Assistant Professor of Legal Writing
Anjali Pathmanathan is an Assistant Professor of Legal Writing and currently teaches Legal Writing I and II. She joined the St. John’s Law School faculty in 2023 after working nearly ten years as a public interest attorney in New York. She spent most of that time as a public defender, beginning her career as a trial attorney for the Criminal Defense Practice of the Legal Aid Society and representing New Yorkers accused of misdemeanors and low-level felonies in Brooklyn.
From 2018 until joining the faculty, Professor Pathmanathan was an appellate defense attorney for the Center for Appellate Litigation. As senior appellate counsel, she represented individuals convicted of high-level felonies in Manhattan and the Bronx in all aspects of their direct appeals and post-conviction claims before the Appellate Division and New York's Supreme Courts. Professor Pathmanathan has argued more than 25 times before the First Department of the Appellate Division, and successfully achieved reversals, modifications, or sentence reductions for several of her clients.
Professor Pathmanathan also previously served as a program associate at the Vera Institute of Justice, and more recently as an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School where she co-taught Appellate Advocacy. Her work has been published in the International Criminal Law Review, The Harbinger by The N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change, and the New York Law Journal, and Professor Pathmanathan is looking forward to focusing her future scholarship on issues related to due process and the criminal legal system.