Jessica Budnitz

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2002

Jessica Budnitz

Juvenile Justice Partners (now absorbed into the Child Advocacy Program (CAP) at Harvard Law School)

http://www.jjpartners.org

Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

Legal Advocacy

The Bold Idea:

Juvenile Justice Partners was a child-focused legal clinic which provided critical legal services to children in Cambridge, Massachusetts and trained the next generation of lawyers in child advocacy. JJP was rooted in the belief that every child deserves to be heard. The work of JJP has been incorporated into a new Child Advocacy Program (CAP) at Harvard Law School. CAP is committed to advancing children’s interests by facilitating productive interactions between academia and policy and practice. CAP trains Harvard Law School students to think strategically about social change and law reform, preparing them to be change agents in their future careers as child advocates.

Through CAP’s clinical program, students take what they learn in the classroom and bring it into the field, working for a spectrum of organizations. Some students directly represent individual child clients, others work to improve laws and policies impacting children; some students work inside the system (at state agencies charged with protecting children), while others use their legal skills to challenge the system from the outside.

Biography:

Jessica Budnitz is a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School & Administrative Director of the new Child Advocacy Program (CAP). Jessica used her 2002 Echoing Green Fellowship to found Juvenile Justice Partners (JJP), a child-focused legal clinic, which was absorbed into CAP when it was established in Fall 2004. Before founding JJP, Ms. Budnitz worked at the Civil Rights Project at Harvard Law School and the Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project at Boston College Law School. She served as a law clerk for the Trial Court of Massachusetts, Juvenile Division. She is the 2003 recipient of the Gary Bellow Public Service Award which is given to a Harvard Law School graduate for commitment to public interest work and an innovative approach to lawyering, and she is a 2004 recipient of the YWCA of Cambridge Award for Outstanding Women. Jessica serves as a Prelaw Residential Tutor in Leverett House at Harvard College. She is a 2001 graduate of Harvard Law School and a 1998 graduate of Duke University.