ND Legislation alumna Lenora Popken ’20 J.D. joins the Legislation School’s Exoneration Justice Clinic as lawful fellow | Information | The Law Faculty
Notre Dame Regulation School’s Exoneration Justice Clinic has hired alumna Lenora Popken ’20 J.D. as a authorized fellow.
The Exoneration Justice Clinic, which launched in fall 2020, is dedicated to correcting miscarriages of justice by investigating, litigating, and overturning wrongful convictions. The clinic offers college students with genuine-world options to represent clients who have been wrongfully convicted. As a lawful fellow, Popken will have a foremost function in the clinic’s system of deciding on new cases for authorized representation, oversee the operate of clinic college students, and assist with the clinic’s lively situations.
“I can not start out to adequately categorical the depth of my enjoyment to return to Notre Dame and the very important work of the Exoneration Justice Clinic,” Popken stated. “My working experience all through law university with the Wrongful Conviction Externship and Notre Dame Exoneration Job formed me into the lawyer I am today. For me, this placement is a beautiful total-circle minute — I experience like I have arrive household.”
Popken returns to the Legislation School right after functioning for a few many years as a staff members attorney for the U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta. In that purpose, she served as a peer leader for the motions device, handling a broad array of complex motions.
Popken graduated from Notre Dame Legislation Faculty magna cum laude in 2020 and was a receiver of each the Peter A.R. Lardy Scholarship and the Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Software of Review in Prison Legislation for the Course of 2020. Through law college, she was actively included with equally the Notre Dame Exoneration Task scholar group and the Wrongful Conviction Externship, the predecessor to the Exoneration Justice Clinic.

Via the Wrongful Conviction Externship, Popken was a person of two certified authorized interns who had the opportunity to take part in a put up-conviction evidentiary listening to on behalf of Andrew Royer. Royer experienced been wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to 55 several years in prison. Centered on the evidence introduced at that listening to, his conviction was vacated and he was in the end exonerated just after serving around 17 several years in jail for a criminal offense he did not dedicate. Popken was ready to greet Royer on his launch from jail, along with Exoneration Justice Clinic Director Jimmy Gurulé, Adjunct Professor Elliot Slosar, and customers of Royer’s household.
“Lenora is an very bright and proficient lawyer with an unparalleled passion for justice,” Gurulé explained. “She is committed to using her authorized schooling and training to symbolize folks that have been victimized by the prison justice procedure. She will be a great addition to the Exoneration Justice Clinic group.”
Slosar included, “As a law college student, Lenora labored tirelessly on behalf of shoppers who experienced the top injustice. In Andy’s circumstance, Lenora was organized, composed, and tenacious in analyzing witnesses on the stand. Lenora’s determination to serving the most susceptible is inspiring and we could not be more thrilled to have her again at the Exoneration Justice Clinic.”
To support the essential work of Notre Dame Regulation School’s Exoneration Justice Clinic, you should simply click below to donate: supplying.nd.edu/EJC
Initially released by at exoneration.nd.edu on June 17, 2023.
