Lara Bazelon

Lara Bazelon is a Professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law where she directs the Racial Justice Clinic and holds the Philip and Muriel Barnett Chair in Trial Advocacy. She is the author of three books as well as numerous essays, op-eds, and long-form journalism pieces. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Magazine, and New York Magazine, among other outlets.

• Wrongful convictions
• Clinical teaching
• Trial advocacy
• Criminal procedure

• Criminal law
• Criminal procedure
• Restorative justice
• Wrongful convictions
• Ethics

• Chair, SFDA Innocence Commission

• New York University, JD
• Columbia University, BA

• Visiting Associate Clinical Professor, Loyola Law School
• Director, Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent
• Clinical Fellow, UC Hastings College of the Law
• Deputy Federal Public Defender, Los Angeles
• Law Clerk, Honorable Harry Pregerson

• Davis Vanguard Justice Award - The award was given to the Racial Justice Clinic for our work with the district attorney's office exonerating the wrongfully convicted and resentencing the excessively sentenced (2021).
• Senior Fellow, Schuster Institute for Ethics and Investigative Journalism (2016-2019).
• Mesa Refuge Writer-in-Residence and Langeloth Fellow (June 2017).
• MacDowell Writer-in-Residence (March-April 2016).
• Black Women Lawyer’s Association of Los Angeles Community Service Award (2014) (accepted on behalf of the Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent for the exoneration of Kash Delano Register).
• Aleph Institute Award of Distinction (2012).

• Ambitious Like a Mother: Why Prioritizing Your Career is Good for Your Kids (Little, Brown Spark, April 2022)
• A Good Mother (Hanover Square Press 2021)
• Rectify: The Power of Restorative Justice After Wrongful Conviction (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, October 2018)

Book Chapters

• “Systemic Racism: Defining Terms and Evaluating Evidence,” in Renewing America’s Civic Compact (Lexington Books 2023 eds. Carol McNamara & Trevor Shelley)
• "David Simon Made Baltimore Detectives Famous. Now Their Cases Are Falling Apart. Has reality caught up to the "Murder Police"?." In Evidence of Things Seen: True Crime in an Era of Reckoning (Ecco/HarperCollins 2023), ed. Sarah Weinman.

• “Exonerations: Causes, Consequences and Remedies,” Annual Review of Criminology (forthcoming 2025, co-authored with Professor Richard Leo).
• “Ground Rules: Giving Meaning and Effect to Contested Terms in the California Racial Justice Act", Santa Clara Law Review (forthcoming 2025, co-authored with Professor Beth Redbird and Assistant Professor Belle Yan).
• "History in the Making: The University of San Francisco Racial Justice Clinic," 17 California Legal History Journal 27 (2022).
• “Restorative Justice From Prosecutors' Perspective,” Fordham Law Review (2020).
• “Victims' Rights from a Restorative Perspective,” 17 Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law (forthcoming 2020). (co-authored with Bruce Green) Victims' Rights from a Restorative Perspective SSRN
• “Ending Innocence Denying,” 47 Hofstra Law Review 393 (2018). Ending Innocence Denying SSRN
• “The Long Goodbye: After the Innocence Movement, Does the Attorney Client Relationship Ever End?,” 106 Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 681 (2017). SSRN
• “For Shame: The Public Humiliation of Prosecutors by Judges to Correct Wrongful Convictions,” 29 Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 305 (2016).
• “Hard Lessons: The Role of Law School Clinics in Addressing Prosecutorial Misconduct,” 16 Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law 388 (2011).
• “Putting the Mice in Charge of the Cheese: Why Federal Judges Cannot Always Be Trusted To Police Themselves and What Congress Can Do About It,” 97 Kentucky Law Journal 439 (2009).
• “Exploding the Superpredator Myth: Why Infancy is the Best Defense in the Modern Juvenile Court,” 75 NYU Law Review 159 (2000). (Recipient, Paul D. Kaufman Memorial Award for best student Note)