The Edward P. Swyer Justice Center
50th Anniversary Celebration

Wednesday, March 19, 2025
5:30 p.m.
Albany Law School
80 New Scotland Ave., Albany, NY 12208
 

Join us to celebrate 50 years of clinical legal experience at Albany Law School!

Rachel Rossi, the most recent Director of the Office for Access to Justice, from the United States Department of Justice will be delivering a keynote address, and our community members will be reviewing highlights from the past 50 years of the Justice Center and Clinics. A celebratory reception will follow. 

We invite the Albany Law School students, faculty, and staff, alumni, clients, and community members to celebrate the incredible work, impact, and history of the Justice Center. 
 

About Rachel Rossi

Rachel Rossi most recently served as Director of the Office for Access to Justice at the U.S. Department of Justice from May 2022 to January 2025.

Prior to that, Rossi served as Deputy Associate Attorney General in the Office of the Associate Attorney General, Vanita Gupta. In that role, she also served as the inaugural Anti-Hate Coordinator for the Justice Department.
 

Rossi began her career as a public defender in Los Angeles, where she served for almost a decade. She practiced in the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office, the Los Angeles County Alternate Public Defender’s Office, and the Federal Public Defender’s Office for the Central District of California, where she vigorously defended thousands of low-income clients in state and federal courts. 

Rossi then served as Counsel to Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Richard J. Durbin, where she was the lead staffer on the First Step Act, a major U.S. federal criminal justice reform bill signed into law in 2018 that created comprehensive sentencing and prison reforms. She then transitioned to the role of Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, working for then Crime Subcommittee Chair Karen Bass.

In 2020, Rossi was the first former public defender to run for the nonpartisan seat of District Attorney of Los Angeles County, where she was only five points shy of qualifying for the runoff election, receiving almost half a million votes. She then served as the Legal Director for the REFORM Alliance, a nonprofit organization focused on reforming probation, parole, supervised release, and community supervision.

Rossi received her law degree from Pepperdine University School of Law.  She grew up in Los Angeles, California, and is the daughter of immigrant parents born in the Dominican Republic and Greece.

 

About The Edward P. Swyer Justice Center

The Edward P. Swyer Justice Center at Albany Law School combines theory and practice and acts as an in-house public interest law firm, providing free legal services to eligible clients in the Capital Region.

In a typical academic year, The Justice Center recruits more than 200 students for clinic projects, representing hundreds of clients and assisting many more individuals and organizations through technical assistance and community education activities.

The Justice Center at Albany Law School's mission is to provide high quality legal representation and to teach students to be skilled professionals who practice law with compassion and sensitivity to individual client needs. Click here to learn more. 

Thank you to our sponsors!