NAPD 2024 Women's Virtual Conference

As the days get shorter and the nights get longer, the coming winter is our time to store up energy for new growth. Join us for this hour of breath and relaxation with some measured, conscious breathing, some affirmations, the support of our group, and a loosely guided, loving-kindness Metta meditation to close out our time together.

Sometimes, a deep breath can make a big difference. This defense work is heavy, personal, and vitally important to the promise of liberty and justice for all. Sometimes and/or always, it is hard to see that we are doing vital work regardless of the outcomes. We work so hard to convince the system that our clients are real human beings. Here, we can remember: So are we!

Let’s slow it down, ease up, take a moment away from the grind, and rest a bit. No winter lasts forever; no spring skips a turn.

This session will highlight how African American women law professors are leveraging their scholarship and teaching to drive social and legal reform, with a particular focus on criminal justice and public policy. Panelists will discuss how their research influences public policy and how their advocacy efforts bridge the gap between academic work and on-the-ground public defense. They describe how they strive to mentor the next generation of law students toward public interest and social justice careers. Attendees will better understand how these trailblazing professors are shaping legal change inside and outside the classroom to advance equity and justice.

Hundreds of jail calls dumped right before trial. More and more body cameras in each case. Digital discovery often holds critical pieces of evidence that change the course of the case, but requires hours of searching for the "needle in the haystack" moments.

The Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy recently rolled out a new software platform called JusticeText to automatically transcribe their voluminous discovery. In this discussion, you will hear from an attorney who has incorporated this AI tool in her workflow to save hours reviewing body-worn camera footage and securing fairer outcomes for her clients. This session will help you maximize the utility of video evidence while minimizing the workload burden to you and your team.

Can’t wait until the session? Learn more about JusticeText, the UChicago school-project built specifically for public defenders here: https://justicetext.com/

Remember the days when we were raised to believe that self-care was selfish? We were to take care of everyone before ourselves. Well, it's time to rewrite that narrative and liberate ourselves from the burdens we've carried for far too long. As women who chose to make a difference in the world, we dedicated ourselves to public defender offices, civil rights law offices, and non-profit organizations. Our caseloads grew, our hours stretched, and our hearts poured into nurturing our clients in addition to handling their legal affairs. Add in volunteer work, family responsibilities, and the weight of secondary trauma, and it's no wonder we neglected our own well-being.

But here's the empowering truth: it doesn't have to be this way anymore. It's time to reclaim our own lives, starting now, so we can live the exciting and healthy dream retirement we've worked tirelessly to achieve.

In this transformative workshop, we will unlock The 5 Secrets To Taking Time to Nourish You. Armed with these powerful insights, we'll create personalized plans to heal and nurture our minds and bodies, ensuring that we prioritize ourselves along the way. And guess what? It doesn't require huge chunks of time. Just eighteen minutes of yoga and five minutes of meditation, five days a week, can work wonders for our strength and flexibility.

But it doesn't stop there. We'll learn to make room for self-care by identifying what we can let go of in our busy lives, allowing us to put ourselves first without guilt or hesitation. And once we've carved out that sacred time, we'll discover invaluable strategies to protect it fiercely, ensuring that nothing and no one stands in the way of our well-being.

Now, let's talk about the results we'll achieve together:

💜 Less stress: Say goodbye to the heavy weight on your shoulders.

💜 Better sleep: Restful nights and energized mornings await you.

💜 Weight loss: Shed the extra pounds that have held you back for too long.

💜 Better control over chronic illnesses: Reclaim your health and vitality.

💜 Feeling rejuvenated instead of exhausted: Embrace a renewed sense of energy and purpose.

💜 Focused and present: Live fully in the here and now.

💜 Strength and flexibility: Both in body and in mind, you'll grow stronger and more resilient.

💜 Living that exciting and healthy dream retirement: Embrace the vibrant, fulfilling life you've always imagined.

It's time to break free from the habit of self-neglect. Together, we'll embark on a journey of self-discovery, empowerment, and transformation. Let's take the leap and create a future where self-care is not only a priority but a non-negotiable part of our lives. Your well-being matters. Join us on this incredible adventure and let's rewrite our story together.

Breast cancer affects one in three women, making it the second leading cause of death among women in the United States. We all know the statistics, but what happens when the diagnosis hits close to home?
As a seasoned investigator with nearly 20 years of experience, I never imagined I would become one of those statistics. But life has a way of surprising us. I am stepping out of my comfort zone to share my personal journey with breast cancer—a journey that’s been anything but ordinary. In fact, I like to say I’m the poster child for “If it can go wrong, it will go wrong.”
This experience has reshaped not only how I navigate my personal life but also how I approach my professional world. In this presentation, I’ll candidly discuss what it’s like to work in a traditionally male-dominated industry while battling a life-threatening illness. It’s a fight for survival, yes, but also a fight for respect, resilience, and the ability for women to unapologetically advocate for themselves.
I hope to inspire and empower others to navigate their own challenges—both personal and professional—while finding strength in the face of adversity. This isn’t just my story; it’s a call for all women to take charge of their health and their futures. Grab your coffee, put down the pen, and let's talk candidly about the realities of juggling the fight for your life while you fight for the lives of others.

Children occupy a unique position in our public systems. Once treated as miniature adults, our perception development has led, over time, to granting children leniency when determining the consequences of their behavior. The special legal status bestowed on youth, in particular, is based on a well-established understanding of children’s social and psychological development—that they should be held less responsible and culpable for their actions, and that they are capable, through the ongoing developmental process, of rehabilitation.3 These foundational legal and moral principles protect children from criminalization and extend safeguards that shield them from the harsh penalties levied on adults.

This session will explore the benefits of quality legal representation for children involved in child protection cases, optimal legal service delivery, the specialized needs of youth involved in public defense and child protection systems, the alignment and shared values of both systems and legal services funding opportunities.

What if all it took to prevent a capital murder was ONE person caring about the would-be offender?  This session aims to inform and inspire by presenting research from the field of capital litigation, showing that the difference between capital murderers and similarly situated individuals who did not kill is often just one person. A teacher. A coach. A family friend. A criminal defense attorney. Yes, YOU. You could be that person. Capital case mitigation files show time and again that capital defendants didn’t have a chance from the start—they come from broken homes marked by physical and sexual abuse that all too often qualify as “terrorization.” But when researchers look at siblings subject to the exact same conditions—siblings who showed sure signs of trauma but did not commit capital murder—the difference was often just one person who cared. What does it tell us that capital defendants often can’t point to a single person in their life who believed in them and treated them with kindness? And what are the lessons for criminal defense attorneys who come into contact with offenders at various points in their lives?  Answering these questions—and highlighting the critically important role that criminal defense attorneys play in serving the most vulnerable members of society—is the aim of this session.

This presentation will touch on legal developments across the country since the Supreme Court overturned the right to terminate a pregnancy in 2022 in the Dobbs decision. We will discuss constitutional protections for abortion rights, "shield" laws, health information privacy laws, travel bans, and their possible implications for criminal defense work.

In the wake of the Dobbs decision, there were many questions about what criminalization would look like. In the two plus years since, we’ve been able to see patterns and better understand how criminalization happens even as the laws continue to change. In this training, we’ll go over what If/When/How and the Repro Legal Defense Fund have seen in national trends and the tools the State has used to criminalize people, touch on how to use this information to inform best practices, and what resources are available in abortion and pregnancy criminalization cases.

The workshop will provide practical tools and insights to help women in public defense and their teams elevate their professional presence and impact. In this interactive session, participants will learn how to define and communicate their unique value, leverage their personal brand to advance their careers, and build influence within their organizations and the broader legal community.

Gail Brashear, Alyssa Knight, and Felicia Dixon are directly impacted women and will be speaking about the impact of prison on gender. The panel will be moderated by Attorney Anna Tolin, Gail's former boss.
The panel will feature a distinguished group of directly impacted women who have experienced firsthand the challenges of navigating the criminal justice system and the subsequent obstacles to employment and higher education.

Setting boundaries can be weaponized against us, suggesting we aren’t caring or not committed to the cause. The result? We may not set or enforce them. Not setting (or expressing) clear boundaries can mean we are bound to our work and not at our most effective, losing ourselves in the process. Boundary diffusion results in over-extending, over-doing, and saying ‘yes’ even when we won’t be doing our best work. Boundaries tell others how we want (expect) to be treated. They are part of self-advocacy, self-care, and listening to our inner selves. In this hour we will explore how we create boundaries, how to leave the guilt in the background, and take care of ourselves while shaping the relationships we are in (and decrease anxiety, worry, and workaholism in the process).

For the last several decades, women’s incarceration has boomed, growing at a rate double that of men. There is an urgency right now to understand the pathways to women’s incarceration, including their criminalization for acts taken in response to gender-based violence (GBV.) There is also a vibrant new movement to rectify the injustice faced by many of these prisoners, as evidenced through Second Chance and other laws.

This presentation will explore basic concepts related to criminalized survivors and their unique challenges in the criminal legal system. Topics will include, for example, social science findings relevant to defending criminalized survivors and their divergent responses to trauma and abuse; common misconceptions that interfere with identifying and effectively representing criminalized survivors; how defense teams can better identify survivor-defendants and communicate with them; systemic challenges present in cases involving criminalized survivors, such as gender bias, skepticism of accounts of abuse, and pervasive misconceptions about victims, their experiences, and the relevance of that information to the defense. This presentation will also discuss recent second chance laws and other potential avenues for relief.

"Attorneys now have 45 times more discovery material to review than they did in 2016…." -- Megan Ring, State Public Defender, CO (Colorado Sun, Feb 2024)

This overwhelming increase in discovery comes from the massive increase in digital evidence, including police dashboard and body camera footage, and is having an immense impact on public defense workloads.

This talk by Reduct Video explores how software and AI can help public defenders cut through the massive influx of body-worn camera footage, 911 calls, jail calls, interrogation recordings, and more, so you can hone in on relevant evidence. Fast, timestamped transcription, synced translations, and easy text-based video clipping for court are just a few of the tools that will be included in the demonstration. Reduct also allows you to simultaneously view multiple body-worn camera videos from the same event, enabling you to examine the evidence from all angles. Come chat about how your office is working through audio / video discovery, and see how software and AI can assist you with the process.

A discussion on the severe shortage of female attorneys practicing criminal defense in rural communities and steps being taken in Michigan to try to address this issue.

Healing justice has been described by Cara Page as “a framework that identifies how we can holistically respond to and intervene on generational trauma and violence and to bring collective practices that can impact and transform the consequences of oppression on our bodies, hearts and minds.” In this session, speakers—which include clinical law professors (criminal defense and immigrant rights), a movement lawyer with trauma expertise, and a social worker and restorative justice practitioner–will discuss experiences with incorporating the framework of healing justice into their practice with clients and the training of new lawyers.

By bringing healing justice into the practice of law, we seek to tap into the well-being and survival practices that have been handed down to us through generations, many by women, that are now being recognized as essential for those engaged in movements for transformative social change. We reject a “neutral” understanding of well-being and embrace one that explicitly works towards anti-subordination. In addition, we aim to shift understandings of trauma and harm from one that is personalized, inflicted primarily by private actors, to one that is more relational, collectivized, and historically informed, caused both by private and state actors. By centering processes grounded in community, our hope is to invite practitioners to feel more safely tapped in and connected to, rather than depleted, by their work.

When victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) are charged with crimes, their experiences of abuse may be directly relevant to their legal defense. For example, evidence of IPV may support a self-defense claim, a duress/coercion defense, refute prosecution arguments used to establish the elements of a crime or help explain a client’s seemingly confusing behavior, especially when it does not comport with what many believe is typical “victim” behavior. In cases such as these, expert testimony is often necessary to help jurors think past their own misconceptions about domestic violence and accurately evaluate the evidence presented at trial. This webinar will provide an overview of the use of expert testimony in cases involving criminalized survivors, including the fundamentals of "battered woman syndrome."

Disability justice represents a powerful paradigm shift in how we approach issues of accessibility and social change. Rather than viewing disability through a narrow, medical lens that seeks to "fix" or "normalize" bodies, disability justice activists are championing a more expansive, intersectional understanding of disability as a fundamental part of the human experience. They recognize that ableism, the systemic discrimination against disabled people, is deeply intertwined with other systems of oppression like racism, sexism, and classism. By centering the diverse lived experiences of disabled people across race, gender, class, and other identity lines, disability justice challenges us to grapple with the realities of bodily difference and limitations in all their complexity. This means moving beyond one-size-fits-all approaches to accessibility and instead cultivating mixed-ability organizing spaces and communities that foster genuine solidarity.