Ron Tyler is a Professor of Law and Director of the Criminal Defense Clinic at Stanford Law School. The Clinic represents clients in state and federal court in California. Prof. Tyler’s scholarly agenda focuses on self-care skills for lawyers and criminal practice and procedure. He is the co-author with Ingrid Eagly and George Fisher of Criminal Practice: A Handbook for New Advocates, St. Paul, MN: Foundation Press, 2021. He is also the author of The First Thing We Do, Let’s Heal All the Law Students: Incorporating Self-Care Into A Criminal Defense Clinic, 21 Berkeley J. Crim. L. 1 (2016).

Professor Tyler is also active in the nonprofit arena, serving on the Executive Committee of the National Board of Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union, as Board Chair of the National Criminal Defense College, and on the Executive Committee of the GRIP Training Institute, an organization that provides emotional intelligence training to men and women in California prisons.

Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty, Professor Tyler was an Assistant Federal Public Defender for 22 years in the Northern District of California. A dedicated defense attorney and nationally recognized expert, he has litigated at trial and appellate courts covering the full gamut of federal criminal cases. He teaches regularly at seminars for criminal defense attorneys, investigators and paralegals. He is also active in several nonprofits, serving on the Executive Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Board of Regents of the National Criminal Defense College and the William A. Ingram Inn of the American Inns of Court.

Professor Tyler received his BS in computer science and engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981 and had a brief career in high tech before changing his focus to public interest advocacy. He began law school as a Tony Patiño Fellow at Hastings College of the Law and earned his JD from UC Berkeley School of Law in 1989, where he served as notes and comments editor on the Ecology Law Quarterly. After law school, he clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel.