Giving a voice to the youngest clients
Decades ago, as a student in UB’s Special Education Law Clinic, Judith M. Gerber ’84 stepped into the world of children’s law. She has been an impassioned voice for children and youth ever since. Now, as chief attorney for the Attorneys for Children Unit at the Legal Aid Bureau of Buffalo, Gerber cultivates the next generation of children’s lawyers.
Gerber leads a team of lawyers and social workers who stand side by side with children, from newborn to 21, facing trauma, adversity and disruption. Together, they navigate the child welfare, juvenile justice, education and related systems. “Even at a young age,” Gerber reflects, “children are experts in their own lives. We are privileged to build relationships with them, to hear their stories and to bring their voices to the fore.” Sometimes, she observes, “a small step taken on a child’s behalf can change their entire life trajectory.”
Along with that, she says, is the responsibility to build relationships with their young clients, connections that may continue for years or even decades as they grow and navigate their situations. And the lawyer’s role as wise counsel often comes into play. “There’s a very strong component of providing advice and counsel, and sometimes we have to use our judgment,” Gerber says. “But nothing we do is in a bubble. There are caseworkers and counselors and therapists and educators. That’s the holistic element of the process.”
The role builds on experience in children’s legal work that began early in her career. After years practicing special education law – including a stint early on teaching the law school clinic at UB – in 2002, Gerber spearheaded an initiative for the New York State Permanent Judicial Commission on Justice for Children, addressing the educational needs of children in foster care. She crisscrossed the State, training judges, lawyers, professionals and families.
“Their lives are so disrupted with the trauma of moving into foster care, and their schooling is disrupted, too,” she says. “They often lose their family, their friends, their teachers, their community. And so, part of the policy work was seeking ways to ensure that children could have some continuity.” Complicating the picture is the persistence of systemic racism, poverty and, for many children, developmental disabilities.
The experience, she says, “gave me the opportunity to study, understand, write and train on issues of the educational needs of children who were court-involved. I had an understanding on a policy level and a practical level of how to really affect the success and trajectory of children.”
After a period as legal counsel to the Buffalo Public Schools and as a consultant on education policy and training in the Amherst schools, she joined the Legal Aid Bureau in 2009 and launched its Education Advocacy Program, which is now integral to its representation of children.
Her current position carries a broad portfolio. Gerber manages four administrators and more than two dozen lawyers, social workers, child advocates, support staff and interns. She also represents the Legal Aid Bureau in wider initiatives to improve children’s legal representation and reform the child welfare and justice systems, both statewide and in Erie County.
As chief attorney, Gerber has embraced the evolution of practice in children’s legal services, including such ideas as restorative justice, trauma-informed practice, and an increasing focus on preserving family structures. “The perspective has evolved,” she says. “My first introduction to this work was to see the degree of disruption and trauma that children endured. I’ve put a lot of work into not just what an advocate can do, but what courts, judges and attorneys can do to adjust their own practices and take account of this trauma in the needs of children.”
Throughout, she has had to strike a balance between the needs of the hundreds of children whom the Attorneys for Children unit represents, and the larger ways in which the justice and child welfare systems can be changed to make life better for so many children. Her work on the broader issues, she says, has been satisfying—and it was recognized recently when the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Children and the Law presented her with the Howard A. Levine Award for Excellence in Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare. The honor recognizes individuals who have “done outstanding work to improve New York’s child welfare and juvenile justice systems.”
“I tell our lawyers,” Gerber says, “how lucky we are to know, when we lay our heads on our pillows at night, that we have made a difference in even one child’s life.”