Professor Renee Knake Jefferson is a distinguished institutional leader known for bringing clarity and integrity as an expert witness in high stakes matters involving lawyer and judicial ethics. She is an agenda-setting authority on lawyer discipline, judicial ethics, recusal, and democratic legitimacy. Her work bridges doctrine, institutional design, and public accountability. She holds the endowed Doherty Chair in Legal Ethics and is a Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center. She previously held academic appointments at Michigan State College of Law, Stanford Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession, and Royal Melbourne Institution of Technology as the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Professor Jefferson is the author of more than 40 scholarly articles and five books, including a multi-volume treatise on Texas lawyer and judicial ethics and the award-winning book Shortlisted: Women in the Shadows of the Supreme Court. Her research on legal ethics has been published in the Michigan Law Review and Yale Law Journal Forum. Major media outlets including The New York Times, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post have referenced her analysis of legal ethics controversies and judicial accountability mechanisms. She has provided expert witness testimony on judicial ethics matters before the United States Congress and twice before the Texas Supreme Court of Special Review. She often is called upon as an expert witness in professional responsibility cases, including the successful defense of an AmLaw 100 law firm in an $800 million legal malpractice case involving attorney conflict of interest claims and the dismissal of a motion to disqualify the general counsel and in-house legal department of major genetics company. Jefferson has taught Professional Responsibility more than 50 times and delivered more than 130 ethics presentations to in-house corporate departments, large and small law firms, state bar continuing legal education programs, and law faculties throughout the US and internationally. A graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, prior to becoming an academic Jefferson practiced law with two international law firms – Mayer, Brown and Hunton & Williams – and as an assistant city attorney for Charlottesville, Virginia.
