Andrea Lubelfeld, Senior Staff Attorney at the James B. Moran Center for Youth Advocacy, represents our clients who have cases in Juvenile Court. She has over 20 years of practice as a criminal defense attorney. Prior to joining the Moran Center staff, Andrea served in the Juvenile, Felony Trial and Multiple Defendants Divisions of the Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender. Andrea received her law degree from the IIT Chicago Kent College of Law. She began her undergraduate education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and received her B.A. in Political Science from DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois.
If you ask Andrea about her job, she will tell you that it is multi-faceted. Among other things, her duties include meeting with clients for intake and follow-up, preparing court documents, collecting evidence, drafting and serving subpoenas, analyzing evidence, conducting legal research, working with our social work staff to coordinate services,and supervising volunteer attorneys and interns — all in a days work! She splits her time between working in the Moran Center office, arguing cases in court, visiting clients at their homes, schools, or detention centers, and representing the Moran Center at events and seminars throughout the Evanston and Chicagoland areas.
Andrea is very attuned to the needs of her clients, and is constantly thinking of ideas for new programs that would be beneficial to them. She has a great spirit of collaboration, both with her clients, their families, and other Moran Center staff members. Most of all, Andrea really cares about her clients. For her, the most rewarding part of her job is making a difference in the lives of young people. Andrea develops a level of trust with her clients, because they quickly learn that she truly cares about them on a personal level and is invested in their success. She isn’t one to sugarcoat the challenges of her job, however. “People are in a crisis and the odds are stacked against them,” she says. “The law isn’t fair, judges aren’t fair, and the state has a lot more advantages than the defense lawyers do. It is an uphill battle.” Still, Andrea is persistent, and her clients know that she will never give up on them. That is part of what makes her such a successful attorney.
When she is not at work at the Moran Center, Andrea enjoys spending time with her three children and her husband, who is also an attorney and professor at Northwestern University Law School. While she enjoys cooking and taking care of her family, she also likes to take a break from her busy schedule sometimes to knit or read a good book. In fact, Andrea is a member of a book club, started with a group of her friends when their children were very young. They continue to have book club meetings today, getting together in Chicago’s Greektown for delicious cuisine, literary discussion, and plenty of laughs!
