Michael Weinstein is a Lecturer in Law at UCLA School of Law and teaches the noncapital habeas field specialization at the Office of the Federal Public Defender in Los Angeles (the FPD). Michael has worked at the FPD since 2010 and currently serves as the Chief of its Noncapital Habeas Unit. As a deputy federal public defender (DFPD), Michael works on habeas corpus cases involving people who have been sentenced to death, life without parole, or indeterminate life sentences. He has litigated these cases at both the trial and appellate levels in both state and federal court. Before becoming a DFPD, Michael clerked in the Central District of California for United States District Judge J. Spencer Letts (2009-2010) and United States District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez (2008-2009).

Michael is on the Executive Committee of the Criminal Law Section of the California Lawyer’s Association (CLA) and is also a member of CLA’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. He also serves on the Executive Committee of the Los Angeles Criminal Justice Inn of Court and, in 2015, the American Inns of Court awarded him a Pegasus Scholarship to study English Law in the United Kingdom for six weeks. Additionally, Michael is a Board Member of Redeemed, a non-profit that specializes in re-entry and clemency work, and one of the lead coaches of Susan Miller Dorsey High School’s mock trial team. Shortly after graduating law school, Michael became a founding collective member of the legal collective, Let’s Go! Liberation, which is now an El Centro Clinic.

Michael received a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in 2003. He graduated from UCLA School of Law in 2008 after serving as the Student Note Editor for the Williams Institute’s Journal of Sexual Orientation and Gender Law.