Faculty Directory & Profiles

Sarah Valentine, Interim Associate Academic Dean and Professor, earned her MLIS degree (1985) and JD degree (1989) at Florida State University. As an attorney, she practiced public interest law for ten years, including at MFY Legal Services in East Harlem and at Legal Aid for Rockland County. In 1996 she helped establish and became managing attorney of Legal Services of the Hudson Valley, a three county legal services office in up-state New York. Her practice has included family law, landlord tenant, government benefits, and juvenile delinquency. She currently presents and writes on the need to secure safe and ethical treatment of queer youth in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems and on the importance of teaching legal research as a both a legal and a lawyering skill. Her law review articles have appeared in such journals as the University of Baltimore Law Review, Michigan State Law Review, Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, the New York City Law Review, and Temple Law Review.

Prior to coming to CUNY, she was a law librarian at New York Law School where she helped develop the course "Legal Research for Legal Practitioners," an advanced legal research course aimed at students wishing to hone their legal research skills prior to graduation. She has presented research trainings to legal aid and other non-profit legal groups, conducted CLE trainings, presented at conferences both in the U.S. and South Africa, and worked with law students and practitioners in multiple settings, with the goal of improving legal research skills. She recognizes that legal research is an important skill for lawyers, like graduates of CUNY Law School, who believe in Law in the Service of Human Needs.