Claire Buetow, Policy Director (Leadership Team)

Claire Buetow, J.D., is the Policy Advisor for the National Association for Public Defense. She is a freelance policy consultant who has written reports for the U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice and the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center at Southern Methodist University. She is a board member of the Indigent Defense Research Association. Previously, she was a senior policy analyst at the Texas Indigent Defense Commission and a staff attorney at the National Legal Aid & Defender Association. In those roles, she performed public defense system evaluations, wrote policy guidance, and managed training and technical assistance initiatives. In 2021, Claire received the Michael K. Moore Award for Indigent Defense Research and Writing from the State Bar of Texas’ Legal Services to the Poor in Criminal Matters Committee. She graduated from Oberlin College and the George Washington University Law School. She lives in Baltimore.