Famed Criminal Defense Lawyer to Speak at Law School

Prominent criminal defense lawyer John Wesley Hall Jr. will speak at noon Thursday, Nov. 4, in the Jim Blair Library Commons in the University of Arkansas School of Law as part of the Lawyer in the Library Series. The talk is free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be served.

Hall is the founding partner and owner of the Law Offices of John Wesley Hall in Little Rock. Before going into private practice, Hall served as Little Rock deputy prosecuting attorney from 1973-79 and was a law clerk in 1974 for Arkansas Supreme Court Associate Justice Conley Byrd. He has experienced approximately 300 jury trials and 800 court trials in all types of criminal and civil cases, including four death penalty trials and an international war crimes trial before the Special Court for Sierra Leone. He is listed as counsel of record in more than 300 cases on Westlaw, in state and federal courts including the U.S. Supreme Court.

Hall is a 1973 graduate of the University of Arkansas School of Law. He has an impressive, influential, and extensive body of publication including, Professional Responsibility in Criminal Defense Practice, Search and Seizure, Trial Handbook for Arkansas Lawyers, Arkansas Guide to Executive Clemency, and DNA: Understanding, Controlling, and Defeating the New Evidence of the 90s (a three-volume, ~4,200 page work co-compiled and –edited with Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld). Among his many leadership roles in professional organizations, Hall is Past President of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and former member of the Board of the International Criminal Defense Attorneys Association.

In addition to his many professional honors, Hall also has been immortalized in popular culture for once representing Satan pro bono in a suit filed against Halloween as a holiday and for having wall signs in his office appear in the film Primary Colors and on NBC’s series “The Office.”