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.

Tejada passed the July 2018 Connecticut bar exam but is still awaiting a character and fitness hearing to become admitted. Law.com caught up with him to find out more about the fledgling bar association and what lawyers who have personally navigated the criminal justice system bring to the table. His answers have been edited for length.

How did you end up in prison? I had a very middle-class background. I was probably one of the last people that anyone expected to go to prison. Essentially, I got into a fight. Long story short, I was looking at a significant amount of time, and I took a plea. I was 17 when I was arrested, and I was charged as an adult. I served four and a half months. I wrote a letter to the warden and got early release. But then I had five years of probation and 16 months of house arrest. It was really an eye-opening experience for me.

How did you end up in law school? I had gotten into college before I was convicted. I had to take a semester off while I was incarcerated. But [the University of Connecticut] let me stay. While inside, I decided to go to law school. I saw a lot of what I call injustice. I just knew I needed to do something about it. I didn’t know the path, exactly, at that point. But I started working hard at school and ended up taking the LSAT after I graduated. I got a scholarship to go to Vanderbilt.

Were you open with classmates about the fact you had done time? I wasn’t—and there were reasons for that. But it was very difficult for me because of that. I wish I had been open. This whole bar association concept happened because I met some people who had my shared experiences after I got out—I met Tarra Simmons and Shon Hopwood—and started connecting with all these other people. I realized I wasn’t the only one. In law school I felt very alone. It wasn’t easy.

Are there more lawyers with criminal backgrounds out there than we think? There’s a lot more than you think. Tara, Shon and [Reginald Dwayne Betts] are involved in the bar. They are some of more high-profile. Chris Poulos as well. But there really are a lot more than you think, and that’s been a really cool experience—finding out about them. They all have incredible stories, and they’re all doing really great work. Since we’ve started setting up the bar association, every week somebody puts me in contact with one or two people who are either going into law school this year or who are planning to go to law school.

What’s the goal of the bar association? I’d like to see more people like me, Shon and Dwayne. I know the incredible impact we can have on the criminal justice system. I think we can make it a lot better. Also, like a lot of other bar associations, you impact the field by educating other attorneys. In the short term, we can’t push 1,000 people through law school in one year. But you can start educating public defenders offices, DA offices and people who are implementing justice. You can share the ways they can interact with the clients who are impacted by the system. But criminal justice reform is the end goal. We all went to law school for a reason, and that was to make things better.

What do you think lawyers who have personally experienced the criminal justice system bring to the table?  In law school you learn a lot of hypotheticals. Then you go into practice and you’re in a courtroom. But the criminal justice does not begin and end in the courtroom. It begins a long time before that. Anyone who has been in the system understands that it’s pretty expansive. There are so many ways the system impacts people and the after effects. Knowing what it means to go to prison and be in shackles and understanding the stumbling blocks for people trying to be reintegrate into society is useful. You need to know the problems to fix the problems.