Recent News

Professor John Copacino, Prettyman alumnus and longtime director of the Prettyman Program and the Criminal Justice Clinic, speaking at the anniversary dinner.

Georgetown Law’s Prettyman Fellowship Marks 65 Years of Preparing Lawyers to Defend the Underrepresented

June 20, 2025 Campus News Clinics Criminal Law Faculty Impacting Change Juveniles Our Alumni Public Interest & Community Service

In 1960, Georgetown Law founded the E. Barrett Prettyman Program, which was – and still is – an innovative fellowship that trains recent law school graduates to represent indigent clients. On May 31, dozens of Prettyman alumni, along with other friends and supporters, gathered on campus to celebrate the program’s 65th anniversary and to congratulate one of its longtime leaders, Professor John Copacino, L’83, on his retirement.

Yale Law School Professor James Forman Jr., who taught at Georgetown Law from 2003 to 2011, delivered the 2018-2019 Philip A. Hart Memorial Lecture on November 15.

Professor James Forman Jr. on "Locking Up Our Own: Race, Class, and the Politics of Mass Incarceration"

November 20, 2018 Civil Rights & Antidiscrimination Criminal Law Juveniles Race & Law

When James Forman Jr., a former Georgetown Law and current Yale Law faculty member, was working as a public defender in Washington, D.C., in the 1990s, he represented a 15-year-old client named Brandon who had pled guilty to gun and marijuana possession. Forman was requesting probation; the prosecutor wanted Brandon sent to Oak Hill, D.C.’s now-notorious juvenile facility. The judge chose Oak Hill — to Forman’s fury. The same racial injustice that motivated him to become a public defender, he realized, was being used to lock his client away.