William Patton teaches U.S. Common Law & Analysis in the Two-Year Extended LLM program at USC Gould School of Law. He is also a professor emeritus at Whittier Law School, where he joined their faculty in 1984 after teaching several years at UCLA Law School. Patton’s primary research interest is at the intersection of juvenile law, ethics, and forensic child and adolescent psychiatry which he teaches at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry. He has testified as an expert witness, argued several cases in the California Supreme Court, authored many legislative analyses and testified often in various state legislatures regarding pending legislation involving the psychological and jurogenic effects of the legal system on children. Patton has published books with Cambridge University Press and LexisNexis and has published more than 45 law review articles that can be accessed at http://ssrn.com/author=625098.

Patton has advocated for children for more than thirty years. He started his legal career as a public defender where he represented children in juvenile delinquency, parental termination, and mental health cases. While at UCLA Law School he taught in the Child Abuse Clinic and supervised law students in representing clients in the child dependency courts. Patton is the Founding Director of the Whittier Law School Center for Children’s Rights, and he serves on the Board of Directors of the non-profit law firm, Los Angeles Dependency Attorneys.