Offit, Anna

Professor of Law

Representative Professional Activities and Achievements

Anna Offit writes and teaches about criminal law, evidence, juries, prosecutorial ethics, and empirical legal research. Her current scholarship examines trial strategy and the inclusivity of the criminal jury. Her articles have been published or are forthcoming in the Northwestern Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, Fordham Law Review, Washington Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, UC Davis Law Review, UC Irvine Law Review, and the Political and Legal Anthropology Review. She is also the author of a book, The Imagined Juror: How Hypothetical Juries Influence Federal Prosecutors (NYU Press, 2022). Offit's research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, U.S.-Norway Fulbright Foundation, Lois Roth Foundation, and Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies.

Offit has been the recipient of various awards for her teaching on criminal law, evidence, and criminal jury reform. These include the 2024-2025 Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Award (a SMU university-wide prize), the Don M. Smart Teaching Award (SMU law school's highest teaching honor) in 2023 and 2025, as well as the 2022 SMU Women in Law Distinguished Professor Award.

Offit received her JD from the Georgetown University Law Center where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics and as a law clerk at the Department of Justice’s Office for Civil Rights. She also holds a PhD in Anthropology from Princeton University.

Prior to joining the faculty at W&M, Offit served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at NYU Law School’s Civil Jury Project. She was also the recipient of a Fulbright grant to study the abolition of Norway’s jury system.