[4] He earned both his BA (1974, with distinction) and MA (1975) in political science from Stanford University and his JD from Harvard Law School in 1978.

His area of specialization was clinical legal practice, including "the role of public defenders in society.

;[9] Credibility in the Newsroom, Race to Execution, 2006; Beyond Black and White;[9] Liberty & Limits: Whose Law, Whose Order?

[9] Television programs he was a guest on include Nightline,[9] This Week with David Brinkley, McNeil-Lehrer News Hour, Crossfire, Today Show, Good Morning America, Larry King Live, Cochran and Company :Burden of Proof, Tavis Smiley, Frontline, America's Black Forum, and Meet the Press.

[9] He was a consultant to NBC news on the O. J. Simpson murder case, which he predicted would end in a "hung jury or an acquittal.

"[11] Ogletree contributed to periodicals such as New Crisis, Public Utilities Fortnightly, and Harvard Law Review.

[14] Ogletree also served as the moderator for a panel discussion on civil rights in baseball on March 28, 2008, that accompanied the second annual Major League Baseball civil rights exhibition game the following day between the New York Mets and the Chicago White Sox.

[16] Professor Ogletree later wrote a book about the events titled The Presumption of Guilt: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Race, Class and Crime in America.

[citation needed] In 2004, Harvard disciplined Ogletree for the plagiarism of six paragraphs from Yale scholar Jack Balkin's book, What Brown v. Board of Education Should Have Said in his own book, All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education.