Laura Nirider: All you Need to Know About The Legal Scholar

Laura Nirider is an American attorney and legal scholar who works as an Associate Professor of Law at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and co-director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions.

Laura Nirider: Bio Summary

Laura Nirider is an American Attorney, she is well known for her work on West of Memphis (2012), Making a Murderer (2015) and Dateline NBC (1992).  She is the co-director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, and the co-host of the Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions podcast.

Laura was born on October 16, 1981 in the United States of America. As of 2022, she is 41 years old. Nirider graduated from the University of Chicago with a Bachelor of Arts in political science. She went on to earn a Juris Doctorate from Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, where she graduated magna cum laude.

Laura Nirider: Career

Nirider, an expert on false confessions, specializes in representing young people who confessed to crimes they did not commit, as well as working to reform the police interrogation process. Following her involvement in several high-profile cases involving juvenile confessions, Nirider’s work gained international attention.

Brendan Dassey, whose case was featured in the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer, and Damien Echols of the West Memphis Three, whose case was featured in the HBO series Paradise Lost and the documentary West of Memphis, are among her clients. She also hosts a podcast on false confessions, entitled Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions.

Nirider co-directed the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth with Prof. Steven Drizin from 2009 to 2019. Nirider, an expert on how children can be coerced into confessing to crimes they did not commit, frequently discusses intentional or unintentional tactics that can break down or mislead young people.

Laura Nirider claims that even well-meaning police interrogators can coerce vulnerable people into making false confessions. Interrogation is frequently taught with the intention of extracting information from stubborn, hardened, and fully-grown individuals, making it unsuitable for use on young people, particularly vulnerable young people.

The center intends to address this issue by teaching incoming law students as well as attorneys and judges, as well as lobbying policymakers.  One such law that Drizin helped to introduce was one requiring videotaping of juvenile interviews in Wisconsin, which was enacted in time to play a significant role in Brendan Dassey’s trials.

Laura Nirider is currently teaching law students about false confessions in young people, a course she did take as a student. She has written extensively on the causes of false confessions and has been invited to give keynote speeches at numerous conferences and symposia on issues relating to the justice system and forensic science.

Nirider and members of the Center, in collaboration with the International Association of Police Chiefs, have published guidelines on how to effectively interview young people without coercing a false confession.

Nirider was interviewed about the troubling role of Reid technique interrogation being taught to school officials in order to extract confessions from students, highlighting the stark differences in awareness between adults and juveniles. Changes in interrogation techniques, such as abandoning the Reid technique, may benefit both innocent juveniles and adults.

In recognition of their work for the CWCY, she and Drizin received the Northwestern Law Alumni Award for Public Service, dedicated to the memory of Dawn Clark Netsch, in 2017.

On the Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions podcast which was hosted by Laura Nirider and Drizin, and produced by Lava for Good Podcasts, Wrongful Conviction:False Confessions goes in-depth on stories of true confessions, using real audio from actual interrogations.

Each episode starts with a real-life crime — with Nirider and Drizin showing the many techniques interrogators use to extract false confessions from innocent suspects.

“Police officers are trained to use a common set of psychological manipulative tactics that are designed to make the person being interrogated start to think that confessing is in his or her best interest, even if they’re innocent,” says Nirider. “A police officer will say, ‘Look, we have rock-solid evidence that you’re guilty.’”

Laura Nirider: Notable cases

Laura Nirider on the Brendan Dassey case

Brendan Dassey appeared on the documentary:  Making a Murderer. Nirider appeared in the documentary’s final episode of the first season, which catapulted her to fame among viewers due to her dedication to the cause and strong, intelligent demeanor. She appears throughout the second series, which follows the CWCY’s efforts to prevent Dassey’s confession from being confirmed as evidence, the only piece of evidence linking him to Teresa Halbach’s murder.

Laura Nirider has stated that her involvement in the Dassey case as a postgraduate student of Drizin in 2007 was one of her motivations for entering juvenile law (particularly with a focus on false confessions). Nirider continued to contribute to the Dassey case even after briefly working in commercial law.

Dassey remains imprisoned; however, efforts to demonstrate that his confession was obtained through unethical means, with Nirider and Drizin at the helm, continue. Laura Nirider is highly critical of the interrogation methods used on a vulnerable and “mentally-limited” 16-year-old, as well as Dassey’s previous legal representation.

Nirider has toured the UK and Ireland with Drizin, discussing her work on Making a Murderer and the science of coerced confessions. As a result of the documentary’s publicity, she has been extensively interviewed by the media, as well as the Innocence Project.

Laura Nirider on the Damien Echols Case

Damien Echols, one of the West Memphis Three, was sentenced to death but was released in 2011 with Nirider as co-counsel. Nirider uses the cases of Echols and Dassey to demonstrate the potential benefits of media attention to cases of wrongful conviction. Laura Nirider was featured on the documentary West of Memphis.

Dixmoor 5

The Dixmoor 5 were a group of men believed to have given false confessions in police interviews. Laura Nirider was co-counsel for three members, and they were exonerated in 2011.