Michelle Alexander was born in Illinois. She graduated from Stanford Law School and Vanderbilt University. Following law school, she clerked for Justice Harry A. Blackmun on the United States Supreme Court, and for Chief Judge Abner Mikva on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She joined the firm of Saperstein, Goldstein, Demchak & Baller, where she specialized in plaintiff-side class action suits alleging race and gender discrimination. She was a member of the Stanford Law School faculty, where she served as Director of the Civil Rights Clinic. In 2005, she was a Soros Justice Fellow. She currently holds a joint appointment at the Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in Columbus, Ohio. Her first book, The New Jim Crow was published in 2010.