Membership Benefits
The National Association for Public Defense is an inclusive and collaborative grassroots movement of public defense professionals dedicated to bringing meaningful access to justice for poor people.
Please download our 2022 Summary of Membership Benefits
You can also download an almost Complete List of All NAPD Webinars (300+) that are accessible to NAPD members in our Webinar Archive on MyGideon.
NAPD created a short video recapping the achievements that NAPD has made in the 5 years since forming in October 2013. We encourage you to watch it!
Stronger Together: NAPD pools the intellectual capital of our members by compiling practical, relevant resources and bringing local justice issues to the national stage. Member benefits include:
- Articles - NAPD articles chronicle experiences, legal developments, news stories, challenges, and successes in the field, providing insight into both the common goals and the diverse circumstances of public defense work.
- Leadership Education - NAPD organizes annual conferences on workloads, leadership and trial skills.
- Webinars - NAPD hosts webinars almost weekly, and has more than 150 webinars in its archive on MyGideon. Topics innclude: “Internet Secrets and Social Media Intelligence Revealed”; “Using Mental Illness to Get a Jury to Not Guilty”; “Cross–Examination of a Complainant in a Sex Case”; “Defending Confession Cases”; "Spotting & Challenging Prosecutorial Misconduct”; and, “Language Impairments.”
- MyGideon - MyGideon is NAPD's library of public defense resources and information, continuously curated for quality and recency. All past webinars and hundreds of other training videos are archived on MyGideon. The resources at MyGideon grow daily.
The Public Defense Experts: NAPD works with local offices and partners to focus the national public defense agenda. Activities include:
- Amicus Briefs: NAPD stands ready to join other organizations in attacking injustice by filing amicus briefs to support diverse justice reforms; it has supported more than 40 briefs since 2014.
- Ethics and Policy Papers: NAPD tackles diverse issues through published ethics opinions/policy papers.
- Racial Justice: NAPD supports training and community outreach to address the pervasive racial bias that pervades every level of the criminal justice system, from policing through sentencing (and beyond).
- IT Support: NAPD provides guidance on case management systems, data/database development, and related technology for organizations that lack IT support staff.
- Juvenile Justice: NAPD works to ensure that juvenile defense is supported and resourced by the national defense community.
- Public Education & Outreach: NAPD creates resources, communications assistance and directly supports members to promote public defenders and public defender values.
- Strike Force: NAPD mentors, shares resources, and lends NAPD support to local jurisdictions when zealous advocacy leads to risk or sanction. The Committee also facilitates a Mentors Prorgram for Executive Leaders and Managers.
- Workload Advocacy: NAPD is developing resources, analyzing data, creating workload standards, and supporting offices grow their budgets to meet workloads need and/or litigate excessive workloads.
- Systems Builders: NAPD lends tailored support to systems undergoing structural, financial or leadership transitions, including Board and/or Commission training, technical assessments and mentoring.
- Fines & Fees Advocacy: NAPD addresses how court costs/other fees assessed to indigent clients threaten client’s rights, illegally restricts their liberty and oppresses entire communities.
Join Us: NAPD is a member-led movement. Annual individual membership is $40; organizational membership is $25/person. NAPD has more than 125 member organizations (including 25 statewide systems), 500 individual members and more than 22,000 total members across all fifty states.