Patricia “Patti” Lee leads our Defend division, which includes the Office’s core work in representing individual clients in adult, juvenile, immigration, post-conviction, and mental health cases. Patti is a native San Franciscan. She attended San Francisco public schools at Lafayette Elementary School, Presidio Middle School, where she was the second girl president of the school, and Washington High School. She received her B.A. at U.C. Berkeley and her JD at Lincoln Law School. Patti has been a powerful force in juvenile justice reform for over forty years. A tireless advocate for the fair and humane treatment of youth, Patti began representing young clients in 1981 and served as the Managing Attorney of our Youth Defender Unit, formerly our Juvenile Unit, for over 30 years, promoting and implementing innovative strategies to reduce juvenile incarceration. Patti changed the course of juvenile defense and under her leadership nearly eliminated state institutional commitments from San Francisco by developing and promoting the use of social work services and defense-based disposition reports to argue against correctional institutional commitments. Patti was also appointed to President Obama’s Science Advisory Board on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in 2017.
In recent years, Patti’s relentless leadership and advocacy were integral to the closure San Francisco’s Juvenile Hall. The Board of Supervisors voted 10-1 in favor of ending the long-time practice of detaining youth in cells, making San Francisco the first major city in the country to shut down a juvenile hall in an effort to eliminate the jailing of children. Patti has been a regional and national leader, serving as Co-Director of the Pacific Juvenile Defender Center, and on the Family and Law Advisory Committee of the Judicial Council, the Center for Families, Children and the Courts, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice. Patti is an active board member of the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice and of the East Bay Children’s Law Offices. For the past 8 years, Patti has performed a leadership role in organizing and facilitating quarterly meetings of California’s leading juvenile justice advocacy groups, which have resulted in the major policy initiatives that have substantially reduced California’s youth incarceration rate. Patti has received the San Francisco Modern Day Abolitionist Award for Outstanding Policy and Legal Achievements from the San Francisco Collaborative Against Human Trafficking, the Pacific Asian American Women Bay Area Coalition Woman Warrior Award for outstanding achievement in Law, the National Juvenile Defender Center Leadership Award for Excellence in Juvenile Defense, the Pacific Juvenile Defender of the Year Award, and the California Wellness Foundation Peace Prize Award for her commitment to preventing violence and promoting peace in communities.