A Familiar Face: Amy Hsieh ’11 Takes Helm of Public Service Law Center

Newly appointed Public Service Law Center Executive Director Amy Hsieh ’11 first joined Brooklyn Law School in the spring of 2023. Photo credit: Conor Sullivan 

 

When Public Service Law Center Executive Director Amy Hsieh ’11 was working at Sanctuary for Families, she regularly partnered with Brooklyn Law School on pro bono opportunities for students who would be paired with supervising attorneys and given a chance to work with the organization’s clients. 

But a year and a half ago, the opportunity that Hsieh was discussing was not for a student but for herself, and she made the decision to return to her alma mater in a new career role.  

“Brooklyn Law School was always on my mind, and after I left Sanctuary for Families, I learned about the Director of Community Engagement position at the Public Service Law Center that was open in the spring of 2023,” Hsieh recalled. After learning more about the role from Danielle Sorken, who previously held the position of Public Service Law Center Executive Director, Hsieh realized it was a great fit for her. The hiring team agreed.  

This fall, Hsieh moved up to the role of Public Service Law Center Executive Director herself. She is also an Adjunct Professor, teaching the Health Law Practice and Policy Externship Seminar. Her return to the Law School is the latest move in a distinguished career devoted to public interest and focused on serving marginalized individuals.  

After receiving her J.D. from Brooklyn Law School, Hsieh was the first graduate to be awarded the Georgetown Law School’s Women's Law and Public Policy Fellowship, where she split her time between two organizations: the International Community of Women Living with HIV (ICW) and the American Bar Association’s Center for Human Rights. Hsieh subsequently worked as a consultant with a variety of global health organizations focused on advocating for the rights of people living with HIV. She then joined Sanctuary for Families and developed a niche in assisting foreign-born survivors of trafficking and other forms of gender-based violence. 

“Sanctuary for Families was looking for attorneys who could connect with Mandarin-speaking clients who had been through difficult situations, but primarily those who had been trafficked. I conducted legal screenings to determine whether people experienced trafficking or not, and then provided immigration legal services and victim witness advocacy support as well,” Hsieh said.  

Hsieh described the assignment as “serendipitous.” Originally from Taiwan and raised in New York, she studied Chinese language and culture as part of her undergraduate degree in East Asian Studies. Her clients were from East Asia, mostly China, and Hsieh’s ability to speak Mandarin and her familiarity with their cultural lens proved an asset both for the clients and the attorneys that she supervised and trained. She is now recognized for her work in the field by journalists who reach out to her as an expert in immigrant trafficking. “My personal, academic, and professional experiences prepared me to serve my clients effectively in that moment,” Hsieh said.  

In her new position at the Law School, Hsieh is working to grow the Public Service Law Center (PSLC), which shares space at 250 Joralemon with the Career Development Center, into a hub for public service life at Brooklyn Law School that serves students, the Law School community, and the broader community in Brooklyn and New York City. The PSLC seeks to catalyze social change by empowering students to become effective legal advocates for underserved communities and the public good, fostering partnerships with public sector organizations, supporting innovative programs that prepares students to address pressing legal issues in the community, cultivating a vibrant public service community within the law school and beyond, and supporting pipeline development for future lawyers.  

Programming for public service careers includes counseling and workshops to prepare for Brooklyn Law School’s career fair and other larger public service and public interest recruiting events that are now held virtually, where students from multiple law schools meet with more than 300 public service organizations seeking students to fill summer positions.  

“The public service recruiting timeline is more spread out as compared to the private sector. Perhaps in response to changes in the private sector, public sector employers are also trying to speed up recruiting,” Hsieh said. The challenge for students seeking public sector work is that nonprofits tend not to have large hiring budgets, there are fewer entry level positions, and often their hiring timetables do not align well with when students are seeking positions. Hsieh says the PSLC works to expand the list of public service organizations seeking to employ Brooklyn Law School students.  

The PSLC also works closely with student fellows in the Edward V. Sparer Public Interest Law Fellowship program (Hsieh was a Sparer fellow herself), which prepares students to work in the social justice field.  Students also visit Hsieh and her team to take on some 20-plus pro bono project opportunities, which offers an important opportunity to complete the 50-hours of pro bono work required for admission to the New York State Bar.  

Another key program the PSLC oversees is Pro Bono Scholars Program, through which students in their final year at the Law School devote their last semester to providing pro bono legal services to low-income individuals through an approved externship program, law school clinic, legal services provider, law firm, or corporation. Hsieh met many law students who hoped to go into public service and chose to work with Sanctuary for Families, her former employer.  

“It was always great to be able to work with them that closely, and the Scholars were able to take on full cases with my supervision,” Hsieh said. “It’s a great program.”