|
|
Assistant Professor of Law
Contact
|
Meagan Hurley joined the Mercer Law faculty as an Assistant Professor of Law in August 2023. Her teaching and research focus on criminal law and procedure, with particular expertise on post-conviction litigation and wrongful convictions.
Professor Hurley instructs courses on Criminal Law, Post-conviction Practice & Remedies, and Client Counseling, in addition to leading The Habeas Project, Mercer Law’s nationally recognized post-conviction defense clinic. In the Habeas Project, Professor Hurley supervises third-year students who provide pro bono representation for convicted persons without the right to appointed counsel whose constitutional rights have been violated. Her scholarly work focuses on conviction integrity, official misconduct and accountability, and access to justice.
Before joining the faculty, Professor Hurley’s previous legal experience involved indigent criminal defense advocacy in the Deep South. She represented wrongfully convicted individuals with the Georgia Innocence Project, serving first as its Alabama Fellow and later as its Accountability Counsel, specializing in innocence cases involving official misconduct. While working in Alabama, Professor Hurley helped create and co-instructed the Cumberland Innocence Clinic at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law, one of the school’s two inaugural clinical programs.
A proud alumna of Mercer Law, Professor Hurley worked as a student public defender in Houston County and as a clerk for the Office of the Georgia Capital Defender during law school, in addition to serving as a member of the Habeas Project and as an intern at Georgia Innocence Project. Professor Hurley has worked on teams that have helped free or exonerate four men who served a combined 115 years in prison for crimes they did not commit. She remains active in several bar associations and committees and is licensed to practice law in Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina.
Professor Hurley earned her B.A. in Communication Arts from Reinhardt University and her J.D. from Mercer University School of Law. She was the recipient of Mercer Law’s Clover Award for Indigent Defense Advocacy and Social Justice Lawyering in 2019, and was named the Reinhardt University Distinguished Alumna of the Year in 2024.
