About the Public Defender's Office

Keri Klein

Keri Klein has served as the Public Defender for Nevada County since February of 2016. Prior to that, she was the Assistant Public Defender for Nevada County. She joined the office in 2007, after spending several years as a deputy public defender in Yolo County. Before entering the field of indigent defense, Keri had a private criminal defense practice in San Francisco.
 
She graduated with her law degree and litigation certificate from Golden Gate University School of Law in 1995. She received her bachelor of arts degree from UC Irvine's School of Social Ecology in Law and Society in 1992.
 
In addition, Keri is an active member of several legal organizations including the California Public Defenders' Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, The National Association of Public Defenders, The National Legal Aid and Defense Association, Pacific Juvenile Defenders, and National Juvenile Defenders. She is a graduate of the Nevada County Community Leadership Institute and has received her credential from the California State Association of Counties (CSAC).

Keri gives continuing education seminars to lawyers on topics including plea negotiations and ethics.  She was also a faculty member for the California Public Defenders' Association Trial Skills Institute from 2005 through 2019.  She is a certified yoga instructor and through a collaboration with the Wayne Brown Correctional Institution, she is providing yoga classes to inmates.    
 
Work has been ongoing to modernize the Public Defender's Office through the use of technology, performance guidelines and the implementation of best practices. With the 2023 release of the National Public Defender Workload Study, it is clear that much still needs to be done and that the Nevada County Public Defender’s Office will continue to strive to overcome the hurdles placed before it.  Keri is proud of her staff and how they have embraced the idea of recidivism reduction through a client-centered approach of representation.
 
This approach combines aggressive advocacy in court with the acknowledgement that many poverty stricken people who are arrested and charged with crimes have other challenges with which they struggle, from housing, to addiction, to mental illness, to lack of employment, to under employment and lack of sufficient education. Keri and her staff support the idea that if they can start to address the underlying issues which drive people into the criminal justice system, they can obtain better case and life outcomes for their clients and their community.

 I grew to like to defend men and women charged with crime... I was dealing with life, with its hopes and fears, its aspirations and despairs. With me it was going to the foundation of motive and conduct and adjustments for human beings, instead of blindly talking of hatred and vengeance, and that subtle, indefinable quality that men call 'justice' and of which nothing really is known.

~ Clarence Darrow