Meet Our Team

Professor Andrea McArdle takes an interdisciplinary approach to teaching and scholarship, holding law degrees, and a Ph.D. in American Studies. In addition to Lawyering, she teaches Land Use and Community Lawyering through an urban lens, Property, Real Estate Transactions, and seminars in judicial writing. Her published work focuses on urban land use and climate governance, pedagogy, and the intersection of law, narrative, and voice. In October 2017, she co-organized a conference at the Law School, Climate Change, Environmental Justice, and Urban Resilience: Incorporating Community Voices, that addressed community-based strategies in response to the impacts of climate injustice. Her urban scholarship has also studied the community impacts of policing, in co-edited books Uniform Behavior: Police Localism and National Politics and Zero Tolerance: Quality of Life and the New Police Brutality in New York City. Read Andrea McArdle's full bio.

Beena Ahmad ’10 (she/her) has been teaching with CUNY School of Law since Fall 2016. She has taught Lawyering, served as co-adviser to the CUNY Moot Court team, and worked with Pipeline to Justice. Her areas of interest include appellate advocacy, the criminal legal system, abolition, national security, policing and the surveillance state, and the First Amendment. She is a proud alumna of CUNY School of Law. View Beena Ahmad's full bio

Julia Hernandez ’12 is an Associate Professor of Law at the CUNY School of Law. Julia's practice has focused on representing parents, children, and families in child welfare and immigration proceedings. She also researches and writes about pedagogy and political lawyering. Prior to joining CUNY's faculty, Julia was an attorney with Brooklyn Defender Services' Family Defense Practice where she represented parents in child neglect and abuse proceedings. Julia also worked with non-citizens fighting deportation with Catholic Migration Services where she focused on representing youth. Julia also participates in the Community Legal Resource Network where she has collaborated with community-based organizations to provide legal workshops in the areas of Family and Immigration law. View Julia Hernandez's full bio.

Professor Lu teaches first-year Lawyering and is the Director of the Economic Justice Project. She earned her J.D. magna cum laude from NYU School of Law, where she was an Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Fellow and Articles Selection Editor for the NYU Review of Law and Social Change. Prior to joining CUNY School of Law, Professor Lu was Associate Director and Acting Assistant Professor of Lawyering at the NYU School of Law. She was formerly Staff Attorney at the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, where she handled class-action litigation and policy advocacy to expand access to public benefits; Katz Fellow and Counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, where she focused on criminal justice and child welfare reform; and Managing Law Clerk in the Chambers of the Honorable Kermit V. Lipez, U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Professor Lu earned her B.A. summa cum laude from Harvard/Radcliffe Colleges with a degree in Women’s Studies and holds an M.A. in English Literature/Critical Theory from Sussex University. Read Lynn D. Lu's full bio.

Sofia Yakren, Professor of Law, teaches Lawyering, Torts, and Disability Law. Professor Yakren received her B.A. from Yale College and her J.D. from Yale Law School. Prior to joining CUNY Law, she was on the faculty at American University Washington College of Law, teaching Disability Law, Mental Disability Law, and the Women and the Law Clinic, where her students represented clients facing a broad range of civil issues related to family law, public benefits, special education, and immigration. In her courses, Professor Yakren emphasized reflection, engaged client-centeredness, rigorous legal analysis, the reality and value of emotions in lawyering, and self-awareness/actualization. View Sofia Yakren's full bio.