Lindsey Lawson has almost ten years of experience as a criminal defense attorney where she observed first-hand the inequities and systematic racism underpinning the criminal legal system. A desire to help identify strategies to dismantle oppressive systems led Lindsey to leave the practice of law. Lindsey’s primary expertise is in criminal legal reform and drug policy and she has worked with a number of national advocacy organizations and advised state and federal legislators on their policy positions.

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Lindsey is licensed to practice in Virginia and Washington, DC and has taught for the Fairfax Bar Annual Criminal Law CLE on available sentencing options for court-involved youth in Fairfax County Juvenile & Domestic Relations Court. She initiated and facilitated implementation of police training on youth development in Fairfax County, Virginia and was a volunteer for the Northern Virginia Legal Services Education Law Program, representing youth in special education proceedings and school discipline hearings.  She also served as a volunteer at Northern Virginia Legal Services Consumer Law Clinic, Landlord/Tenant Clinic, and provided uncontested divorces. In 2016, Lindsey was selected as a Raben Group Justice Policy Network Fellow, where she deepened her knowledge and expanded her network in the movements to end over-policing, the drug war, and mass incarceration.

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In 2005, Lindsey obtained her law degree, attending law school at night at Catholic University of America, while working full time. While in law school, she was elected as the Evening Law Student Association as Mentor Coordinator and served as a staff member to The Journal of Contemporary Health Law and Policy. She was selected as a Summer Honors Intern within the Family Division in the New York City Law Department.  In 1998, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from The George Washington University, which she attended as a student-athlete on a swimming scholarship. 

 

After college and during law school, Lindsey was a juvenile probation officer in both Montgomery County, Maryland and Fairfax County, Virginia where she observed disparities in treatment and outcomes for youth of color, supported by systems and structures, which led to her questioning narratives she’d been taught about equality and opportunity for all. 

 

Lindsey is a founding member of Racial Justice Alexandria, a collective of individual activists and groups acting to implement the Movement for Black Lives policy platform in Alexandria, Virginia where she lives with her husband, son, and their dog. Lindsey most recently volunteered with the City of Alexandria’s Equal Justice Initiative Community Remembrance Project to obtain their memorial from the National Museum for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama documenting racial terror lynchings that occurred in Alexandria to ensure the history of racial terrorism is not forgotten. Lindsey hails from the south, with deep familial ties in Florida and Alabama, and hopes to connect her policy and volunteer efforts in and around Washington, DC to the south and across the country.