Murphy worked as an associate attorney at Todd and Weld LLP until 2011. He then became a founding partner at Murphy & Rudolf LLP in Worcester, Massachusetts. In March 2024, President Biden nominated Judge Murphy to serve as a district judge for the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, and he was confirmed in December of the same year.
Julia E. Kobick is a District Judge on the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. She previously served as a Deputy State Solicitor and Assistant Attorney General in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office. Before joining the Attorney General’s Office, she was a law clerk to the Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Honorable Michael A. Chagares of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and the Honorable F. Dennis Saylor IV of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. She was an elementary school teacher in New York City before joining the legal profession. Judge Kobick is a graduate of Harvard Law School, Pace University, and Harvard College.
Erica Brody is a partner at Brody Hardoon Perkins & Kesten, LLP. She has devoted her career to demanding justice and accountability on behalf of people whose civil rights have been violated. Erica is licensed to practice in both Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and she appears regularly in federal and state court, as well as before the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. Erica earned her B.A. at Tufts, where she graduated magna cum laude and with highest honors. She earned her J.D. at Boston College Law School. Following Erica’s graduation from law school, she clerked for the Justices of the Massachusetts Superior Court.
