Bio
Jeffery Robinson is the executive director of The Who We Are Project. Until April 2021, Robinson was an ACLU deputy legal director and the director of the ACLU Trone Center for Justice and Equality, which houses the organization's work on criminal justice, racial justice, and reform issues. Since graduating from Harvard Law School in 1981, Jeff has three decades of experience working on these issues. For seven years, he represented indigent clients in state court at The Defender Association and then in federal court at the Federal Public Defender’s Office, both in Seattle. In 1988, Jeff began a 27-year private practice at the Seattle firm of Schroeter, Goldmark & Bender, where he represented a broad range of clients in local, state, and federal courts on charges ranging from shoplifting to securities fraud and first degree murder. He has tried over 200 criminal cases to verdict and has tried more than a dozen civil cases representing plaintiffs suing corporate and government entities. Jeff was one of the original members of the John Adams Project and worked on the behalf of one of five men held at Guantanamo Bay charged with carrying out the 9/11 attacks.
In addition to being a nationally recognized trial attorney, Jeff is also a respected teacher of trial advocacy. He is a faculty member of the National Criminal Defense College in Macon, Georgia, and has lectured on trial skills all over the United States. He has also spoken nationally to diverse audiences on the role of race in the criminal justice system. He is past president of the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and a life member and past member of the board of directors of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Jeff is also an elected fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers.
Featured work
Feb 19, 2021
Merrick Garland Can Transform the Department of Justice. Will He?
Dec 7, 2020
Bold and Visionary: A Criminal Justice To-Do List for the New Administration
Jul 3, 2020
It's Time To Tell the Truth About the Confederacy and its Symbols
May 22, 2020
America, It Is Time to Talk About Reparations
Feb 24, 2020
Honoring Black History Month Means Respecting the Foundation That it Stands On
Jan 6, 2020
Tulsa’s Troubling Past is Not Far Removed from Its Present
Oct 31, 2019
Why Have a Forum on Reparations in Charleston and Why Now?
Oct 16, 2019
Amber Guyger’s Sentence Doesn’t Highlight a More Empathetic Criminal Legal System
Aug 23, 2019
Will North Carolina's Supreme Court Allow Racism to Remain a Persistent Factor in its Death Penalty?