Clinical Associate Professor Mariam Hinds joined Fordham Law this fall, after spending two years at American University Washington College of Law as a practitioner-in-residence in the Criminal Justice Clinic working with the co-directors, veteran clinicians Binny Miller and Jenny Roberts. There, she shepherded law students who represented clients charged with misdemeanor offenses in Montgomery County District Court as well as clients seeking expungement of their records.
Hinds co-directs Fordham Law’s Criminal Defense Clinic—where law students represent clients charged with misdemeanors and also work in partnership with the Legal Aid Society’s Video Mitigation Project.
“For their video mitigation work, the students interview their clients to learn more about their lives and histories, conduct interviews of family members, friends, and community members who can provide vivid and detailed context to the clients’ narratives and develop persuasive mitigation videos that humanize the clients for the judge or prosecutor,” Hinds said.
Prior to working in academia, Hinds spent five and a half years representing clients in the Criminal Defense Practice at The Bronx Defenders, a nonprofit that provides legal services to low-income Bronx residents. That work inspired an article she wrote, “The Shadow Defendants,” which is forthcoming in the Georgetown Law Journal. She said the article is about “the labor women, particularly Black women and women of color, perform to support their loved ones in the criminal legal system.” She explained, “This article describes the legal mechanisms that extract these women’s labor and the consequences and penalties they suffer for its performance; how it impacts their time, economic and financial resources, privacy and liberty, mental and physical health, and their social relationships. It also weaves in a narrative of resistance describing the advocacy and policy work that shadow defendants have championed and led.”
Hinds, who grew up in Connecticut and has spent much of her professional life working in New York, said she jumped at the chance to work at Fordham Law, which she called “a phenomenal institution.” She said she’s seen law students mature after just one semester of clinic work, “In addition to learning specific legal principles, procedural rules, and fundamental lawyering skills, students also learn how to learn and reason like a lawyer.”
Hinds received her J.D. from Stanford Law School where she was the recipient of the Gerald Gunther Prize for outstanding performance in Constitutional Law: Fourteenth Amendment and the John H. Ely Prize for outstanding performance in Juvenile Justice and Social Policy. She holds a B.A. from Yale University where she graduated cum laude.
“During their time in the clinic, I hope students develop the foundational skills and techniques that they need to be zealous, ethical advocates and attorneys,” Hinds said. “But I also hope that they see how the law impacts people, including marginalized or vulnerable communities. And I hope that, throughout our semester together, students begin to build a vision of their own professional identities and practices that never loses sight of their capacity to confront and combat injustice in order to effect change.”