Annual Conference
Dates: 9/27 – 9/29
Location:
Denver Marriott Tech Center
4900 S Syracuse St.,
Denver, CO 80237
Conference Contact:
Michelle Griffin – Michelle.Griffin@coloradodefenders.us
Keynote Speakers
Ama S. Frimpong (She/Her)
Chief of Services
We Are CASA
Ama Frimpong is a nationally recognized attorney and fierce advocate for immigrant justice. As chief of services at We Are CASA, she leads the organization’s programs and services with excellence and a deep commitment to grassroots people power. Since joining We Are CASA in 2022, she has driven landmark strategies to defend immigrant rights, including litigating high-profile cases challenging the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda, such as the termination of birthright citizenship and Temporary Protected Status (TPS); and leading efforts to limit dangerous collaborations between local law enforcement and ICE, with particular emphasis on ending 287(g) agreements.
Today, Ama serves as one of the attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, advocating alongside a powerhouse legal team in a case of national significance that has become a flashpoint in the fight for justice for immigrant workers and their families. Through Kilmar’s case, she is amplifying the stories of those too often silenced, making clear that the struggle for one man’s freedom is a struggle for all of our freedoms.
Throughout her career, Ama has represented clients and mentored attorneys on cases before the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and in criminal and civil courts across D.C., Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. Her work has always centered the lived experiences of low-income, immigrant, and Black and Brown communities, bridging the gap between courtroom victories and systemic change.
Before joining We Are CASA, Ama served as managing attorney at the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights (CAIR) Coalition, leading legal defense for detained adults and unaccompanied children in the D.C. region.
A proud graduate of Salem College (2011) and Wake Forest University School of Law (2014), Ama brings not only legal expertise but also an unwavering belief in the power of communities to demand and win justice.
Alec Karakatsanis
Founder & Executive Director
Civil Rights Corps
Alec is the Founder and Executive Director of Civil Rights Corps. He has pioneered constitutional civil rights cases to challenge the size, power, profit, and everyday brutality of the punishment bureaucracy across the United States. These legal challenges have helped to free hundreds of thousands of people from jail, returned tens of millions of dollars to indigent people and families, prevented hundreds of thousands of illegal convictions, prevented the separation of thousands of families, and transformed the way the U.S. criminal punishment bureaucracy handles fines, fees, and bail. Alec has also worked with directly impacted communities across the U.S. to design innovative new legal, advocacy, and narrative strategies for challenging widespread illegal and harmful practices of prosecutors, police, probation officers, judges, and private companies who work with them to profit from the punishment bureaucracy.
Alec graduated from Yale College in 2005 with a degree in Ethics, Politics, & Economics and Harvard Law School in 2008, where he was a Supreme Court Chair of the Harvard Law Review. Before founding Civil Rights Corps, Alec was a civil rights lawyer and public defender with the Special Litigation Division of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia; a federal public defender in Alabama, representing impoverished people accused of federal crimes; and co-founder of the organization Equal Justice Under Law. You can read a profile about Alec’s work starting Civil Rights Corps challenging modern debtors’ prisons in Harvard Magazine here.
Alec lectures widely about the failures of the criminal punishment bureaucracy, typically giving more than 100 lectures, speeches, trainings, media interviews, and workshops each year. He was awarded the 2016 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award by Public Justice and the Stephen B. Bright Award for contributions to indigent defense in the South by Gideon’s Promise. His work at Civil Rights Corps challenging the money bail system was honored with the Champion of Public Defense Award by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He was also awarded the 2023 New Frontier Award from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
Alec is the author of two books, Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System (2019) and Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News (2025). He also writes a popular newsletter called Alec’s Copaganda Newsletter and regularly collaborates with visual artists, poets, musicians, and filmmakers to produce art about the punishment bureaucracy.
Alec is interested in genuine holistic safety for everyone and ending human caging, surveillance, police, the death penalty, immigration laws, war, and inequality. He also likes playing the piano and soccer, collecting rocks, singing, growing flowers, creating mosaics from dried flowers, repeating the same jokes until they become funny, writing poetry, and making weird paintings on large pieces of wood and metal.You can watch Alec talk about Copaganda in the media on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and The Breakfast Club. You can also watch Alec discuss the groundbreaking Right2Hug campaign, and how civil rights lawyering can challenge authoritarianism.
Anticipated Continuing Legal Education (CLE) Credit
- Sunday: 3 general credits
- Monday: 6 general credits
- Tuesday: 5 general credits
* Subject to final approval by the Supreme Court CLE office.
Cost for Private Lawyers, Investigators, Social Workers, & Paralegals
- Lawyers (breakfast included):
- Sunday – Tuesday, 14 CLEs, $600
- Sunday / Monday, 9 CLEs, $450
- Monday / Tuesday, 11 CLEs, $500
- Sunday, 3 CLEs, $250
- Monday, 6 CLEs, $350
- Tuesday, 5 CLEs, $325
- Investigators, Social Workers, & Paralegals (breakfast included):
- Sunday – Tuesday, $230
Registration (closes Friday, September 18th)
- Private Lawyers – CLICK HERE
- Private Investigators, Social Workers, and Paralegals – CLICK HERE
Public Defender Conference is closed to those who serve any prosecutorial or judicial function
Once you register, you will receive an email confirmation.
Agenda
The final agenda and additional information will be sent out by Monday, September 21, 2026.