At the Oct. 5 annual conference of the National Association of Women Judges, 299th District Court Judge and Austin Bar member Karen Sage was sworn in as president.
Sage was sworn in by retired Third Court of Appeals Justice Bea Ann Smith.
According to the NAWJ announcement, Sage is the first Texan president of the organization in 20 years.
NAWJ’s mission is to promote the judicial role of protecting the rights of individuals under the rule of law through strong, committed, diverse judicial leadership; fairness and equality in the courts; and equal access to justice.
Judge Sage was elected to the 299th District Court, a felony criminal court, in 2010. Before taking the bench, she practiced both civil and criminal law at the state and federal level. She began her legal career in 1991 as a commercial litigator for O’Melveny & Myers. Soon after, she moved into the public sector, serving first as chief counsel to Mayor Richard Riordan of Los Angeles, then as a judicial clerk to the Hon. Kim McLane Wardlaw in the Central District of California. She spent the next phase of her career as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York, specializing in white-collar crime. Coming to Texas, she became a state assistant district attorney in Travis County, where she pioneered the county’s specialty docket for mental health.
Beyond her legal practice, Judge Sage has taught courses on the practice and ethics of criminal law at Duke University and The University of Texas. She is a member of the Austin Bar Association, the American Bar Association, and the Federal Bar Association, and a Fellow of the Texas Bar Foundation.