About Mike
Mike Apsan-Orgera is a Fellow in the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization at Yale Law School, where he works with the Peter Gruber Challenging Mass Incarceration Clinic and the Criminal Justice Advocacy Clinic. His work focuses on systemic reform efforts aimed at combating mass incarceration and advancing criminal legal system equity.
Mike earned his J.D., summa cum laude, from Nova Southeastern University, Shepard Broad College of Law. During law school, he served on the Nova Law Review and received the Van Horn Group Pro Bono Award for his commitment to public interest work. He went on to complete an LL.M. in Criminal Justice at UCLA School of Law, where he earned distinction for his extensive pro bono contributions through the El Centro Legal Reentry Clinic and the Legal Veterans Clinic, assisting individuals in expunging criminal convictions and navigating the collateral consequences of justice involvement.
His prior legal experience includes externships with the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Los Angeles (Noncapital Habeas Unit), UCLA’s Prisoners’ Rights Clinic, and Nova’s Veterans Law Clinic and Disability Inclusion and Advocacy (DIAL) Law Clinic. He has also served as a law clerk at multiple firms and organizations, including Reid Levin, PLLC, Ramey Litigation Group APC, Apsan Law Offices, Philips Corp., and Avaya, Inc.
Mike’s scholarly interests lie at the intersection of wrongful conviction, bail reform, and preventive detention. His research focuses particularly on non-DNA exonerations of individuals who pleaded guilty to crimes they did not commit, and on how modern bail reform erodes the constitutional presumption of innocence by imposing pretrial preventive detention on legally presumed—and often factually innocent—individuals before trial.