Carlotta Lepingwell

Carlotta Lepingwell directs the Criminal Justice Clinic, supervising student attorneys in representing defendants at all stages of their criminal cases. She specializes in criminal litigation at all levels of practice, including trial and post-conviction, and in representing criminalized survivors.

Lepingwell joined Tulane Law in 2020 as part of the inaugural team of the Women’s Prison Project (“WPP”), a collaboration between the Criminal Justice Clinic and the Domestic Violence Clinic. She later served as interim Criminal Justice Clinic Director before being named Director in January of 2026.

Because of her work with WPP, she has expertise in representing and advocating for women whose acts of survival are criminalized. This includes women who kill their abusers in self-defense, who commit crimes under the coercion of their abusers and/or traffickers or who fail to protect their children from their abusers. Her work with the WPP includes individual, direct representation, consultation on legislative reform, and training and technical assistance locally, nationally and transnationally.  

Lepingwell also continues to contribute to the national community of litigators that challenge the use of faulty science in criminal litigation. This work began with her own litigation practice at the Office of Capital and Forensic writs in Texas and has extended into the work she now does with counsel substitutes in Louisiana and in providing technical assistance in Texas and the 5th Circuit.

She has taught a seminar on scientific and expert evidence and guest lectures on challenging forensic evidence. She has been invited to train on trial skills and capital post-conviction litigation skills at the state and national level. She also directs Tulane Law School’s Criminal Litigation Intersession.

Prior to joining the Tulane Law School faculty, Lepingwell served as the Deputy Director and the Training Director at the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs, where she established the office’s first training program and represented clients who are sentenced to death in all stages of state habeas litigation. Previously she served as a public defender and supervising attorney at The Bronx Defenders, and as a public defender in Massachusetts and at the Orleans Public Defenders in New Orleans. Before moving back to the United States to pursue her dream of being a public defender, she worked for a year in private criminal defense practice in Toronto, Ontario.