Tiffany Bracewell is taking a break from her job at Troutman Sanders defending corporate clients in white-collar matters to work for the Atlanta federal defender's office in a new secondment program.

Starting in January, the Troutman associate will spend six months helping Federal Defender Program attorneys represent criminally accused defendants who can't afford counsel—a stint that Troutman is sponsoring. Bracewell, who will remain on the Troutman payroll, is the inaugural private-firm fellow for the program, which serves the Northern District of Georgia.

The Federal Defender Program plans to partner with other law firms for subsequent secondments, said its executive director, Stephanie Kearns. "It's a great opportunity for big firm lawyers to be in court and work on trials."

One of the nonprofit's board members, Carl Lietz of Finch McCranie, suggested the idea, which the others quickly embraced, Kearns said, because it fulfills a two-fold mission for the program: training young lawyers to handle cases in federal court and developing a panel of experienced private practice lawyers to represent defendants in conflict cases.

Bracewell will work with the 25 lawyers in the program's trial unit on a variety of cases, Kearns said, handling bond and evidentiary hearings, contested sentencing proceedings and trials.

She won't be involved in death penalty cases, which are handled by the program's capital habeas unit, Kearns added.

"Troutman Sanders is proud to partner with the Federal Defender Program, and we are pleased to support Tiffany's immersive participation," said Troutman's managing partner, Steve Lewis, in a statement, adding that it's a way for the firm to "give back in areas we can make a meaningful difference."

Bracewell, a fifth-year associate at Troutman, said the program will afford her valuable federal courtroom experience. "It's no secret that it is very challenging for big law associates to get courtroom experience of any type these days—and especially in my practice," she said in an interview.

At the firm, she works on civil and criminal white-collar defense matters, including investigations from federal agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department.

As these cases can take years to resolve—and the defense's goal is to do so quietly before charges are brought—Bracewell said she has not had much chance to appear before judges for hearings or trials.

"The Federal Defender Program has a fantastic reputation in Atlanta with a stellar trial team," she added. "I will be learning from them and bringing that back to my practice."

Plenty of young litigators spend a few years as federal prosecutors to gain trial experience and then join a big firm's white-collar defense practice, but it's far more rare for lawyers to gain trial experience through a federal defenders program.

"The defense opportunity is fairly unique," Kearns said, since Bracewell will work on cases at various phases before numerous federal judges, compared with an assistant U.S. attorney who might handle only a limited number of cases from start to finish over a relatively brief tenure.

Bracewell said she learned of the new program from Lietz, her former trial skills professor at Georgia State University College of Law, when she happened to sit next to him last March on a flight back to Atlanta from the American Bar Association's annual white-collar crime conference in New Orleans.

She said the Troutman partners she works with, Bryan Lavine and David Chaiken, and firm leadership encouraged her to pursue the opportunity to gain trial skills. "They said they wished it existed when they were associates." 

Pro Bono Murder Case

While Bracewell looks forward to gaining courtroom experience as a federal defender fellow, she's acquired some criminal defense expertise already from a high-profile murder case she's handling pro bono with Troutman partner Tom Reilly, Chaiken and associate Majda Muhic.

They are representing Devonia Inman, whom Bracewell says was wrongfully convicted in 2001 for the 1998 armed robbery and murder of the night manager of a Taco Bell in Adel. Donna Brown died of a gunshot wound to the face when she was accosted late at night in the restaurant's parking lot with the day's receipts in hand.

Inman, incarcerated at age 19, is serving a life sentence without parole.

Bracewell has been working on Inman's habeas petition for a new trial for almost four years. Troutman took the case after the Georgia Innocence Project, with Eversheds Sutherland attorneys Knox Dobbins and Jason Stone, discovered from post-conviction testing that DNA from an improvised knit mask found in the victim's car matched a different suspect. 

Inman's case has been featured in two podcasts: Breakdown: Murder Below the Gnat Line from the Atlanta-Journal Constitution and Murderville from The Intercept.

An important Georgia Supreme Court decision in September has kept Inman's quest for a new trial alive. Bracewell, who'll keep working on the case while at the Federal Defender Program, said the Troutman team has just started discovery, with the aim of an evidentiary hearing next year.

"I feel very excited and lucky to be doing both," she said.