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Professor Dillard has served on the faculty at the University of Baltimore, School of Law for nearly two decades. She began her teaching career at American University, Washington College of Law, and she has been a visiting law professor at Seattle University and at both law schools affiliated with Indiana University. Before entering the academy, Dillard was the deputy public defender for the city of Alexandria, Virginia, and she maintains a private law practice which represents one client charged with capital murder in Virginia.
Recently Professor Dillard enjoyed a research fellowship with the Elizabeth Sage Collection at Indiana University. She is currently working on a project -- Start with the Clothes -- where she is researching material culture and professional attire norms for women and gender queer trials lawyers in the U.S.., with a focus on the ways that professional attire shapes professional identity and the legal profession as a whole.
Her general scholarly interests include sanity and competency issues, police use of force and death-in-custody, and the #MeToo movement.
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PROFESSOR
Dillard began her teaching career in the Legal Rhetoric Program at American University, drawing from her day job as a public defender drafting pleadings and briefs for court. Her experience developing the curriculum for and directing Legal Rhetoric guides her in every classroom, where her primary focus is helping students develop and sharpen their legal analysis skills. The core of her substantive knowledge is criminal law and constitutional criminal procedure, and she has co-authored a textbook in each subject. Deep knowledge of specific topics in criminal law and procedure helped her develop and teach a #MeToo seminar, a Race, Crime, and Media course, and a capital punishment seminar. Her experience as a trial lawyer defines her approach to teaching Evidence and Professional Responsibility, but her roots in legal rhetoric and analysis inform every class she teaches.
Books
CRIMINAL LAW: CASES AND PROBLEMS (with Myron Moskovitz and Elizabeth Boals) (Carolina Academic Press, 8th ed. 2023)
CASES AND PROBLEMS IN CRIMINAL PROCEDURE: THE POLICE (with Myron Moskovitz and Elizabeth Boals) (Carolina Academic Press, 7th ed. 2019).
start with the clothes.
In 2001, Stanford Law Professor Deborah Rhode chaired the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession, and her report, The Unfinished Agenda, is a masterful consideration of sexism and misogyny in the legal profession. Rhode articulated the “double standard and the double bind” for women in the courtroom who must balance not being seen as “too ‘soft’ or too ‘strident,’ too ‘aggressive’ or ‘not aggressive enough.’ ” In 2018, University of San Francisco Law Professor Lara Bazelon reflected on Rhode’s ABA report in her essay, What It Takes to be a Trial Lawyer if You’re not a Man; Bazelon writes, “Let’s start with the clothes.” This phrased resonated with me when I taught Rhode’s report and Bazelon’s essay in a #MeToo seminar. I found myself in a profound, somatic experience, arising from the decade I spent as a public defender, “costuming up” for court every day.
Building from a Repository Research Fellowship with the Elizabeth Sage Costume Collection at Indiana University, this project examines the material cultural of courtroom attire and considers the disparate impact of attire norms for women and gender queer trial lawyers in the United States. Part of this project involves collecting “courtroom attire” stories from women and gender queer trial lawyers. We want to know your stories. If you’d like to participate, please start by taking our short questionnaire.
SCHOLAR
Dillard’s traditional scholarship concerns severe mental illness and competency to stand trial, policing and privacy, partisan judicial selection, and food justice issues. She draws from professional experience as a public defender and capital defense attorney in her writing, and her point of view emerges from deeply personal experiences. She has published op-eds with The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, and The San Francisco Chronicle in an effort to bring complex legal issues out of the courtroom and classroom and into the public realm.
Law Reviews Articles
Op-Eds / Public Comments
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DEFENDER
Professor Dillard spent a decade in public service in Alexandria Virginia, where she served as Deputy Public Defender under Melinda Douglas, the first woman appointed to head a public defender office in Virginia.
She served as counsel in more than 20 jury trials, but it is the daily work of meeting clients at the jail, negotiating with prosecutors, questioning police officers, and appearing before judges on the courtroom stage that stays with her as a professor and scholar. She worked with countless student interns over the years and supervised many of them in their first courtroom appearances; helping build a corps of dedicated, talented public servants is her proudest achievement. While she does not miss the high-stakes drama of trial work, she does miss meaningful collaboration with other lawyers and the steady, unwavering goal of challenging government power.
CAPITAL
DEFENDER
Professor Dillard has represented one client charged with capital murder in Virginia for over 20 years, and that work inspired several traditional law review articles. The trial court ordered that her client was “unrestorably incompetent” after 15 years of pre-trial detention and extensive, highly-contested litigation, but he still remains detained with a pending capital murder charge. The case has been in state habeas proceedings more recently, and the team of lawyers appointed in the case are determined to see the client free from his unconstitutional detention.
PUBLIC
SERVICE
Ad Hoc Police Practices Review Commission, Fairfax County, Virginia, 2015
Reviewed policies of Fairfax County, Virginia Police Department by invitation of Sharon Bulova, Chair of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, and served on a subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight.
ACLU of Virginia, death penalty advocates task force, 2015-2016
Reviewed statutes affecting death penalty prosecutions and executions, and consulted in preparing a lobbying platform to limit and abolish the death penalty in Virginia.
Baltimore city police department independent review committee, 2013-2014
Reviewed the death-in-custody of Tyrone West by invitation from Police Commissioner Anthony Batts, and assessed the quality of the internal investigation.
Special reporter, Criminal rules subcommittee of the maryland standing committee on rules of practice and procedure, 2008-2009
Connect with Dillard
adillard@ubalt.edu
jagd@jagdillard.com
Learn more about the Start with the Clothes project.