Chances are I’m going to be talking about something today that many of you already know, either because you have firsthand knowledge of the role that public defenders play in the criminal process or because you’ve spent time critically thinking about how attorneys operate in a criminal justice process that is clearly inequitable on many grounds, and in particular, on race. But even though many of you may already know this intuitively, the goal of my research and contribution to the legal literature is to dive deeper into some of the current conversations that we have about reforming the criminal justice system. I explore if some of the things or the practices that attorneys engage in actually contribute to the very racial inequities in the criminal process they may fight against.