NATIONAL CRIMINAL DEFENSE COLLEGE FACULTY

Brett Willis

Owner, Brett Willis Law LLC
Home 118 Main Street Southwest M3 Gainesville GA 30501 TPI Attendance: June, 2012
Photo of Brett Willis

Biography

Brett Willis has defending people since birth. His entire legal career has been dedicated to defending people who are accused of committing crimes. From 2005 to 2022 he worked as a Georgia Public Defender in Hall County. In 2022, he opened his own law firm.

He is a member of the inaugural class of Gideon’s Promise. At present, Brett serves as an instructor for: the Harvard Law School, the Georgia Public Defender Council, and GACDL’s Bill Daniel Program.

He is the author of Georgia’s only practice guide on defending against the charge of failure to register as a sexual offender. In 2008, Brett successfully challenged the constitutionality of the sex offender registration law as applied to homeless persons in Santos v. State, 284 Ga. 514 (2008).

In 2010, Brett was selected as one of ten Georgia lawyers under forty “On the Rise” in a review by The Fulton County Daily Report. In 2011, he was recognized for securing a dismissal for a woman accused of poisoning her husband with arsenic; the case had been slated to appear on TruTV. In 2013, he was featured in the HBO documentary Gideon’s Army. Also in 2013, he was awarded the prestigious Foot Soldier award by Gideon’s Promise. In 2014 Brett was named the Georgia Public Defender of the Year. He earned his J.D. from the University of Georgia (2003) and his Master of Laws from New York University (2004).

Notes

Recent Teaching History