LAW WEEK COLORADO
Three lawyers who are finalists to succeed retired Denver District Court Judge Larry Naves hail from different legal worlds, according to the public portions of their job applications released this week.
* Tijani Cole, a 1990 University of Denver J.D., has been a district court magistrate in Boulder for 17 years. He is assigned to the 20th Judicial District in Boulder. Cole also has experience as a deputy state public defender.
* Ann Frick, a 1978 University of Colorado J.D., primarily practices in the high-stakes world of corporate litigation, although her long resume includes a brief stint as a Denver prosecutor in the early 1980s. She is a founding member of Jacobs Chase Frick Kleinkopf & Kelley, where she has practiced for nearly 15 years; before that, she practiced for 12 years at another litigation firm, Kelly Haglund Garnsey Kahn.
* Michael Vallejos, a 1991 CU J.D., heads the Denver regional office of the Colorado State Public Defender’s office. The office represents indigent defendants charged with criminal offenses. He has worked for the office nearly continuously over the past 19 years.
The three were nominated by a district nominating commission, which is a central part of Colorado’s more than 40-year-old system of merit selection of judges. Gov. Bill Ritter has approximately two weeks to name one of the three as Naves’ replacement.
Their applications are published here.
