Shannon Leap

Ms. Leap is entering her second year at Loyola Law School this fall.  Ms. Leap’s interest in issues affecting women and children started during her teenage years.  When Ms. Leap was 15, she began volunteering at the Curriculum Department of Homeboy Industries, where she helped coordinate classes for clients, including the “Homegirls,” many of whom are women of color, are mothers, and have had histories of substance use, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and sex work.  Ms. Leap built on the experience she obtained at Homeboy at Pitzer College, where she focused on issues affecting system-impacted women.  Then, even before law school, she interned at the Juvenile Innocence and Fair Sentencing Clinic at Loyola Law School’s Center for Juvenile Law and Policy, where she worked with incarcerated individuals who have been sentenced to very long prison terms for crimes that they were convicted of as juveniles.  This summer, Ms. Leap will be a Trial Unit law clerk with the Federal Public Defender for the Central District of California.   In the fall, Ms. Leap will become a certified law student in the Juvenile Innocence and Fair Sentencing Clinic, with the goal of being able to represent a female client at her 2020 parole hearing.