Jill Goldsmith
Lecturer
Jill Goldsmith is a writer and producer for television, with credits on Emmy-winning series including ABC’s NYPD Blue, The Practice and Boston Legal, Fox’s Ally McBeal and NBC’s Law & Order, as well as TNT’s Rizzoli & Isles, and was a finalist for the Humanitas Prize, for an episode of Boston Legal. She was previously a showrunner and executive producer for a one-hour drama in development at BET and has sold pilots to ABC, NBC and Universal. She has also been a featured speaker at numerous conferences and writing programs, and has appeared as a panelist on C-Span Close Up, CBS News and CNN.
A contributing author to the book Lawyers in Your Living Room! Law on Television (American Bar Association, 2009), Goldsmith wrote the chapter “Writing for Television: From Courtroom to Writer’s Room.”
Prior to writing for television, she spent seven years as a public defender in the Juvenile and Felony Trial divisions of the Cook County Public Defender’s Office in Chicago, Illinois, where she represented indigent clients in all aspects of felony cases, from arraignment through sentencing.
Goldsmith received her M.F.A. in screenwriting from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. She received her J.D. from Washington University School of Law and served an internship with U.S. Senator Paul Simon on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
