Professor Kate Mogulescu, an expert on gender issues in the criminal legal system and human trafficking, has joined the faculty and will lead a new clinic in criminal justice.
“I want to update the clinical model for criminal justice education,” said Mogulescu, who previously served as a supervising attorney in the Criminal Defense Practice at the Legal Aid Society.
Mogulescu believes the Law School is the ideal place to take on this endeavor because of its close relationships to the agencies, organizations, and stakeholders influencing the criminal justice system daily. She is excited to work with Brooklyn students, who are known for being motivated to do public interest work and to cultivate a deep understanding of their practice.
Mogulescu said that she always wanted to be a public defender. During college at SUNY Binghamton, she was an intern investigator at the Legal Aid Society, an experience that crystallized her interest in defense work. She attended law school at Yale with this goal in mind and joined Legal Aid as soon as she graduated. She served as a staff attorney for five years before taking leave to lead the criminal defense clinic at Pace University Law School for a year.
She went on to develop the Exploitation Intervention Project, to provide better representation for individuals in the criminal sex industry. The project focuses on learning from the clients and about their lives. It is now a fully functional, citywide unit of Legal Aid with eight team members, handling all prostitution cases, including non-sexual crimes fueled by tracking.