Hub Talks are designed to enrich the scholarly engagement of our faculty by focusing on a “slice of scholarship” while building community and promoting intellectual exchange with collaborative potential across disciplines and schools.

Julie E. McConnell is Director of the UR Children’s Defense Clinic. She has worked in juvenile justice for more than 25 years and specializes in holistic trauma-informed representation and client-centered practice. She and her students represent disadvantaged youth and adults originally sentenced as children. In 2021, her students earned early release for five clients who had served more than 25 years in prison. McConnell is co-editor of the book Juvenile Law and Practice in Virginia and consults as a juvenile legal system expert in Virginia criminal cases and with the International Institute of Justice and the Rule of Law in Valetta, Malta. McConnell is currently Chair of the VA Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice and Prevention and the VA Bar Association Commission on the Needs of Children.

Faculty Hub Talk: Bridging the Justice Gap through the University of Richmond Children’s Defense Clinic