“Hand to god,” says Judge Jennifer Feige, “I didn’t want to be a lawyer!”

Adding a welcome dimension to the idiom “down to earth,” Chapman alumna and now the Honorable Jennifer Feige (JD ’06) sat down with us last week to offer reflections on her pathway into the judiciary, a lifetime of public service and, ultimately, her seat on the Kern County bench. As Feige (you may remember her as Jennifer Weissburg) and many former law students like her have discovered, pathways into the judiciary seldom follow a linear progression, offering instead a meandering course that, somehow, provided exactly the right track Chapman’s newest bench appointee needed to be on.

“I didn’t want to be like all the lawyers I knew, working those crazy hours,” Feige continues, “and then one day I walked into a political science class at UC Irvine–a class on introductory constitutional law–and I was hooked.”

Both of Feige’s parents worked as lawyers, after trying just about everything else first. As a law student, her mother worked by day and attended law school at night. Her trajectory into the law started with social work, then, as a Doctor of Psychology, including stints as a waitress and even a Coast Guard-certified ship captain. Her father started out as a mechanic, completing law school at UWLA, while Feige’s mother served tables to support the family, before passing the bar and serving as an attorney for nearly 30 years. The Weissburg family values are built on a bedrock of enduring respect for continuing education and an abiding yen to serve their community, with lawyering as a sensible and satisfying conclusion to the journey.

Reflecting on family career expectations, Feige suggests that “There was this expectation, you know, that you were supposed to get a Political Science degree and [then] go to law school. That’s what you do in my family.”

Appointed to the Kern County bench in March 2026 by Governor Gavin Newsom, Judge Feige took the spark she found in her undergraduate introduction to constitutional law class and, after weighing the pros and cons of pursuing her JD at Whittier or Chapman, settled for the latter and the supportive community she found at Kennedy Hall.

Describing her student experience at Chapman, Feige is unequivocal, “I loved it,” she says, “The education and the experiences that I had really helped shape my career. I think it taught me how to have meaningful conversations with people from different ideological and political backgrounds, which has really served me well.”

As any “L” student can tell you, law school is no cakewalk, but it is not without its silver linings. At Chapman, Feige found a supportive community she could rely on (and still does), and a nurturing environment supported by faculty and her fellow students. She remarks on one instance in a contracts class taught by now Emeritus Professor Susanna Ripken, when Ripken cold-called her and Feige found herself unable to answer, bursting into tears in the middle of class.

“This is not me,” shares Feige, “I didn’t know what was wrong,” she adds. Returning to Feige after class, Ripken offered her typical, unequivocal support, acknowledging Feige’s typical fastidious preparation for the class, and suggesting that perhaps something else might be affecting her students’ work.

“Turned out I had a thyroid disorder,” adds Feige, sharing that complications around mis- or poor management of thyroid issues can lead to unpredictable emotional ups and downs, especially for a hardworking law student gutting it out in law school part-time while trying to hold down a job at the same time.

Learning to manage this health scare was a formative moment for Feige, and, as any self-respecting jurist can attest, self-care is an essential element in navigating the unrelenting, high-impact nature of a career in law. Feige had worked part-time throughout her undergraduate degree and, at the time, was still a part-time law student at Chapman, but burning the candle at multiple ends was having a detrimental effect. Support and encouragement came through Dean Scott Howe and Associate Dean for Student Affairs Jayne Kacer, whose open-door policy regarding student mentorship Feige cites as instrumental in shepherding her off a part-time track and into a full-time commitment to her law studies.

With a computer science background and a CV punctuated with the phrase, “Tech Support,” Feige initially saw career options for herself in IP and patent law. However, once she began interviewing for roles, she discovered that the Weissburg family requirement for a life in service of others had been handed down, seemingly rubber-stamped onto her own career path.

“One of the reasons I never pursued a career in computer science was that it was so isolating. I like working with people,” she says, “I have had many jobs over my life, but I would say that working in law is the best job I’ve ever had,” adds Feige, illustrating her early efforts to gain a toehold on a career in law, first as a part-timer at the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, followed by a summer externship with the Orange County DA’s office. For Feige, the fit with public service felt solid; the only problem was that she couldn’t find a suitable role. After graduation, she jumped in her car and combed through positions in the Southlands, interviewing in Orange County, Bakersfield, Riverside, San Bernardino–ultimately landing an interview at the Kern County Counsel office in 2007.

The way Feige describes it, the pivotal interview question for her role in Kern County was, “What do you know about juvenile dependency?” This led to an answer years in the making. She drew on her mother’s experience as a social worker and her own experience working in juvenile delinquency at the Los Angeles County DA’s office. By the time she got home, a faxed offer letter awaited Feige, along with her first step into a twenty-year career in service to the Kern County Counsel’s office with a focus on juvenile dependency and special education. As her storied career matured, the COVID-19 outbreak intensified a career shift toward advisory work for public health, animal services, emergency services, and even the county treasurer’s office, again facilitating Feige’s continuing education in diverse areas of public service law and affording her the opportunity to deepen her professional network as her own roots in the Kern County community deepened. She reflects on the influence Associate Dean Kacer had on her as a student, particularly Kacer’s “open door” policy for students and how, at the height of her own tenure in the Kern County Counsel’s office, it was Feige’s own door that was somehow “always open” to guide and advise juniors, mentoring young public service lawyers along their own career paths.

Serving as a Judge in the Kern County Superior Court, Feige’s long engagement with education and public service is now in full bloom as she tackles her newest and arguably most challenging assignment, but not without support.

“I’m very grateful to the bench in Kern,” she says, “it has been so welcoming and so supportive, and the educational resources that are offered by the judicial council are nothing short of amazing.”

Feige delights in citing a plethora of resources that she, seemingly, can’t wait to sink her teeth into as she develops as a judge, from podcasts to bench guides, as well as a wealth of training newly appointed judges must complete in their first two years on the bench–how do you learn all this stuff?

“Well, you just learn it as you go,” says Feige, “and you watch other judicial officers, and I’ve already learned a lot from the members of the bench I have appeared in front of. I’ve worked in a regional courthouse, and I’ve worked in a juvenile courthouse, and I know a number of attorneys who went on to become judicial officers–I got to see firsthand how they made the transition.”

With a lifetime of service to the Kern County community already in her rearview mirror, this accomplished Chapman alumna is heading towards her latest challenge the way she always does, by prioritizing learning and service to others and setting her remarkable and abiding passion for the law as her North Star. You cannot applaud character like that enough.