Shared Pain and a Rising Community

Several days ago, dozens of public defenders around the country shared their collective pain about an all-too-familiar dilemma. Despite the satisfaction and righteousness of this work, crushing workloads and poor pay make sustaining a career (and a healthy life beyond […]

NAPD Celebrates Black History Month

This month, NAPD celebrates Black History Month by sharing information, insights, and inspiration via our social media platforms. In addition, we will host our final two racial justice webinars.  We hope you will celebrate alongside us by following our post […]

Dismantling Performative Allyship and the Woke Public Defender

We all remember the summer of 2020.  In the public defender community, we rallied, we cried, we issued statements in support of Black lives after George Floyd was murdered on camera. I believe we had good intentions. We felt badly. […]

Happy Holidays to All!

On behalf of the team and the Board of Directors of NAPD, we bring you season’s greetings and good wishes. We are grateful for this community and to every one of the front-line workers of the criminal legal system who […]

Public Defender Corporation Recovery Coach Project (WV) Selected as 1 of 9 Rural Innovation Sites

The Rural Justice Collaborative (RJC) Advisory Council has selected the Public Defender Corporation Recovery Coach Project, conceived and created by West Virginia Public Defender Services (WV PDS), as one of nine Rural Innovation Sites. These are the country’s most innovative […]

Dismantling our American apartheid: Making the case for a defender general of the United States – Chicago Tribune

I chair an alliance of individuals and organizations that calls for a “defender general” to address the apartheid that is our U.S. criminal justice system.   Partial measures, such as the recently failed police reform legislation, nibble around the edges […]

We Are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For

This quote embodies the sentiment shared last weekend at the NAPD Women's Conference. Nearly a thousand women in public defense – across all professions – gathered to share in our passions, our triumphs and our hardships. Although this event was […]

NAPD Remembers Marshall J. Hartman, a Public Defense Trailblazer

On September 21, 2021 Marshall J Hartman died.  To say he was a giant in the public defense world is not hyperbole, but not nearly enough.  A winner of many well-deserved awards, he graduated from the University of Chicago Law […]

Remembering 9 11

On the evening of September 10, 2001, I was a public defender at the Legal Aid Society working the night shift in arraignment court in Manhattan. My shift ended at 1:00 a.m. and I had to be back in court […]

Book Review: “Bow Wow Needs A ‘Real Lawyer’: A Public Defender’s Life” by Jeffrey A. Ward

This review was first published in the Florida Bar Journal. It is being replublished here with permission. Recently, the Chicago Tribune quoted Tennessee law professor Benjamin Barton as stating,  "only 44 percent of Big Law lawyers report satisfaction with their […]