Bios of Contributing Authors

LibraryRepresenting Parents in Child Welfare Cases: Advice and Guidance for Family Defenders (ABA) (2015 Ed.)

Andrew Cohen has represented parents and children for the Committee for Public Counsel Services Children and Family Law (CAFL) Division since 1995. In his current position as CAFL Director of Appellate Panel, Mr. Cohen oversees the work of about 130 private child welfare appellate attorneys, helps to oversee the work of about eight hundred private child welfare trial attorneys, conducts trial and appellate trainings, and maintains a small trial and appellate caseload. He has argued many appeals before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and Appeals Court. He also regularly files amicus curiae briefs in child welfare matters on behalf of his agency. He has authored several articles and book chapters on evidence, parent representation, and child welfare trial and appellate practice. Mr. Cohen has lectured at the American Bar Association, the Massachusetts Bar Association, the National Center for Adoption Law & Policy, the International Commission on Couple and Family Relations, the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, and Harvard Law School. Before joining the CAFL Division, he worked for four years doing commercial and bankruptcy trial and appellate litigation and clerked for The Honorable Carolyn Dineen King of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Houston. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Mr. Cohen is a former chair of the Boston Bar Association Family Law Section and a former member of the Boston Bar Journal's board of editors. He currently serves on the steering committee for the American Bar Association's National Parents' Counsel Organization.

The Center for Family Representation was founded in 2002 in New York City to provide families in crisis with free legal representation and social work services to enable children to live with their parents safely. It is the major provider of legal services in New York and Queens County in New York City for indigent parents charged in Family Court with maltreating their children. Every CFR client works with a team of professionals comprised of a lawyer, a social worker, and a parent advocate—a trained professional who has experienced the child welfare system firsthand and has successfully reunited with her family. The team model ensures that families access services, get fair legal treatment, and are able to better take care of their children.

In addition to representing parents, Ms. Cortese served as a child's attorney for over a dozen years and has also represented foster care agencies in trial and appellate proceedings. She worked at the NYC Legal Aid Society Juvenile Rights Practice ("JRP"), as the Director of Professional Development, where she coordinated and conducted training citywide for attorney, social work, paralegal, and management staff. She also served as the Attorney-In-Charge of JRP's Manhattan trial office that represented 12,000 children annually in child protective, delinquency, and PINS proceedings. Ms. Cortese has been a member of the faculty of the Practicing Law Institute, the New York State Judicial Institute and the Child Welfare League of America, and has written for the American Bar Association's Center on Children and the Law. In May of 2010, Ms. Cortese received the Kathryn A. McDonald award from the New York City Bar Association for Excellence in Service to the Family Courts. Ms. Cortese is a graduate of Columbia University School of Law and Colgate University.

Richard Cozzola is the Director of the Children and Families Practice Group at LAF in Chicago, Illinois, the largest provider of legal services to the poor in Chicago. He has represented parents, adolescents and children, foster parents, and relatives in Juvenile Court matters for over thirty years. Mr. Cozzola joined LAF in 1997.

He has been a faculty member for trial skills programs for juvenile court practitioners sponsored by the...

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