The Impact of Lived Experience on Defense Teams
This session will explore and discuss how legal defense teams for both criminal and family defense can better serve clients by taking a multi-disciplinary approach that includes team members with lived experience in the legal court system. The partnering of an attorney with a peer advocate can be a powerful method of providing more trauma-informed and client-centered advocacy whether a client is facing the loss of their children or their liberty. Modeling the teamwork of attorney and peer advocate, this attorney and parent advocate duo will share the challenges and changes made to the practice of family defense in Colorado. They will discuss opportunities to support clients in criminal cases as well, citing missed opportunities experienced when Ms. Doxtater was incarcerated, facing lengthy prison time as well as the loss of her parental rights.
Shawna Geiger
Director of Engagement
Colorado Office of Respondent Parents' Counsel
Shawna Mackey Geiger is the Director of Engagement for the Colorado Office of the Respondent Parents? Counsel. Her focus is on supporting and improving family defenders in Colorado and around the country, as well as working to improve and abolish the family policing system. Before moving to ORPC she was the Director of Training for the Office of the Federal Public Defender in Denver and was previously the Training Director for the Colorado Office of Alternate Defense Counsel. Prior to her role as a trainer, Ms. Geiger represented clients as a public defender as well as in private practice where she focused on indigent criminal and juvenile defense.? Ms. Geiger teaches trial advocacy, storytelling, persuasion, leadership, trauma-informed practice, equity and diversity training, and client communication skills across the country. She also serves on the Board of Regents of the National Criminal Defense College. Shawna works with national defender organizations to ensure that family defenders advocate in an anti-racist manner and are consistently working to create equity for clients with disabilities and those of the LGBTQ and BIPOC communities.
