Peter Lantka joins the firm with more than twenty years of civil litigation experience spanning federal government service and private practice. Before joining the Firm, Pete served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Civil Division for the District of Arizona, where he defended the United States in a wide range of matters under the Federal Tort Claims Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Rehabilitation Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, and constitutional claims. In that role, he managed cases from initial assessment through resolution, including discovery, depositions, settlement conferences, dispositive motion practice, trials, and appeals, and regularly appeared before the United States District Court for the District of Arizona and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Pete also served as Deputy Chief and Chief for the U.S. Attorney’s Office Civil Division, supervising approximately twenty attorneys, paralegals, and support staff while mentoring attorneys, developing training programs, and advising on litigation strategy, ethics, and electronic discovery.
Pete later served as an Attorney Advisor in the Department of Justice’s Professional Responsibility Advisory Office, where he counseled attorneys across all ninety-three U.S. Attorney’s Offices and DOJ components on professional responsibility issues and managed the Department’s State Rules Project, monitoring ethics developments nationwide. He frequently taught at DOJ’s National Advocacy Center and served as a Certified Mediator on employment matters through the Executive Office for United States Attorneys.
Pete has spoken on employment law, ethics, and civil litigation before various organizations, including the Society for Human Resource Management of Greater Phoenix, the Arizona State Bar Association, and the Ninth Circuit Lawyer Representatives’ District Conference. He has published articles on federal court jurisdiction, case management strategy, alternative dispute resolution, and ethics. He has also served as Adjunct Faculty at Arizona Summit School of Law, where he designed and taught a course on Federal Courts and Jurisdiction. Immediately prior to joining Ogletree, Pete served in the Professional Standards department of an international law firm.
Pete graduated magna cum laude from Valparaiso University School of Law, where he was an Honors Program Scholar and served as Chief Justice of the Moot Court Society. Following law school, he served as a Judicial Clerk to the Honorable Christopher A. Nuechterlein, United States Magistrate Judge for the Northern District of Indiana. He earned his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is admitted to the Arizona bar.
