Michael Pinard, J.D.

Professor Michael Pinard is the Francis & Harriet Iglehart Professor of Law and Co-director of the Clinical Law Program at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. He is teaching a new course, Youth Education and Justice Legal Theory and Practice, which is focused on assisting efforts to improve disciplinary processes and procedures in Maryland’s public schools so that students are provided the resources necessary to remain in school and out of the juvenile and criminal justice systems.

Professor Pinard also teaches the School to Prison Pipeline Legal Theory and Practice seminar. He has taught the Reentry Clinic, Criminal Procedure, Legal Profession, the Criminal Defense Clinic and a criminal records seminar. He has published several law review articles and op-eds on the criminal process, criminal defense lawyering, race and criminal justice, and the interconnections between the reentry of individuals with criminal records and the collateral consequences of criminal convictions. His most recent law article is Poor Black and “Wanted”: Criminal Justice in Ferguson and Baltimore, 58 Howard L. J. 857 (2015). He is currently writing a book on race and criminal records.

Professor Pinard has worked to improve the criminal justice system nationally and locally through legislative and policy advocacy, writing and participation in various working groups and advisory groups. He has been active nationally in efforts to improve legal education. He is co-editor-in-chief of the Clinical Law Review and served on the Clinical Skills Committee of the ABA’s Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. He is a former president of the Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA), and has served on behalf of the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education as co-chair of the Clinical Scholarship Committee and chair of the Nomination’s Committee. He is a former co-chair of the AALS Section on Litigation.

Professor Pinard serves on the board of directors for the Jobs Opportunities Task Force (Baltimore) and the Advisory Council of the Public Justice Center (Baltimore). He has served as a board member of the Public Justice Center, an advisory committee member of the Maryland Reentry Partnership, an advisory committee member of the Prisoner Reentry Institute at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and as chair of the Maryland State Bar Association’s Legal Education and Bar Admission’s Committee.

In 2011, Professor Pinard was honored as a Champion of Change by the White House for his work on behalf of individuals with criminal records. In 2008, he received the Shanara Gilbert Award from the Clinical Section of the Association of American Law School as an emerging clinical law professor committed to teaching and achieving social justice.

Professor Pinard received his juris doctor from the New York University School of Law. He was a staff attorney with the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem and the Office of the Appellate Defender in New York City. From 1998 to 2000, he was a Robert M. Cover Clinical Teaching Fellow at Yale Law School. Prior to coming to Maryland in 2002, he was an Assistant Professor at St. John's University Law School and a Visiting Associate Professor at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. From 2008 to 2009, he was a Visiting Professor at New York University School of Law. In spring 2015, he was a Scholar-in-Residence at Columbia Law School.