Biography
Lauren Shapiro is the Managing Director of the Family Defense Practice (FDP) at Brooklyn Defender Services. FDP represents over 4,000 parents and caretakers each year in Abuse and Neglect and related cases in Brooklyn Family Court. Ms. Shapiro oversees an interdisciplinary staff of over 90 attorneys, social workers and administrative staff and directs the litigation and policy activities of the practice. She founded the practice I 2007 as an office of Legal Services NYC – one of three offices funded by the City of New York. She moved the practice to Brooklyn Defender Services in 2013 where FDP clients receive comprehensive legal representation in all matters related to their family court cases, including criminal, education, housing, benefits and immigration matters.
Ms. Shapiro has devoted her legal career to representing clients in low income communities. After graduating from New York University School of Law in 1986, she worked at South Brooklyn Legal Services for over 20 years where she was founded and directed the HIV Project for seven years, one of the first in the country to represent low income people with HIV. She then directed the Family Law Unit for 10 years where she did domestic violence and child protective cases before starting the Brooklyn Family Defense Project.
Ms. Shapiro is the chair of the NYC Bar Association’s Council on Children. She formerly co-chaired the ASFA Task Force, a collaboration of child welfare advocates and agencies. Ms. Shapiro co-chaired the Kings County Family Court Domestic Violence Working Group for many years. She taught a civil externship class at Brooklyn Law School for six years, including a semester with the Kings County Family Justice Center which she helped found. Ms. Shapiro has published extensively on child welfare and family law, including Moving On: UCCJEA, The Hague Convention, and Relocation, Appellate Division First Department, Lawyer’s Manual on Domestic Violence, Fourth Edition (2005): Representing Domestic Violence Victims in Neglect Proceedings, Appellate Division First Department, Lawyer’s Manual on Domestic Violence, Third Edition (2000) and Co-author, Charging Battered Mothers with “Failure to Protect”: Still Blaming the Victim, Fordham Urban Law Journal, Vol. XXVII (February 2000).