Sonya Pfeiffer is a partner with Rudolf Widenhouse in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she represents clients in white collar federal criminal cases, wrongful conviction and civil rights cases, and serious state-court criminal cases. Pfeiffer joined the firm after working in the business litigation division of Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge and Rice, where she was involved with both civil and criminal cases in the firm’s Charlotte office. In particular, Pfeiffer focused her legal work on medical malpractice and campaign-finance related criminal litigation. She began her legal career in the Mecklenburg County Public Defender’s Office, where she served in both the Misdemeanor and Felony Drug Unit.
In addition to her legal experience, Pfeiffer is an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker. She spent more than a decade as a television news reporter in Raleigh, Boston, Omaha and New York. She also covered major international stories while based in Paris, France, including the Yitzhak Rabin assassination in Tel Aviv and the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords in Paris.
Pfeiffer holds leadership positions in the North Carolina Advocates for Justice, the North Carolina State Bar Association and the Mecklenburg County Bar Association. She is also a member of the Bar in Washington, D.C. and Massachusetts, and is licensed to practice in all federal districts in North Carolina and before the Supreme Court of the United States.
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Using Chat GPT in Criminal Cases - Writing Better Prompts
Want a motion written in plain language but grounded in Tennessee case law? Need a summary of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence with primary and secondary citations? This is where you learn how to get that—on demand, and with far less editing. This training is designed specifically for attorneys—busy professionals who need fast, accurate, and case-relevant AI support. Whether you’re drafting motions, brainstorming legal strategy, summarizing complex case law, or preparing cross-examinations, the quality of your AI output comes down to one thing: how you ask for it.
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Alcohol, Blackouts and Consent in Sex Cases
This comprehensive training program provides defense attorneys with a rigorous, science-backed approach to dismantling prosecutorial narratives, exposing unreliable testimony, and ensuring that juries are properly educated on the complexities of memory, intoxication, and consent. You'll explores critical mistakes and misconceptions encountered in these cases, including errors in memory reconstruction after an event, incorrect inferences, cognitive schemas, suggestibility, contamination and misinformation, mistakes of fact and more.
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Overcoming the Presumption of Guilt and Defining Reasonable Doubt
Reasonable Doubt, what is it?
In order to win criminal cases, the defense practitioner must object to a reasonable doubt standard that lowers the burden of guilt. This program will discuss proven methods to argue and define reasonable doubt persuasively to a jury. You’ll learn how define reasonable doubt using metaphors and hypothetical scenarios that force juries to dispute the evidence, conflicts in the evidence, or even lack of evidence in your case.
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The DIY of DNA: Exoneration Through DNA Evidence
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AI Rising: Integrating & Fighting the Use of Artificial Intelligence
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A Defender's Guide to Federal Evidence - 2nd Edition
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