Jessica K. Steinberg

Jessica Steinberg is a nationally recognized expert on access to justice, state courts, and poverty law. Her recent scholarship has appeared in leading journals, including the Columbia Law Review, NYU Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, UCLA Law Review, Stanford Law Review Online, and Harvard Law Review Forum, among others. Professor Steinberg is the 2025 recipient of the AALS Deborah L. Rhode Award, which recognizes a trailblazer in legal education and the profession. For her role in developing a Compassionate Release Clearinghouse to expand representation for older prisoners, she received the 2021 Wiley A. Brant Award civil rights award. She has also been named a Bellow Scholar for her research on lawyerless courts and is a former Chair of the Association of American Law Schools’ Section on Poverty Law.

Professor Steinberg teaches civil procedure and criminal procedure. Prior to this, she taught the Prisoner & Reentry Clinic, which performed groundbreaking work on behalf of prisoners and returning citizens. The clinic freed more than two dozen men from prison and terminated parole and supervised release for many more. Professor Steinberg coauthored the first-ever parole treatise for DC prisoners incarcerated in the federal Bureau of Prisons and regularly testified on bills to promote “second chance” laws for people with felony records. Professor Steinberg also served as primary author on several bills to promote a fair criminal justice system in the District of Columbia. The clinic’s work on clemency under President Obama’s campaign to release nonviolent, low-level drug offenders was featured on the front page of the New York Times.

Prior to joining the GW Law faculty, Professor Steinberg served as the Jay M. Spears Fellow at Stanford Law School, and an Equal Justice Works Fellow for the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County. Professor Steinberg earned a BA magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Barnard College and a JD from Stanford University.

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