CORINNA BARRETT LAIN is the S. D. Roberts & Sandra Moore Professor of Law at the University of Richmond School of Law. She is one of the nation’s leading authorities on the death penalty, presenting her work at national and international conferences and publishing in the top law journals in the country. Her work has appeared in the Stanford Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Duke Law Journal, UCLA Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, and Georgetown Law Journal, among other venues, and has been cited by numerous courts, including a concurring opinion of the United States Supreme Court.

Lain is also one of the leading voices on criminal justice in Virginia more broadly, lecturing at annual conferences for the bench and bar and serving as the principle co-author of Thompson-West’s Virginia Practice Series on criminal law, a four-volume treatise that serves as the authoritative guide for Virginia criminal law and procedure. In 2023-2024 alone, the Virginia Practice Series was cited 25 times by Virginia appellate courts, including five times by the Supreme Court of Virginia.

Lain graduated summa cum laude from the College of William and Mary, and received her J.D. from the University of Virginia, where she served on the managing board of the Virginia Law Review and was elected to Order of the Coif. She clerked on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and then served as a state prosecutor in Richmond, Virginia, before joining the Richmond Law faculty in 2001. Lain is a former sergeant in the United States Army and a recipient of the University of Richmond’s Distinguished Educator Award, the highest award that the University bestows.

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