Shon Hopwood’s unusual legal journey began prior to him attending law school. In 1999, Shon stood before a federal judge and was sentenced to over 12 years in federal prison for his role in five bank robberies. While in prison, he learned the law and began writing legal briefs for other prisoners. Two of the petitions Mr. Hopwood prepared were granted by the U.S. Supreme Court, and he won cases for prisoners in federal courts across the country.

Upon his release, Mr. Hopwood earned a Juris Doctor as a Gates Public Service Law Scholar from the University of Washington School of Law, before serving as a law clerk for Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He is now a teaching fellow at the Georgetown University Law Center’s Appellate Litigation Program.

His legal scholarship has been published in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties, Washington, and Fordham law reviews, and in the Georgetown Law Journal’s Annual Review of Criminal Procedure. His writing has also been published in the Seattle Times, Huffington Post, The Atlantic.com, and SCOTUSblog. He co-wrote his memoir, Law Man: My Story of Robbing Banks, Winning Supreme Court Cases, and Finding Redemption, which was published by Crown Publishing at Penguin Random House.