About Joanna
Joanna Trachtenberg built a legal foundation across three institutions and three disciplines. She earned a B.A. in Ethics, Politics, and Economics from Yale University in 1999, followed by an M.A. in Women’s Studies from the University of Limerick in 2002. She completed her J.D. at New York University School of Law in 2005. Those academic stops gave her a mix of theory and practical training that has informed the different roles she later took.
Her early professional years were spent at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, where she began as an associate after law school in 2005 and returned to an associate role in 2008. Between those stints she served as a law clerk to the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey in 2007. The clerkship provided courtroom perspective and exposure to federal procedure that later informed her appellate work.
In 2010 she moved into public service as an Assistant Lawyer General in the Missouri Attorney General’s Office. There she handled litigation on behalf of the state and worked on matters that traversed administrative law and state-regulatory questions. The role required regular interaction with state agencies and, in some matters, appearances in federal courts.
Trachtenberg is admitted to practice in New York and Missouri, and she is admitted to the Eighth Circuit. Those admissions reflect a mix of state and federal practice. She has litigated at multiple levels of the system and has experience drafting briefs, arguing motions, and advising on procedural strategy. She also participates in professional groups; she is a member of the Elwood L. Thomas Inn of Court.
Colleagues describe her as methodical in preparing records and attentive to the procedural details that matter in appellate and state litigation. Her record shows a pattern of moving between large private firm litigation and government practice, bringing the procedural rigor of one setting into the other. She has handled matters that required collaborating with agency staff, preparing appellate filings, and managing complex factual records.
She continues to practice in areas that combine government litigation and appeals, handling matters that span state regulatory disputes and federal appellate proceedings. Her current practice remains centered on litigation at the state and federal levels.
