The Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs extends a warm welcome to Lia Monahon, a new Clinical Instructor at the Criminal Justice Institute (CJI).
Prior to joining CJI, Lia served as a superior court trial attorney with the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS), where she was the lead attorney in serious felony cases, and represented clients in all stages of criminal prosecution from arraignment through post-dispositional advocacy. For the past six years, she served on the advisory committee for the “Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth,” where she guided strategic coordination of multi-state legislative efforts with constitutional challenge to juvenile life without parole (LWOP) before the U.S. Supreme Court. Lia’s efforts were instrumental to the policy recommendations incorporated in Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court ruling in Diatchenko v. District Attorney for the Suffolk District.
She has previously served as a legal fellow for the Children’s Law Center of Massachusetts, a legal assistant for New York Legal Aid Society (Special Litigation’s Unit), and as a Law Clerk to the Honorable Kenneth M. Karas of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Lia graduated from Dartmouth with a B.A. in Women’s Studies, and a minor in African-American Studies (Cum Laude). She received her J.D. from Northwestern University School law (Cum Laude).