NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Kathryn E. Barnett, a partner at the national plaintiff’s law firm of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP, has announced that the American Inns of Court (AIC) has named Lieff Cabraser attorney Sharmila L. Murthy of Nashville a 2009 Pegasus Scholar.

Each year, the AIC selects only two gifted young American attorneys for participation in the Pegasus Trust Exchange Program for Young Scholars. As a 2009 American Pegasus Scholar, Murthy will participate in a rigorous six-week program beginning Feb. 23 in London.

The Pegasus Trust Scholarships is an international exchange program for talented young attorneys — the future leaders of their profession — to learn about the practical working of the common law system in other countries and to form enduring relationships with lawyers in those countries. While American Pegasus Scholars receive an intensive introduction to the English legal system, young English barristers are placed with an American host Inn of Court to provide a broad but thorough exposure to the American legal system.

Past American Pegasus Scholars in London were immersed within barristers' chambers to observe trials or arguments in action and also observed proceedings of the House of Lords, the Privy Counsel, the Old Bailey, the Royal Courts of Justice and Magistrate’s Courts and then discussed the proceedings with the Law Lord, Judge or Magistrate.

Murthy focuses her practice on representing victims of predatory lending in complex and class action litigation. From 2004 to 2007, she was a Skadden Fellow and staff attorney at Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands, where she created the Refugee Immigrant Partnership Project for Legal Empowerment. She graduated from Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard in 2003 and was a law clerk to U.S. Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey on the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals from 2003 to 2004. She graduated from Cornell University in 1997 and was a Fulbright Scholar in India from 1998 to 1999.

She currently serves as president of the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, volunteers with the Nashville Pro Bono Program, helped found the Nashville Chapter of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy and was an associate member of the Harry Phillips American Inn of Court from 2006 to 2008. She received the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services New Advocate of the Year award in 2006 and the Nashville Bar Journal Article of the Year award in 2006. In 2008, she was a Finalist for the Nashville Emerging Leader Award in the legal services category.

American Inns of Court is a legal mentoring association designed to improve the skills, professionals and ethics of the bench and bar. American Inns of Court actively involve more than 26,000 state, federal and administrative law judges, attorneys, legal scholars and law students. Learn more at www.innsofcourt.org.

Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein is a 50-plus attorney law firm that has represented plaintiffs nationwide since 1972. It has offices in San Francisco, New York and Nashville.