Paula Mackin

Paula MackinPaula Mackin retired in 2010 from her solo practice based in Newton, Massachusetts.

Upon graduating from George Washington University Law School in 1974, Paula began her career in children’s civil rights. After starting out in the public sector for legal services in Connecticut, she returned to Boston and worked as a litigator in the Justice Department’s Juvenile Law Reform Project, based at Greater Boston Legal Services. In 1985 she entered private practice and in 1991 opened her solo practice, concentrating in adoption law.

Over the past 35 years, Paula has defended families threatened with state intervention, represented children with unmet special educational and mental health needs, defended several complex contested adoption disruption cases and counseled prospective adopters. In addition, she participated as plaintiff’s counsel in several groundbreaking class action cases in federal and state trial and appellate courts, including Lynch v. King in Massachusetts (the first case in the country establishing a child’s right to sue the state for failure to protect the child from harm) and P-1 v. Shedd in Connecticut (the first class action case brought under the then new federal special education law). For several years, Paula trained public sector attorneys across the country in federal class action litigation and trial strategy and jurisdictional issues and taught a course in education law as an Adjunct Professor at Boston College Graduate School of Education.

Paula has appeared on local and national television and has lectured and written on the unnecessary obstacles placed in the way of adoption.

As an Access to Justice Fellow, she will be working with the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to provide strategies to improve access to legal process and facilitate adoption of abused and neglected children by foster families.

2017 Update:

Paula Mackin (Class of 2013-2014) will continue to work with Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (MSPCC). MSPCC is a private, non-profit society dedicated to leadership in protecting and promoting the rights and well-being of children and families.

Over the past few years, Paula has drafted and worked toward passage of legislation promoted by MSPCC which clarifies and strengthens the right of foster parents to testify on behalf of the children in their care. Although both federal and state law promise “a right to be heard,” in practice foster parents are often prevented from testifying, thereby depriving the Court of critical evidence on the status of the child in legal proceedings to determine their placement. Paula also periodically trains groups of foster parents around the state on how to organize and prepare that testimony.