CHANI KATZEN LAUFER, 33

BA ’96
Law Guardian,
Legal Aid Society

The children Chani Katzen Laufer protects by day sometimes haunt her dreams at night: the 5-year-old with permanent scars whipped into his back by his mother’s boyfriend, the 3-year-old found under a pile of garbage at his grandmother’s cockroach-infested home, the little ones being sexually abused by their own parents.

For Laufer, a law guardian for the nonprofit Legal Aid Society in New York City, each day brings a new unspeakable scenario where the abused and neglected victims become the clients whose interests she represents in family court.

“This job takes quite an emotional toll on me. These children are really suffering, and in the beginning I had nightmares,” she says. “At the same time, you can feel like you are saving these kids. Sometimes they are adopted by a good family. Most of the time, they are at least in a better situation.”

Laufer did not set out to become a lawyer. After earning an ad hoc bachelor’s degree in communications at Baruch, she served as a staffer for New York State Governor George Pataki and, later, Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind; as a production assistant at the CBS This Morning show; and as a reporter at both the Bergen Record (N.J.) and Philadelphia Inquirer newspapers. When she decided to pursue public-interest law, she attended Fordham Law School and graduated in 2004.

Laufer came from an Orthodox Jewish community in Rockland County, from a family that saw no need for a woman to earn a college degree. She says her professors at Baruch gave her the support she needed. “Baruch has wonderful, dedicated faculty members who understand that students have overcome a lot of odds to succeed,” she says. “It is a place with a lot of heart.”

—Bonnie Hede Striegel

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