A nationally renowned advocate for reform of the U.S. criminal justice system, Lawrence C. Marshall has been widely recognized for both his activism and teaching. As the director of Stanford's legal clinics, Professor Marshall has committed himself to creating an integrated clinical experience that serves the needs of each and every student at Stanford Law School. Much of his scholarly work has focused on issues surrounding the application of the death penalty.

Professor Marshall co-founded the world-renowned Center on Wrongful Convictions, for which he served as legal director and represented many wrongly convicted inmates, including a number of inmates who had at one time been sentenced to death. Before joining the Stanford faculty in 2005, Professor Marshall was a professor of law and legal director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law and of counsel at Mayer, Brown & Platt.

Early in his career, Professor Marshall clerked for Justice John Paul Stevens of the Supreme Court of the United States, and for Judge Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.