Federal Sentencing, Prison, and Post-Conviction Law Firm

The Law Offices of Alan Ellis is a full-service criminal defense law firm representing federal criminal defendants and inmates throughout the United States and abroad. My clients face charges and indictment, conviction, sentencing and often prison. Since 94% of all federal criminal defendants will plead guilty and of the remaining 6% who go to trial as many as 75% will be convicted, 97% of all federal criminal defendants will be sentenced. Of these, 80% will go to prison.

Approximately one-third of my work comes to me from defense attorneys requesting my assistance on cases. Another one-third comes to me from clients, their family or friends who are currently represented by counsel. Many of these individuals are pleased with their attorneys and simply want me to consult with them to ensure a better result. Some, however, are concerned with the performance, ability or skills of their current attorney and want me either to consult with them or to actually take over their representation. The final third of my clientele comes to me directly.

With increasing frequency, I am being called upon to consult and assist earlier in the criminal defense process. This is due in no small part to the importance of plea bargaining and the significant recognition that planning and preparation for sentencing, prison placement, and post-conviction remedies must not be relegated to the post-verdict or part-plea stage of the proceedings.

Practice Areas

During their incarceration, inmates often want to be transferred to another prison facility. With the help of my federal prison consultant, I also attempt to help inmates achieve this goal.

Also while incarcerated, inmates may find themselves in trouble with Bureau of Prisons authorities. The firm counsels these individuals on how to avoid these problems [see article on "How to Do Time"] and when this is unavoidable, how to respond to charges that are brought against them.

From time to time inmates experience other problems such as medical issues which have not been adequately treated, sentence computation errors, halfway house placement, etc. The firm helps inmates with these problems.

According to Federal Lawyer magazine, Alan Ellis, the firm's founder, "is one of this country's pre-eminent criminal defense lawyers." The United State Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has called Mr. Ellis a "nationally-recognized expert in federal criminal sentencing." The San Francisco affiliate of ABC-TV has stated that he is "the best in the business." Verdict magazine quotes other legal commentators as saying that he is "the go-to guy in America if you're in deep trouble with the feds."

Our firm includes highly trained and experienced lawyers and criminal justice professionals including two mitigation specialists-one of whom is a former United States probation officer and the other a forensic psychiatric social worker-and two federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) prison consultants-one of whom is a former Regional Designator and the other a former Director of Health Services.

For additional information, please call me in my San Francisco, California office from the western United States at 415 380 2550 or my Philadelphia, Pennsylvania office at 610 658 2255 from the eastern United States or fill out our intake form on my Contact me page.