Abbe Smith is Director of the Criminal Defense and Prisoner Advocacy Clinic, Co-Director of the E. Barrett Prettyman Fellowship Program, and Professor of Law at Georgetown University. She joined the Georgetown faculty in 1996. Professor Smith serves as an Adviser on the Model Penal Code: Sexual Assault and Related Offenses project.
Prior to joining Georgetown’s faculty, she was Deputy Director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School, and a Clinical Instructor and Lecturer on Law at Harvard. Professor Smith has also taught at the City University New York School of Law, Temple University School of Law, American University Washington College of Law, and the University of Melbourne Law School (Australia), where she was a Senior Fulbright Scholar in 2005-06.
Professor Smith began her legal career at the Defender Association of Philadelphia, where she was an Assistant Defender, a member of the Special Defense Unit, and a Senior Trial Attorney from 1982 to 1990. She continues to be actively engaged in indigent defense, as both a clinical supervisor and member of the Criminal Justice Act panel for the DC Superior Court, and frequently presents at public defender and legal aid training programs in the United States and abroad.