Elbert Lin

The former Solicitor General of West Virginia, Elbert co-chairs the firm’s Issues and Appeals practice. He has been on the front lines of many precedent-setting cases in appellate courts across the country, including an “unprecedented” 2016 US Supreme Court victory described as “the court’s most severe rebuke of a president” since the Truman administration. The “legal whiz” (E&E News 2017) brings to clients a well-honed ability to identify the most persuasive issues for appeal and a practiced understanding of how best to frame complex legal questions in appellate courts.

With experience in the private sector and multiple branches of government, Elbert’s practice has spanned a wide range of issues, including major questions of constitutional and administrative law at the federal and state levels. He has argued dozens of cases in state and federal appellate courts, including before the US Supreme Court and several en banc courts of appeals.

In 2013, Elbert was appointed the Solicitor General of West Virginia. During his four-and-a-half year tenure, Elbert served as a member of the Attorney General’s senior management team, oversaw all civil and criminal appeals, and supervised the state’s federal litigation. He authored more than twenty-five briefs in the US Supreme Court and more than forty-five formal Opinions of the Attorney General.

Earlier in his career, Elbert was a partner in the appellate and communications litigation groups of a national law firm and served as a trial attorney in the Federal Programs Branch of the US Department of Justice’s Civil Division, where he received a Special Service Award. He has also been a law clerk at all three levels of the federal judiciary: for Justice Clarence Thomas on the US Supreme Court; for Judge William H. Pryor Jr. on the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit; and for Senior Judge Robert E. Keeton on the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

Elbert speaks regularly on a wide variety of topics, including constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, state and federal relations, the US Supreme Court, and appellate practice. He has testified before Congress, and has spoken at the national conventions of the American Bar Association, the Association of Corporate Counsel, the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, the Federalist Society, Americans for Prosperity, and the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Elbert is admitted to practice in the following federal courts: the Supreme Court of the United States; the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, Eleventh, D.C., and Federal Circuits; the District of Massachusetts; the U.S. District Court for the Eastern and Western Districts of Virginia; and the Northern and Southern Districts of West Virginia.