Christopher Arriola ’95, a deputy district attorney in the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, is the 2006 president of the nearly 4,000-member Santa Clara County Bar Association. As the new bar president, Arriola has created a blue ribbon commission composed of business, legal and governmental leaders that will study and seek solutions to diversity issues facing the legal profession in Silicon Valley. It is chaired by Justice Carlos Moreno of the California Supreme Court and D. Bruce Sewell, general counsel at Intel Corporation. The commission, which held its first meeting on February 28, plans to recommend ways in which the local legal community can reflect changing demographics and the clients it serves.
Arriola also is the past president and the current judicial chair of the California La Raza Lawyers Association, a statewide association representing more than 2,000 Latino lawyers. Assigned to the district attorney’s Juvenile Delinquency Unit, Arriola supervises the Mental Health Court and handles sexual assault cases. Among his past honors, Arriola was named one of the top 20 lawyers under 40 in California by the Daily Journal in 2003 and was the recipient of a Bay Area Local Heroes Award given in 2001 by KQED during Latino Heritage month.