Faculty Spotlight: Professor Amy Kimpel

“From as early as I can remember I have wanted to help people,” says Professor Amy Kimpel, one of California Western School of Law (CWSL)’s three new faculty members and the Executive Director of the Innocence and Justice Clinic (IJC). “I remember telling my high school guidance counselor that I wanted to change the world,” says Professor Kimpel. Today, she has to roll her eyes at the audacity of her 17-year-old self, but the fact remains that she has spent her career trying to improve others’ lives— first as a middle school teacher in at-risk communities, then as a public defender, now as a scholar and a clinical professor. In all her roles, Professor Kimpel’s imperative remains the same: “I try to help people, whether they are clients or students, by centering their experience. I try to listen for  their needs, rather than imposing my own vision on them.” 

Joining California Western, Professor Kimpel is eager to continue her mission to help address mass incarceration, what she deems the great civil rights struggle of our generation. From the start of her career, Professor Kimpel has engaged in this fight on many fronts: in education, public defense, policy work, scholarly advocacy, and by training young advocates who are just as passionate about justice as she is. Professor Kimpel says she is continually inspired by the “growth and resilience of clients and students. Working with people in crisis for the last fifteen years, I can’t tell you how often I am affirmed by humanity. It makes me hopeful about society’s ability to address systemic injustices.”

When she pivoted to the law, Professor Kimpel joined NYU Law’s Juvenile Defense clinic, where she fell in love, both with the work of public defense and with her soon-to-be wife, with whom she now has two children. Out in the field, she worked at the Judicial Council of California, and as a public defender for the Federal Defenders of San Diego, Inc. and the Santa Clara County Office in San Jose. While at the Judicial Council, Professor Kimpel spearheaded the implementation of AB 1810, a bill that sought to better address the needs of incarcerated individuals struggling with mental health. This front of the mass incarceration battle is especially meaningful for Professor Kimpel because the first habeas case she handled was on behalf of a client who had been charged with murder but whose attorney had never engaged a mental health expert. With an intellectual disability and schizophrenia, this client may not have even been competent to stand trial. Professor Kimpel was able to have his conviction reversed, and he was given habeas relief, but only after 20 years in the California prison system, in which his mental illness had made him a target and a victim of violence. “I would be remiss if I didn’t say that folks with mental health challenges are no more likely to commit acts of violence than the rest of the population. In fact, they are overrepresented in those victimized by crimes,” says Professor Kimpel. “Unfortunately, this is a drum we have to keep beating.”

Professor Kimpel’s extensive experience in court—twenty-five jury trials in federal and state court and two cases argued before the Ninth Circuit—continues to inform her scholarship and teaching. “I’ve seen first-hand how much damage can be wrought by those claiming the mantle of justice,” says Professor Kimpel, whose research is rarely removed from what is happening on the ground in criminal and immigration law. “I like my research to have a touch and feel. My scholarship engages in those places where the rubber hits the road.” Whether she is advocating for overhauls to criminal procedure or reforms to the immigration system, her work is always grounded in the experience of the people suffering within the justice system. “I want to center the human experience,” whether it is an indigent, Black, or Brown person saddled with the stigma of a criminal record that they can’t afford to expunge, or a poor immigrant charged with a low-level border offense, or even the public defender who is increasingly prone to burnout and secondary trauma because they are being exposed to more and more disturbing digital content in discovery.

As she continues her advocacy on all of these fronts, Professor Kimpel says, “being a clinical professor is my dream job, because I get to help clients, train the next generation of lawyers, and work for systemic change.” For the last five years, she has been the Director of the Criminal Defense Clinic at the University of Alabama School of Law. She now comes to California Western eager to continue this work with the next chapter of the Innocence and Justice Clinic. Recognizing that many CWSL students come from communities that have been impacted by systemic oppression, Professor Kimpel believes her role is “to illuminate the connections between case law and their lived experience with different legal systems, to have them thinking critically about how our systems operate, who they potentially harm, and how we can wield the law in a way that lifts communities up.” Professor Kimpel was inspired by a recent meeting with a 1L who had applied to law school after getting caught up in the dysfunctions of the criminal justice system: “She wanted to be in a position to change the way the criminal legal system operates and advocate for people. Students at CWSL are really well equipped to be able to do that.”

As the Executive Director of the California Western Innocence and Justice Clinic, Professor Kimpel feels “fortunate to be able to walk into a position with the foundations of CIP’s 25-year history.” She notes that one of the primary goals of the clinic  is to give students the opportunity to learn how to lawyer. “We need to train students how to do it the right way,” says Professor Kimpel, recognizing that law school students often get little to no direct experience and, when they get their first position, are suddenly responsible for a caseload of 100 clients. “Students need to build their skills and confidence, their ability to reflect, iterate, and grow. We need to build their resiliency and stamina. And we don’t know exactly what field they’ll end up in, so we want to give them transferable skills.”

Professor Kimpel is excited to be able to provide direct representation to the wrongfully incarcerated. The IJC will continue its innocence and post-conviction work on behalf of those clients, and CWSL will also maintain its partnership with California Innocence Advocates to be able to serve more clients and to provide additional clinical opportunities for students. “I also think there is room to grow and respond to the needs of the communities we serve and the interests of students,” says Professor Kimpel, “Innocent people in prison is a profound injustice, and it is also a symptom of a number of problems in the criminal legal system. In the years to come, I want to inspire and motivate our students to address mass incarceration in a number of ways. Innocence work is one front of a war I’ve been fighting my entire career.”

Engaged as she is in the fight, Professor Kimpel emphasizes the need for balance. When she takes off her professor hat, she relishes being a mom and a wife. This summer, she drove cross country with her daughter and their dog and “listened to a lot of Taylor Swift and The Hunger Games.” She makes sure to take time for good fiction, good music, and good art, and has recently taken up gardening as well. “I like seeing tangible fruits of my labor. I like to be useful in the world.” 

Professor Kimpel Recommends:

• Season Three of the Serial podcast, which is all about the day to day function of criminal courts in Cleveland, Ohio. It centers the ordinary functions of the criminal legal system. It’s incredibly well done, broad and comprehensive. It will give students interested in criminal law a look at the type of work they’ll likely be doing. At least at first, they won’t be doing a death penalty case with Bryan Stevenson.
• Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. He is the founder of a legal nonprofit focused on death penalty and racial justice work.  This book is an essential education on the historical connection between the criminal legal system and other forms of racial oppression. He gives an amazing accounting of the criminal legal system and its flaws-- and he inspires you. When we talk about these tremendous injustices, people can feel defeated; this book gives a good dose of optimism about our ability to change systems. 
• Because we’re here in Southern California, I love City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965. It’s a very interesting portrait of different systems of incarceration and the way in which they’ve been used to target or control different populations over the years: Los Angeles’s Indigenous people, Chinese immigrants, “hobos.” I love this book because she’s unearthed history about communities that organized and resisted and the different strategies they used. It ends with urban Black communities and the first riots against police shootings. It gives great sociohistorical context and pathways to resist, organize, and change systems.
• The Shawshank Redemption. It’s just a great movie and helps you understand why both innocent and guilty clients are worth fighting for.