NATIONAL CRIMINAL DEFENSE COLLEGE
FACULTY DIRECTORY
For a list of NCDC faculty who have taught in prior years, please click here.
Karen Smolar
Biography
Karen Smolar is the Dean of the National Criminal Defense College as well as a Managing Director in the Public Defender Division at the Committee for Public Counsel Services in Massachusetts. Karen spent her three previous decades representing the indigent accused in New York City, including twenty years of dedicated work at The Bronx Defenders. Karen spent a decade as their Trial Chief, deservedly earning the informal title of Persuasion Guru. Karen’s time at The Bronx Defenders was marked by formal and informal brainstorming of a countless number of cases, as she mentored, trained, and supervised dozens and dozens of younger public defenders representing clients charged with nearly every crime imaginable.
Karen’s trial training legacy lives on at The Bronx Defenders, embodied in the Defenders’ Academy, the annual, intensive five-day program that Karen created from scratch in 2007. The Academy was the first training program in the country to focus on the intersection between trial skills and performance work, and it continues to attract and welcome interested attorneys in criminal, family, and civil practices from across the United States. Many Academy graduates from over the years would acknowledge the debt they owe to Karen when they speak of having been “Smolarized” in their approach to trial work.
Prior to her appointment as Dean in 2017, Karen had served for a decade on the College’s faculty as a presenter, lecturer, and small-group leader. Her work at the College allows her to develop and implement creative programming and pedagogy to train lawyers from around the country and beyond. Since her Deanship began, Karen has been especially proud of both the College’s successful efforts to diversify its faculty, staff, and participants as well as the College curriculum’s emphasis on racial and social justice.
Karen is herself a renowned lecturer and guest trainer on everything from storytelling to closing argument, cross-examining expert witnesses to voir dire, having presented at trainings for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the New York State Defenders Association, and many other state-wide public defender offices around the country. Karen also has more than a decade of experience teaching in law school classrooms. Karen has served as adjunct faculty at St. John’s School of Law in New York, Seton Hall Law School in New Jersey, and Roger Williams University School of Law in Rhode Island.