Making it Personal: Outstanding Young Lawyer Award Recipient Kiki Council Discusses Her Path to Reproductive Rights Activism
| Publication year | 2023 |
| Pages | 52 |
| Citation | Vol. 52 No. 2 Pg. 52 |
PROFILES IN SUCCESS
Making It Personal
Outstanding Young Lawyer Award Recipient Kiki Council Discusses Her Path to Reproductive Rights Activism
BY HALEY HEMEN
If there's one thing that Kiki Council, this year's Gary McPherson Outstanding Young Lawyer of the Year, knows, it's that networking is everything in the legal profession. "I love to tell law students that my journey to working in the reproductive justice space is a great example of the importance of maintaining professional networks," she says.
"In spring 2021, I was still litigating and trying to figure out how to springboard myself into the reproductive justice movement. A good friend from UChicago, Amanda Bennett, had been working in the movement for several years and was—and still is—working at an organization called the Digital Defense Fund, which provides digital security support for the abortion movement. Amanda reached out one day with a job posting for a staff attorney position at DDF's sister organization, the Forefront Project."
The position would be a stretch for Council, but she embraced it, confident she could get up to speed as she completely switched up her legal practice. The Forefront Project advises 501(c) (3) public charities that do reproductive rights, health, and justice work on how to remain (c) (3) compliant in their advocacy work, a radical departure from Council's employment litigation defense work, but this kind of advocacy work was something she felt called to do. So, she pushed ahead with what she wanted.
Council has since been able to leverage that experience into a new position at The Lawyering Project as Legal Counsel for Pro Bono Initiatives. The Lawyering Project works to eliminate laws that undermine reproductive rights, health, and justice that deprive people of moral agency and control over their bodies while compounding other forms of oppression, including racism, sexism, and poverty. She is currently working to
create a nationwide network of attorneys who are willing to provide pro bono legal services to the reproductive justice movement.
This attitude of forging ahead to follow not the easiest path, but the path that feels right, is much the same attitude that brought Council to law school in the first place. Although she knew lawyers from...
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