Righting Wrongs In January 2025, Cole created the Nebraska Innocence Clinic at the University of Nebraska College of Law. “I am most excited to support students as they navigate representing clients and to teach them that people caught up in the system are not merely names on a page, but real people with families and hopes and dreams,” she said. Renovation The clinic is the first of its kind in Nebraska; wrongful conviction cases were previously handled by the Midwest Innocence Project, a nonprofit based in Missouri. Rewarding Cole hadn’t planned on criminal work, but a class with BC Law Professor Michael Cassidy and her time in the BC Defenders clinic opened her eyes to what is now her dream career. “My clients and students are what keep me going,” she said. “Do what you love, because then the hard days are a bit easier.”
2019
Elizabeth Cole
Elizabeth Cole is the founding director of the Nebraska College of Law’s Innocence Clinic, which launched in January 2025. Previously, she was a clinical teaching fellow at the Michigan Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School.
