Family Plan
3L Addie Gilson blends scholarship with hands-on advocacy
It was an eye-opening experience, she says — particularly seeing the experience of the parents.
“In my first week, I witnessed Child Protective Services remove a newborn child from her mother,” Gilson says. “Before that day, I had only ever thought of the child welfare system in terms of the injustices inflicted on children by their parents, not those imposed on families by the state.
“This new perspective captivated me.”
She spent the rest of the internship talking with parents as much as she could during home visits and outside courtrooms. Gilson began to understand how the legal standards for child neglect mapped neatly onto the conditions of poverty, then went back to Princeton and turned those conversations into her senior thesis.
In between classes and other activities, she drove to laundromats, soup kitchens, churches, and community centers scattered throughout New Jersey. It was slow work at first, and she wondered whether she could get a statistically significant sample size.
But she kept showing up to wherever the parents wanted to meet — in libraries, fast-food restaurants, or at home — for interviews that often lasted several hours.
After graduation, Gilson worked with a Princeton sociology professor and a graduate student to expand her thesis, ultimately conducting 81 interviews and analyzing over 5,400 pages of transcripts using qualitative data analysis software.
Their article, which explores how kin networks impact parents’ experiences in the child welfare system, was recently published in the Journal of Marriage and Family. It was no easy task for a full-time law student who also has dedicated a significant amount of time to the Family Defense Project — one of Berkeley Law’s 40 Student-Initiated Legal Services Projects — which advocates for low-income parents involved in, or at risk of becoming involved in, dependency court proceedings.
Gilson came out of Princeton thinking she’d pursue academia but was confronted with the sense that as much as she liked research and writing, she wanted a career that would bring her closer to the people whose voices she sought to uplift and defend. After falling in love with the East Bay while working at the Alameda County Public Defender’s Office, Berkeley Law’s robust public interest offerings made the school feel like a perfect fit.
Now, Gilson is planning for a career in public defense — ideally in both family and criminal defense.
“I’m beyond thrilled that Berkeley Law is continuing to make room for family defense,” she says. “This is an area of public interest law, beginning to gain national traction, that desperately needs committed, passionate advocates.”