Milinda Kakani is a Lecturer in Law at UCLA School of Law and will teach Trial Advocacy. She is currently the Director of Youth Justice at Children’s Defense Fund – CA where much of her work is focused on dismantling the juvenile probation system in Los Angeles County and building out an alternative rooted in youth development and transformative justice. Before joining CDF-CA, Milinda was a supervising attorney for Public Counsel’s Transition Age Youth Project. In that capacity, she represented system-involved youth, supervised a team of attorneys and social workers, and supported coalition work addressing the collateral consequences that come from having contact with the family regulation and juvenile court systems. Prior to that, she worked in the Bronx Defenders’ Family Defense Practice for seven years as a staff attorney and a supervising attorney, where she represented parents dealing with allegations of abuse and neglect, supervised a team of criminal and family defense attorneys and worked to address the disproportionate representation of minorities in the family regulation system. Before law school, Milinda was a member of the New York Teaching Fellows Program and spent two years teaching 6th graders at P.S./M.S. 4 in the Bronx.

Milinda received her B.S. from University of California, Berkeley and her J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.