Over the last five years, Jordan Balk Schaer (he/they) has built a practice of analyzing granular data published by the United States Sentencing Commission. For Jordan’s clients, the results have meant receiving prison sentences reduced by months, years, or even decades below the sentencing recommendations sought by federal prosecutors, probation officers, and the Sentencing Guidelines. Recognizing that no client and no case is ever the exact same, Jordan personalizes each analysis to find the best, most useful information for federal criminal defense attorneys to present to sentencing courts.

After all, federal sentencing law instructs judges to consider how courts sentence people situated similarly to the person before them. Jordan is one of a small handful of people in this country who can truly answer that question by looking at data on every single person sentenced in federal court.

Jordan started doing this work when he was a paralegal at the Federal Public Defender in Oakland, CA. Jordan combines his education in computer science and sociology with federal criminal legal experience from working at the Federal Public Defender. Jordan is passionate about helping people going through the criminal legal system.