Carrie Sperling teaches Legal Method, Legal Advocacy, and Advanced Persuasion and Creative Advocacy. Her scholarly writing incorporates research from various disciplines to improve advocates’ persuasive techniques.

An active member of the legal writing community, Professor Sperling serves on the Association of Legal Writing Directors’ scholarship committee and chairs the Legal Writing Institute’s Pro Bono Committee. Her legal career centered on public interest law, first as director of the ACLU’s north Texas region, then as an advocate in federal court for inmates on Texas’s death row, and most recently as the first executive director of the Arizona Justice Project – one of the nation’s first innocence projects.

Professor Sperling continues to link her research to practice, guiding teams of volunteer attorneys and law students in investigating and presenting prisoners’ claims of innocence in the courts. Some of her pro bono cases have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Dallas Morning News, The Sacramento Bee, and the Phoenix New Times.

Before joining the College of Law, Professor Sperling was an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. She has also served as a law clerk to the Hon.  Jerry Buckmeyer, U.S. District Judge, and the Hon. Paul D. Stickney, U.S. Magistrate Judge in the Northern District of Texas.