Profile

Samantha C. Pownall ’11 ​directs the Education Law and Policy Institute and is the Program Director for the Wilf Impact Center for Public Interest Law. Professor Pownall teaches clinical legal and experiential learning courses at New York Law School, including the Education Law Clinic, Special Education Law and Practice, and Legal Practice. Her scholarship and instruction focus on education equity and access, state and local administrative procedures, youth advocacy campaigns, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and special education law, holistic client representation, juvenile justice, and constitutional and civil rights issues in public schools.

Professor Pownall began her legal career as an Equal Justice Works Fellow at the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), where she led a project that provided legal representation to low-income students who had been arrested or suspended from school, and published a report on stop-and-frisk and the school-to-prison pipeline in New York City. At the NYCLU, she also coordinated First Amendment protest monitoring, and advocated for reproductive freedom, sex education, marriage equality, and immigration reforms. She clerked for the Honorable Sterling Johnson Jr. in the Eastern District of New York and litigated special education cases as Of Counsel to an education law firm serving families in New York City.

Professor Pownall developed a passion for youth justice advocacy while a law student in New York Law School’s Civil Rights Clinic, as an affiliate of the Wilf Impact Center for Public Interest Law, and during her 1L summer at the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights in New Orleans. Before becoming a lawyer, she taught high school Spanish at Franklinton High School in Franklinton, North Carolina, through Teach for America. She also taught college access and leadership development classes for young people aged 12–21 at The Door and the Lower Manhattan Arts Academy in New York City.