Professor of Practice Justin Brooks Named a 2024 Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts Finalist by the ABA

SAN DIEGO (March 27, 2024) – University of San Diego (USD) School of Law Professor of Practice Justin Brooks has been named a finalist for the American Bar Association’s 2024 Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts for his book, You Might Go to Prison, Even Though You’re Innocent. The book details the causes of wrongful convictions based on Professor Brooks’ more than three decades of experience as a criminal defense attorney and innocence organization director. 

Each year, the American Bar Association (ABA) presents these awards to recognize work in media and the arts published or presented during the preceding year that have been exemplary in helping to foster the American public’s understanding of law and the legal system. The ABA Gavel Awards Screening Committee of 50 professionals with wide ranges of legal and media expertise, including lawyer-members of the ABA, selected the 29 finalists from 176 entries. The winners will be announced on May 22, and awards will be presented on August 3 at the ABA’s annual meeting in Chicago.

Professor Brooks has also been featured as the keynote speaker at several recent conferences around the country, notably at the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, an elite group of trial lawyers admitted by invitation only, and at the Utah State Bar Annual meeting, attended by 400 attorneys. In April, he will headline the 2024 Annual Defender Dinner, which is the biggest event of the year for federal and state criminal defense attorneys in San Diego.

Click here for a full list of the finalists.

About Professor of Practice Justin Brooks

Professor Brooks directs the LLM Program in Comparative Law in Spanish at the USD School of Law. As the program director, he administers a national moot court program in Mexico and coordinates the work of 35 innocence organizations in Latin America.

Before joining USD Law, Professor Brooks practiced as a criminal defense attorney in Washington, D.C., Michigan, Illinois, and California in both the trial and appellate courts. He was the founding Director of the California Innocence Project at Cal Western law school from 1999-2023, and under his direction, the project freed 40 innocent people from prison (including former NFL player Brian Banks). 

Professor Brooks is the author of the only legal casebook devoted to the topic of wrongful convictions and the author of “You Might Go to Prison, Even Though You’re Innocent,” which details the causes of wrongful convictions based on his experience of more than three decades as a criminal defense attorney and innocence organization director.  He is portrayed by Academy Award-nominated actor Greg Kinnear in the feature film, “Brian Banks.”

He has been recognized several times by the Los Angeles Daily Journal as one of the Top 100 Lawyers in California, and in 2010 and 2012, California Lawyer Magazine honored him with the “Lawyer of the Year” award. He was named “International Lawyer of the Year” by the California Bar International Section in 2020 and in the same year was named “Champion of Justice” by the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys.

About the University of San Diego School of Law

Each year, USD educates approximately 800 Juris Doctor and graduate law students from throughout the United States and around the world. The law school is best known for its offerings in the areas of business and corporate law, constitutional law, intellectual property, international and comparative law, public interest law and taxation.

USD School of Law is one of the 84 law schools elected to the Order of the Coif, a national honor society for law school graduates. The law school’s faculty is a strong group of outstanding scholars and teachers with national and international reputations and currently ranks 30th nationally among U.S. law faculties in scholarly impact and 41st nationally in past-year faculty downloads on the Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN). The school is accredited by the American Bar Association and is a member of the Association of American Law Schools. Founded in 1954, the law school is part of the University of San Diego, a private, independent, Roman Catholic university chartered in 1949.