She is currently a clinical professor of law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and has been a major force in obtaining support for incarcerated individuals seeking post-conviction relief in Illinois.
Shobha Mahadev, a law professor, did not set out to be a lawyer. She aspired to be a scientist and spent her time at Berkeley as an environmental science major researching native grasses. But when a friend took the LSAT, she became interested in a legal career. So she relocated to Chicago and enrolled in Northwestern’s J.D. program, where she specialized in public interest law.
The American Bar Association (ABA) named the Indian American “Fearless Children’s Lawyer of the Month” this month. She is currently a clinical professor of law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law’s Children and Family Justice Center, assistant dean of the Bluhm Legal Clinic, and project director for the Illinois Coalition for the Fair Sentencing of Children.
According to the ABA, Mahadev has been a major force in obtaining support for incarcerated individuals seeking post-conviction relief in Illinois, which has resulted in many of those individuals returning home.
According to her ABA profile, her interest in juvenile defense began when she volunteered for a satellite juvenile justice clinic office during her first year as a law student. Angela Vigil, a current member of the Children’s Rights Litigation Committee (CRLC) Working Group, ran that clinic. .
In her third year, she joined Vigil’s juvenile justice clinic, which “formed the foundation for her future legal career,” according to the ABA.She worked for a law firm for the first three years after graduation, “seizing every opportunity to engage in pro bono criminal representation.””
She then worked for the Office of the State Appellate Defender (OSAD) for five years. She also collaborated with the Children and Family Justice Center (CFJC) on the creation of a handbook for juvenile court attorneys. She was eventually named coalition leader, “where she was charged with expanding the coalition to work with partners in the state and nationally to end juvenile life without parole,” according to the ABA. She worked hard to expand the coalition, which eventually included faith-based organizations, families, advocates, and pro bono attorneys.
According to her ABA profile, “she was determined to include the voices of families and people serving juvenile life without parole sentences in the state and helped the CFJC strategize on how to couple policy advocacy with litigation to bring the 103 individuals home.” These partners eventually formed their own advocacy groups, such as Communities and Relatives of Illinois Incarcerated Children and Restore Justice.
“I hope to continue this forward momentum by harnessing the power of the Illinois constitution and trying to dismantle the laws that put us in this position in the first place—laws that require the transfer of young people to adult criminal court and mandatory sentencing laws,” Mahadev told ABA.
