Jessica K. Steinberg

Jessica Steinberg’s research interests are in the areas of civil procedure, state courts, access to justice, and poverty law, with an emphasis on original empirical research. Her recent scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in leading journals, including the Columbia Law Review, NYU Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Harvard Law Review Forum, and UCLA Law Review, among others. Professor Steinberg has 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. The clinic developed 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. 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.

Professor Steinberg is a primary author of several bills to promote a fair criminal justice system in the District of Columbia, including legislation to create compassionate release for older prisoners, expand good time credits for people serving long terms of incarceration, and increase employment opportunities for individuals with criminal records. For her role in developing a Compassionate Release Clearinghouse to expand representation for prisoners during the COVID-19 pandemic, Professor Steinberg received the Wiley A. Brant Award for “dismantling injustice” from the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. 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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