Acker, Tanya: - Tanya Acker received her B.A. at Howard University and graduated from Yale Law School in 1995. Straddling legal work in government and private practice, Acker has worked at the Office of the White House Counsel, the Civil Rights Division in the US Department of Justice, and also for some of the nation's top tier private law firms. She served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Dorothy Wright Nelson on the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals and has also maintained a commitment to pro bono work, receiving the ACLU's First Amendment Award for championing the homeless. You can catch her every day on the Emmy-nominated CBS show Hot Bench. She lives with her husband and her dog, Max, in Los Angeles, California.