UC Davis Law professor Irene Joe and restorative justice specialist Jeremiah Mungo examine how ABA advertising restrictions and the absence of meaningful credentialing standards leave criminal defendants—particularly those who can afford private counsel—with little reliable information for choosing a defense attorney, forcing them to rely almost entirely on informal word of mouth. Drawing on Mr. Mungo’s personal experience hiring a private attorney who was later disbarred, Professor Joe and Mr. Mungo argue that modest reforms such as voluntary specialist certification programs, tiered qualification requirements, and publicly available attorney experience data could establish a quality floor in the criminal defense market without dismantling legitimate concerns about lawyer advertising.
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Irene Oritseweyinmi Joe
Irene Oritseweyinmi Joe is a Professor of Law at the UC Davis School of Law, where she has taught since 2016. Her scholarly work focuses on the administrative and ethical challenges inherent in the criminal justice system, specifically examining how the design of the criminal process affects the ability of institutional attorneys to manage overwhelming caseloads. At UC Davis, she teaches courses in Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Professional Responsibility, and Voir Dire.
Professor Joe’s academic research is deeply informed by her years of practice in the criminal courts. Before entering academia, she served as a fellow for the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama, representing indigent defendants in capital post-conviction litigation and children sentenced to life without parole. Following a federal clerkship with the Honorable Napoleon Jones of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, she returned to the front lines of public defense. She served as both a line defender and the Assistant Special Litigation Counsel for the Orleans Public Defenders—an office created in the challenging aftermath of Hurricane Katrina—and later became the Assistant Training Director for the Louisiana Public Defender Board. In that role, she was responsible for the statewide training of the legal and administrative staff charged with providing ethical representation to defendants facing everything from misdemeanors to capital charges.
A former Binder Teaching Fellow at UCLA School of Law, Professor Joe is a frequent contributor to the national legal conversation. Her scholarship has appeared in the California Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Iowa Law Review, and Boston University Law Review, among others. She also offers perspective on broader social issues, such as her Los Angeles Times op-ed regarding the intersection of immigration and political history.
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