January 2026

As an advocate for youth, developing trust and rapport with young clients is often the cornerstone of a good working relationship. Establishing this trust has been its own learning process as I learn to navigate building that trust with youth that have had and continue to experience trauma related to abuses of law and power. As a new attorney, I’ve been learning to weigh what this role means in the eyes of others and how I can show up in this role to mitigate some of the wariness that accompanies client interactions. A recurring example of this dynamic emerges when asking clients to sign a release of information (ROI).

Requesting an ROI from a client is both a typical and routine practice of legal advocacy, as lawyers often face the need to request private documents related to the client for their case. However, in working with youth I have come across resistance and hesitation from youth to sign ROIs; reluctant to sign over a broad power to an attorney. On my part, this has presented an opportunity to reflect on my position and on how I want to approach my work as an advocate. On one hand, an ROI allows me to access the documents needed for my client in a timely manner and best support their case. On the other hand, I understand that their hesitation often stems from lived experience where youth have been coerced into signing away rights and privileges. This understanding informs my own desire to support my young clients in exercising their rights and refusing to agree to external control of their information.

One such result of navigating both interests is learning how to function on a different timeline, one directed in large part by the trust built and gained with my client. This can be difficult when working with fixed deadlines and upcoming court dates. However, as I position myself as an advocate against systems of oppression, I am also committed to recognizing and reevaluating how my actions risk replicating oppressive structures or can help forge better practices. By speaking with the young person and acting according to their concerns, I’m learning to participate in the creation of the latter.

For youth involved in the juvenile adjudication system, the attorney-client relationship is one among many. Other relationships can include relationships with probation officers, support services providers, educators, therapists, and more. The previously discussed difficulty with trust extends to these relationships as well. Moreover, the success of the providers in gaining and keeping the trust of the youth they work with often has a direct impact on the ability of the young person to make progress on court-imposed goals and milestones. As an advocate working in the young person’s best interest, part of my advocacy involves investigating when these relationships break down – especially when the rupture devolves into a break in services for my client.

One way in which this breakdown occurs is over differing understandings of the support needed. What a young person identifies as support or which type of support they prioritize may differ from the provider’s own understanding. While this difference can ensue for a variety of reasons, attorney interventions consistently involve listening to the young person and ensuring that the provider is giving the client’s concerns their appropriate weight. In the other direction, it can also mean talking to the young person from the position of trusted individual and explaining the provider’s perspective. Where trust is lacking between a client and provider, the trust between the young person and myself as counsel allows me to step in and help bridge that gap in communication when possible. As I continue my advocacy in the service of children and young people, I aspire to keep building out my ability to strengthen relationships built on trust with my clients and continue to assist and intercede on their behalf when trust is not present in other relationships.

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December 2025

With the new year on the horizon, my recent advocacy in juvenile court has been characterized by a renewed focus on the theme of new beginnings. While far too many youth will spend the holiday season in detention, our team has experienced a succession of wins, including having a client released from detention back to her family and a number of dismissals from probation. The dismissals from probation recognize a youth’s successful completion of their probation program and represent, at least in theory, the moment for unsupervised re-entry for the youth involved. While dismissal marks a major accomplishment for a youth, what post-dismissal life can look like highlights different levels of systemic vulnerability between clients. Post-dismissal can mean differences between clients insofar as their ability to re-enroll back in school, their ability to continue access to necessary support, and differences in their ability to re-engage back in the communities they had been separated from while detained or placed on probation. In short, the immediate period following dismissal often reflects a continued need for support.

With eligible transition age youth (TAY) – youth between the ages of 18 to 25 – this need for continued support is provided by an extension of aid known as AB 12 extended foster care status. AB 12 programming refers to an extended foster care status whereby a youth 18 years or older that has at some point been deemed a ward of the state and is then dismissed from probation is rendered eligible to receive aid until they age out of the AB 12 program upon their 21st birthday. To remain eligible for AB 12, a young adult dismissed from probation must work, be enrolled in an educational or vocational program, or be too disabled to satisfy either of the previously mentioned requirements. AB 12 recognizes that young adults often need sustained access to services as they work to build stability and further their own goals and dreams. By providing youth with housing, stipends, job-training programs, and counseling, AB 12 status can weave a safety net for youth who would not otherwise have access to this type of assistance.

Working in youth justice with Education Defense and Justice for Youth (EDJY) at EBCLC, my supervisor and I have been building out an AB 12 practice through which we can represent youth post-dismissal and help them obtain and remain eligible for AB 12 benefits. Our AB 12 practice represents our vision for holistic advocacy, where we aim to follow a client through as many stages of their progress through the juvenile system as a client may need. What this presently translates into is an introduction to a juvenile case at some stage prior to dismissal, seeing them through dismissal of probation, representing them to maintain their AB 12 benefits, and then eventually assisting in the sealing of their juvenile records. One key benefit of accompanying a transitional age youth through these various stages is the opportunity to build strong rapport with the youth and become deeply familiar with their case and their needs. In particular, increased rapport also lends to us learning our own client’s strengths vis-a-vis their advocacy needs. Within EDJY, and EBCLC more broadly, we hold the conviction that our clients are the masters of their stories. As a result, as I get to know my clients, I begin to think about how best to ensure that the client’s voice is the one that gets heard in court, whether it is through a written motion, a petition by advocates, or the client speaking directly. The more that the voices of those that have lived through the juvenile justice system are heard by and incorporated into the decisions that come out of it, the greater chance there is that the decisions rendered therein approximate a better justice.

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November 2025

While the first month of the fellowship was a whirlwind experience, by this report I am feeling more settled into the different components of youth justice and education defense. Among the uplifting experiences that have transpired are included my passing the California Bar Exam, winning a first Manifestation Determination Review (MDR) hearing, and kick starting a meaningful collaboration with the Alameda Public Defender’s office to serve youth eligible to receive AB12 benefits, in addition to celebrating the Education Defense and Justice for Youth’s (EDJY) 10-year anniversary of its founding.

At the 10-year celebration I was able to meet Felicia Lewinstein, whose son, Brian Lewinstein’s untimely passing led to the creation of the generous 2-year Brian Lewinstein fellowship that funds my work and has funded the work of fellows before me. Felicia and I spoke about Brian’s love for EDJY and how Brian had felt that by doing work in education defense and youth justice, he had found the work that he had gone to law school to do. Our conversation invoked the concept of legacy, of what it means for one’s work to have an impact and what that impact means for those who continue the work after us. In the week after meeting Felicia, the concept of legacy has arisen, at least conceptually, in both education defense and youth justice work.

In my education defense work, when advocating during the creation or renegotiation of an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) or at a MDR hearing, the results of both processes create legacies for the student, their school and school district, and the advocacy teams as attorneys. IEP meetings involve working with school administrators and the student’s teachers to determine what accommodations and services will allow the student to succeed when they are struggling. Within EDJY, we advocate for aid to be comprehensive and work to uplift the student’s voice – what they feel they need and what type of help they would like to receive. While school administrators and teachers contribute their input as educators, the EDJY team centers the client, working to ensure that the legacy of the IEP or MDR meeting includes an empowering of the student, where they can take away from the experience the feeling that they were able to speak to their needs and have advocates that reflected that.

In youth defense work, our work with record sealing and helping youth obtain AB12 benefits invokes an evolution of what the client is taking from their past and bringing into their future. Youth that have been caught within the juvenile justice system frequently have very different profiles. However, as with most transition age youth in early adulthood, assistance (housing, education, medical) is often necessary for a smooth transition into stability and safety. AB12 benefits provide a necessary bridge for justice impacted youth, as they navigate the end of their probation and work to build up solid foundations for themselves. For one client, this includes sealing his juvenile records. Having a juvenile record can impact the ability of a person to obtain employment that involves licensing by a licensing board and can have a stigmatizing effect. Along with this concern, the client was also concerned about the legacy he was leaving to his young children. Becoming a parent and wanting to ensure that his children enjoy stability and security were strong motivators for his desire to get his records sealed. How the system responds to individuals like this client and how we as advocates work to provide aid and guidance leaves a legacy of its own. One that can mean more love, safety, and care for the youth that are routinely tasked with being the sole creators of a new way for them to interact and survive within our community.

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October 2025

It has been just over a month since I began my fellowship with the Education Defense and Justice for Youth (EDJY) unit at East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC). Already, the impact of my colleagues’ work and the avenues for my own add-in have become clear. From a high-level view, the work EDJY engages in responds to the unforgiving existence of the school-to-prison pipeline. The young students facing school push-out are also targets of over-surveillance by law enforcement and often have less access to resources and support. It is unsurprising then that instances of kids and youth facing school discipline also frequently coincide with those same students’ capture by the juvenile justice system.

One powerful aspect of advocacy in this practice is the use of language. Having previously worked in criminal defense in the adult system, I am familiar with the various ways in which language is used to dehumanize the people being adjudicated. This past month, I have witnessed how particular language has been used to either highlight or obscure the youth we represent and to shape how their lives and actions are represented and perceived.

For example, the adultification of young people in the juvenile system is one well-documented instance of language misuse. At stakeholder meetings, I’ve heard officials skew upwards the average ages of the young people in detention, only to be corrected by the subsequent interventions of others. I’ve also heard people describe the young people in their care by their height and make statements about “violent nature” of the young people in detention. Importantly, this language was not used in a manner that was case-specific but rather offered as a general description of young people in detention. These descriptions mirror those heard in the adult criminal adjudication system and serve to portray youth as “criminals,” a description that negates the young person’s humanity and obscures the fact that the people described are children and minors, people with particular needs and subject to particular vulnerabilities. In turn, I have also heard my colleagues and other advocates use language that centers our clients as kids and young people, using language to provide our clients with the ability to tell their stories.

The use of language in this manner is also a powerful advocacy tool in the education defense setting. Throughout this month, I learned from colleagues that skillfully change the tone of conversations determining expulsion eligibility into conversations that use tone and language to reflect the parties’ intentions to provide the best outcome of the student. The use of language in this way creates a space to work on collaborative solutions instead of devolving into adversarial condemnation that only serves to both push students out from school and recast their needs and conduct as criminal adjacent.

As I begin taking on a greater role as an advocate, I look forward to putting into practice the people-centered language and holistic advocacy that I’ve been learning from my EDJY colleagues and ensure that those I represent can safely obtain aid.