Advocacy comes in many forms
Nadia Mozaffar speaks to serving as an advocate in juvenile law
A version of this story first appeared in the Raise the Bar newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free by clicking here.
By Emily Kelchen | for Raise the Bar
As lawyers, it is our job to solve our clients’ problems. Which is always easier said than done, but becomes something of an impossibility when the law itself is the thing that is problematic. At Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, Senior Attorney Nadia Mozaffar runs into this issue on a daily basis. Raise the Bar sat down with Mozaffar to talk about the difference between advocating for one child vs. the well-being of every child. -Emily Kelchen
The org you work at was the first legal nonprofit to ever focus on the juvenile justice and child welfare systems, and its founders helped create the modern public interest law firm model. Tell us a little bit about how the work you do differs from what someone working at a more traditional law firm might do.
At Juvenile Law Center, our core purpose is ensuring that children, even those that get in trouble, are treated like children. Because kids’ brains are not fully developed—they are more immature, willing to take risks and susceptible to peer pressure—they are less culpable and should face different consequences and receive different support than an adult doing the same thing. For the past 50 years, we’ve been working to push the law in this direction through a combination of litigation and policy advocacy.
Even if you are in court, the advocacy you do must look a little bit different than that of someone working in a traditional firm, right?
I have found that all advocacy is rooted in relationship building. It only works when you advocate with the community that policies impact. It is imperative that I build strong relationships with youth, their families and their communities and allow them to lead and direct any advocacy that I do. Similarly, we gain credibility with law and policymakers by building relationships with them so they trust the stories and data we share. So while the work I do is different, I think this type of relationship building is at the core of all legal practice—building trustworthy relationships with your clients, opposing counsel, judges, etc. will always make you a better advocate whether you’re working on litigation, M&A or any other form of legal work.
What other legal skills do you think translate particularly well to the policy world?
The ability to plan ahead and see the bigger picture is a big one. In policy advocacy there’s rarely a set timeline or calendar like one would have with litigation. But there are always steps you can take to get feedback, brainstorm follow-up actions or educate others about what you are doing. Attorneys are good at proactively thinking through those next steps, and that makes us well-suited for advocacy work.
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Raise the Bar is curated and written by Emily Kelchen and edited by Bianca Prieto.