Bar Association for Ex-Cons-Turned-Lawyers in the Works
A stint in prison set Dieter Tejada on the path to law school. Now, he hopes to marshal lawyers with personal experience in the criminal justice system to push for reform.
August 07, 2019 at 12:53 PM
5 minute read
Dieter Tejada is far from your typical law grad. While spending more than four months in a Connecticut prison at age 19, he decided law school was in his future.
A decade later, Tejada has a J.D. from Vanderbilt University Law School and a big dream: He’s starting a bar association specifically for lawyers and law students who have been incarcerated—those who are “justice impacted” in his parlance.
The National Justice Impact Bar Association is still in the startup phase, but it has some high-profile supporters including former bank robber-turned Georgetown law professor Shon Hopwood and Tarra Simmons, who successfully fought to be admitted to the bar in Washington State after spending 20 months in prison for a drug offense.
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