I write, teach, and advocate for racial and social justice. 

I am a law professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, where I direct the Criminal & Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice Clinics and hold the Barnett Chair in Trial Advocacy.  Before that, I worked as a deputy federal public defender and the director of a Los Angeles-based innocence project.  Along the way, I got married, had two children, divorced, and worked to create a different kind of family.  

Advocating for criminal defendants and writing about systemic breakdowns in courtrooms and in families has always felt interrelated and important.  So often, we stay within our silos, unaware of the rich possibilities for collaboration, support, and mutual understanding.  My writing seeks to break down those barriers and ask that my readers open their minds to unexpected—even unlikely—ways of thinking about problems that may not be so intractable after all.

To learn more, check out these profiles in MM LaFleur’s Lives with a Purpose and The Sun Magazine.

This image is released for use under the Creative Commons License 4.0 Attribution-ShareAlike.

I'd love to hear from you. 

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