LEIGH GOODMARK

University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law

Leigh Goodmark is the associate dean for research and faculty development and the Marjorie Cook Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, where she directs the Gender, Prison, and Trauma Clinic. A Yale University and Stanford Law School graduate, she has authored three books and co-edited two additional volumes on intimate partner violence, criminalized survivors, violence against women and gender violence.

Goodmark’s grandfather and father were both plaintiff’s side workers’ compensation lawyers. Her first job — at age 10 — was filing papers at Goodmark & Goodmark.

“I was taught to believe that, at its most basic, a lawyer’s job was to help people,” she said. She went on to work at the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law, joined the faculty at the University of Baltimore School of Law, and ultimately came to Maryland Carey Law, where she has taught for more than 20 years.

Students she has sent into the legal profession work in public interest law, government, law firms and in-house roles. “Being able to see the ripple effect of sending students out into our community who are doing amazing work of their own is the greatest gift of being a law professor,” she said.

Her scholarship and advocacy focus on people subjected to criminal punishment for actions related to their own victimization. She consults on legislation including Survivors’ Justice Acts passed in multiple states, publishes on the experiences of criminalized survivors — sometimes in collaboration with her clients — and trains practitioners on how the legal system fails this population.

Her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review and the Yale Journal on Law and Feminism.

A third-generation lawyer, Goodmark also speaks with high school and college students considering law school. She tells them about her own path to the profession, discusses whether law is the right choice for them, and shows them the range of work the field makes possible — encouraging students to pursue the legal work that motivates and excites them.