Making Sense of Science: Forensic Science, Technology & the Law (2025)
Online Version Order Here: Making Sense of Science: Forensic Science, Technology & the Law (2025) | NACDL CLE Catalog
CLE Credit: Up to 20 hours of self-study CLE credits. Please confirm with your state's CLE commission to ensure this program is available for self-study CLE certification.
Program Summary: NACDL’s 2025 Forensic Science, Technology & the Law Seminar is a comprehensive training program designed to help criminal defense lawyers understand, challenge, and effectively litigate forensic evidence in serious criminal cases. Featuring leading defense attorneys, scientists, forensic practitioners, and researchers, the program explores some of the most important forensic disciplines impacting modern criminal litigation, including DNA interpretation and transfer, fingerprint analysis, bloodstain pattern analysis, fire investigation, forensic pathology, shaken baby syndrome allegations, digital evidence, surveillance video analysis, forensic software, cognitive bias, cannabis science, and the use of experts in criminal cases. The program also examines emerging issues involving artificial intelligence, probabilistic genotyping, forensic decision-making, and the growing role of technology in criminal investigations.
The practical value of this seminar lies in its focus on helping defense lawyers identify weaknesses, limitations, bias, and overstatement in forensic evidence that is often presented to juries as infallible. Attorneys will learn how to effectively work with experts, challenge DNA and fingerprint conclusions, attack flawed fire investigations, expose cognitive bias in forensic laboratories, scrutinize surveillance video evidence, confront unreliable identification techniques, and evaluate complex scientific evidence through a defense-oriented lens. Whether handling homicide cases, sexual assault allegations, drug prosecutions, child abuse cases, arson investigations, or digital evidence litigation, lawyers will leave this program with practical strategies for cross-examination, expert consultation, motion practice, discovery review, and trial advocacy that can be immediately applied in active criminal cases.
Presentations Included:
Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) Track:
- The Future of Advocacy: Innovative AI Solutions for Criminal Defense Inside and Beyond the Courtroom – Patrick T. Barone
- AI: Artificial Intelligence Roadmap for Practicing Attorneys – Elizabeth Daniel Vasquez
- Challenging Automated Suspicion: Litigating 4th Amendment & Technology Issues – Maneka Sinha
- Cellular Location Data: How Did the Great Lie Get Accepted by the Courts? – Andrew Garrett
- Biometrics: Facial Recognition – Sidney Thaxter
- Beating a Stacked Deck: Attacking Electronic Evidence in Digital Searches – Tim Zerillo
- Justice by Algorithm: AI, Bias, and Ethical Challenges – Prof. Sonia M. Gipson Rankin
- Electronic Data Recorders: The Value and How They are Misused – Daniel Billington
Forensic Science Track:
- How to Best Utilize (and Treat) Your Experts – Laura Schile, Christopher Angles, Tara Godoy, and Jonathan Laurans
- Your Case is Raining Gems: How to Impeach Deviations from the Standards of Evidence – Dr. Jennifer L. Johnson
- The Principles of Reliable Fire Investigation: Application of the Scientific Method to Forensic Investigations – Doug Carpenter
- Too Close for Comfort: AFIS Searches, Close Non-Matches, and Quality Assurance in Latent Print Comparisons – Heidi Eldridge
- STRmix – Elizabeth Daniel Vasquez
- Serology Testing and DNA Transfer: What the Lab Reports Really Mean – Lisa Desire
- The Science of Cannabis and THC – Daniel Mehler
- Bloodstain Pattern Analysis: Genuine or Junk? – Amy Santoro
- Challenging the "Science" of Shaken Baby Syndrome – Danica Rue
- Forensic Pathology: Determining Manner and Cause of Death – Dr. Martha Burt
- Forensic DNA Interpretation, Human Factors & Cognitive Bias: Improving the Practice Through a Systems Approach – Melissa Taylor
- Cognitive Bias in Forensic Science – Adele Quigley-McBride
- Let’s Go to the Tape: Science-Based Standards for Non-Eyewitness Identification in a Surveillance World – Kathy Pezdek and Tamar Lerer
- Do You Really See What You Think You Do? Visibility Analysis & Technological Advances – Daniel Billington
- Analyzing Authenticity: Decoding Video Evidence – Brian Cummings
- Challenging Carceral Forensic Software – Dr. Marc Canellas
Prices
- List Price $225.00
- Member Price $199.00