NATIONAL CRIMINAL DEFENSE COLLEGE FACULTY
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Connor Barusch
Trial Attorney & Training Attorney; Committee for Public Counsel Services
Biography
Connor Barusch (“Barusch”) (he/they) joined CPCS, the Massachusetts Public Defender, in 2011, working as a trial attorney in several different neighborhoods in Boston at the District Court and Superior Court levels. In 2018, he rotated into the Training Department. During law school, Barusch co-founded and worked at a free legal clinic called Massachusetts Transgender Legal Advocates. Before joining CPCS, they worked as a law clerk at the Massachusetts Appeals Court and as an associate at Kauffman Crozier LLP, an LGBT family law firm. Barusch loves trying cases, cooking, running and playing board games.
Barusch became interested in public defender work after witnessing and beginning to understand the impact of mass incarceration on queer people, especially queer people of color. As a white person, Barusch believes that white public defenders should take on a special role in combating racism against our clients as well as standing in solidarity with our public defender colleagues of color. He is constantly on a journey of learning to hold himself and other white public defenders accountable for the mistakes we make in our jobs and in our lives related to racism and would love to have conversations with the NCDC community about what accountability and solidarity should look like.
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Recent Teaching History
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Jeff Chapdelaine
Attorney at Law
Biography
Jeff Chapdelaine, JD, LICSW is an Attorney, Forensic Social Worker, and Forensic Drama Therapist based in Boston Massachusetts. He represents clients in both criminal and plaintiff’s civil cases. He consults nationally on plaintiff’s civil cases and on cases where people are accused of committing crime, working with lawyers and on trial strategy, jury selection and trauma informed client focused case preparation. His consulting company trains both lawyers and mental health professionals on areas where legal systems and mental health systems intersect.
He serves on the Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) Criminal Curriculum Advisory Committee and as faculty locally for MCLE and Committee for Public Counsel Service, and nationally for the National Criminal Defense College in Macon Georgia, the Trial Lawyers College in Dubois Wyoming, several state systems and at other training programs.
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Recent Teaching History
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Paul Rudof
Partner, Elkins, Auer, Rudof, & Schiff
Biography
PAUL RUDOF is a partner at the law firm of Elkins, Auer, Rudof, & Schiff in Northampton, MA. Before entering private practice, he worked for 18 years as a public defender at the Committee for Public Counsel Services, first in the Essex County office, then in the Criminal Defense Training Unit, and finally as the state-wide Public Defender Co-Counsel. Since 2006, Paul has been on the faculty at the National Criminal Defense College, and has lectured on criminal law, forensics, and trial skills for defender organizations throughout the country.
A 1999 graduate of the University of Utah College of Law, Paul spent a year as a law clerk for the Honorable Michael Murphy of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit before joining CPCS. He earned his B.A. from Brown University in 1993, where he majored in both Political Science and Judaic Studies.
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Recent Teaching History