Amy Barsky

Amy Barsky is an experienced, effective, and tireless advocate who strives every day to protect her clients’ rights and achieve the best possible results for them.

In her criminal defense practice, Amy defends her clients against a broad range of charges, from white collar offenses, such as financial crimes, export charges, money laundering, RICO violations, and obstruction of justice, to assaults, drug trafficking, weapons charges, and sex offenses. She also represents clients pursuing post-conviction and other habeas relief, including proceedings under section 2255; immigration, extradition, and conditions-of-confinement challenges under section 2241; and “compassionate release” petitions seeking clients’ early release from prison. Amy has extensive experience at the intersection of criminal law, immigration law, and international human rights law. 

Amy also plays a key role in the Fick & Marx business disputes and civil litigation practices and has obtained the dismissal of a wide range of civil claims. She also represents clients in civil rights cases and Title IX proceedings. 

Examples of Amy’s advocacy include:

• Won habeas relief from extradition for a man wrongfully accused of murdering a police officer in his home country and successfully defended that result in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
• Served as co-counsel in a federal assault trial, winning acquittal for a client charged with assaulting an ICE officer during ICE’s attempt to deport him a dangerous third country, based on a “necessity” defense, and prevented his immediate deportation by filing a federal habeas petition.
• Served as co-counsel in a civil rights case that resulted in a $4.7 million settlement for a mother whose adult son was shot and killed by police.
• Won reductions in sentence (“compassionate release”) for a man wrongfully convicted of a 1992 car bombing, based on a combination of circumstances including a decades-old legal error, as well as for multiple clients during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Litigated dozens of habeas petitions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. 591 (2015), leading to the early release of numerous individuals sentenced to unconstitutionally excessive sentences, including a handful of very rare “second or successive” habeas cases requiring authorization from the Court of Appeals.

Before joining Fick & Marx in 2018, Amy served for four years as a research and writing attorney at the Federal Public Defender Office for the Districts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Prior to that, she was a youth justice attorney at Bay Area Legal Aid, where she assisted teenage clients in education discipline, special education, and disability benefits matters. She also worked with unaccompanied immigrant youth in Chicago and the Bay Area, and as an immigration fellow at the East Bay Community Law Center, where she represented immigrant clients as part of a “medical-legal” partnership. 

Amy attended Yale College and UC Berkeley School of Law. She clerked for Judges John Noonan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Thelton Henderson of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.