Clinic Faculty & Staff
Abbe Smith
Director of the Clinic, Co-Director of the E. Barrett Prettyman Fellowship Program, and Professor of Law. She joined the Georgetown faculty in 1996. Prior to coming to Georgetown, Professor Smith was the Deputy Director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School, where she was also a Clinical Instructor, and Lecturer on Law. In addition to Georgetown and Harvard, Professor Smith has also taught at City University New York Law School, Temple University School of Law, American University Washington College of Law, and the University of Melbourne Law School (Ausralia), where she was a Senior Fulbright Scholar in 2005-06. Professor Smith teaches and writes on in the areas of criminal and juvenile defense, legal ethics, juvenile justice, and clinical legal education. In addition to law journal articles, she is the author of Case of a Lifetime: A Criminal Defense Lawyer’s Story (Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), co-author with Monroe Freedman of Understanding Lawyers’ Ethics (4th ed., Lexis-Nexis, 2010), and co-editor with Monroe Freedman of How Can You Represent Those People (forthcoming, 2013). a contributing author of We Dissent (Michael Avery, ed., NYU Press, 2008) and Law Stories (Gary Bellow & Martha Minow, eds., University of Michigan Press, 1996). Professor Smith began her legal career at the Defender Association of Philadelphia, where she was an Assistant Defender, a member of the Special Defense Unit, and a Senior Trial Attorney from 1982 to 1990. She continues to be actively engaged in indigent defense practice and frequently presents at public defender and legal aid training programs in the United States and abroad. Professor Smith is on the Board of Directors of The Bronx Defenders and the National Juvenile Defender Center, and is a longtime . She is a member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the National Lawyers Guild. In 2010, she was elected to the American Board of Criminal Lawyers, an exclusive national society for outstanding criminal trial lawyers. She is also a published cartoonist. A collection of her cartoons, Carried Away: The Chronicles of a Feminist Cartoonist, was published in 1984.
Amanda K. Rogers
Amanda Rogers is a Visiting Professor at Georgetown Law School, teaching and supervising in the Criminal Justice Clinics. Previously, Professor Rogers directed and started the Caritas Clemency Clinic at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. She and her students represented incarcerated individuals seeking release from prison through compassionate release. She litigated cases in federal district courts across the country, including Alabama, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas and the Virgin Islands. Prof. Rogers began her criminal defense career with Georgetown Law’s Prettyman fellowship. After the fellowship, Prof. Rogers joined the Public Defender Service as a trial attorney representing both adults and children charged with serious felonies in D.C. Superior Court. By the end of her tenure, she was a supervising attorney and served on PDS’ forensic practice group, which trained and supervised lawyers involved in forensic science litigation.
Pierce Suen
Pierce Suen is a Visiting Professor at Georgetown Law, teaching and supervising in the Criminal Justice Clinics. Before joining Georgetown, Pierce spent a decade at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia where he was a supervising attorney. During his time at PDS, Pierce tried cases ranging from fare evasion to first-degree murder and represented indigent clients at every level of proceedings—in juvenile, misdemeanor, and felony court, and in direct appeals, parole revocation, and post-conviction relief. Pierce is a faculty instructor at Harvard Law School’s Trial Advocacy Workshop and has conducted trainings for the Washington Counsel of Lawyers, the Navy JAG Corps, and the NACDL National Forensic College. Pierce is a graduate of NYU Law, where he was a Root-Tilden-Kern scholar, and the University of Chicago.
Lauren VonWiegen
Lauren is the Investigations Supervisor and Director of the Investigative Internship Program. She received a B.A. in Criminal Justice from Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Lauren went on to spend nearly seven years working as an Investigative Specialist at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, where she investigated both pre-trial serious felony cases and worked as a Defense Victim Outreach Specialist on IRAA cases.
Edwin Rodas
Edwin Rodas is the Office Manager for the Criminal Defense & Prisoner Advocacy Clinic. He handles all administrative matters necessary to ensure an efficient work flow.
E. Barrett Prettyman Fellows
Claudia Benz
Claudia Benz is the Second Year E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow. She received her B.A. from the University of Chicago in 2018. Before law school, Claudia taught fifth grade in Chicago for two years as a member of Teach for America. She received her J.D. from Duke Law School in 2023, where she was the president of the National Lawyers Guild, the co-director of the Clemency Project, and a student attorney in the Criminal Defense Clinic. Claudia spent her law school summers with the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission in Fairfax County and the Law Offices of the Public Defender in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and also externed with the Public Defender’s Office in Durham, North Carolina.
Ellie Olsen
Ellie Olsen is a First Year E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow. She received her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2016 and her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2024. Prior to law school, Ellie was an Investigative Specialist at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. During her time in law school, Ellie was a student attorney with Harvard Defenders, the Crimmigration Clinic, and the Criminal Justice Institute. She spent her law school summers at Communities for a Better Environment, the Civil Liberties Defense Center, and the Alaska Public Defender Agency.