Leah Hill

Bio

Professor Hill's teaching areas include family law, poverty law, and clinical education, emphasizing interdisciplinary approaches to family law problems. Currently, Professor Hill directs the Family Advocacy Clinic, a fully integrated interdisciplinary education and practice clinic that allows students to serve parents seeking access to quality education for their disabled children. Previously, she served as Fordham Law's Associate Dean for Experiential Education. As Associate Dean, she led all the law school's experiential programs.

Professor Hill has served on the New York City Mayor's Children's Cabinet Advisory Board, the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) Clinical Section Executive Committee and co-chaired the Clinical Section's Committee on Lawyering in the Public Interest. In 2021, Professor Hill was appointed to the New York Governor's Blue Ribbon Commission on Forensic Custody Evaluations. Currently, she is a member of the New York Women's Foundation's Celebrating Women 2022 Breakfast Steering Committee and as a special advisor to the Scales of Justice Academy, a law school pipeline program serving NYC public high school girls. Professor Hill is the recipient of a Fulbright Teaching and Research Scholarship and the Mutual of America Community Partnership Award.

Before joining Fordham's faculty, Professor Hill spent a decade serving "in the trenches" advocating for marginalized Black and Brown communities. Her early work included defending parents fighting against the family regulation system, serving as one of the first staff attorneys in the Community Economic Development Program at Brooklyn Legal Services, Corporation A, and working on multiple reform efforts at the NY Legal Aid Society's law reform unit. Indeed, her research and advocacy continue to cover a wide range of issues affecting the lives of marginalized women and families, including racism and inequality, state-sanctioned family surveillance and regulation, education access, inequality, and access to justice.

Recent Publications and Media Appearances

• Saving Children from Fatal Beatings, New York Times Letter to the Editor, November 2, 2021
• School-to-Prison Pipeline, Black and Highly Dangerous, BhD Podcast, Episode 167, March 2021
• School Dress Codes Still Disproportionately Affect Black and Gender Non-Conforming Girls, Supermajority News, June 20, 2021
• Special Education Disparities Are Social Determinants of Health: A Role for Medical-Legal Partnerships, 14 Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education, and Action 251 (2020) (with Karen Bonuck, Ph.D.)
• Disturbing Disparities: Black Girls and the School-to-Prison Pipeline, Fordham Law Review Online, Vol. 87, Article 11 (2019)
• Loving Lessons: White Supremacy, Loving v. Virginia, and Disproportionality in the Child Welfare System, 86 Fordham L. Rev. 2727 (2018)

Education

• Professor Hill earned her J.D. from Rutgers University School of Law, Newark and her BA from Brooklyn College.