SAMANTHA BUCKINGHAM is the director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic at the Center for Juvenile Law and Policy at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, CA. She teaches courses associated with the year-long live-client clinic and supervises students who represent juvenile clients in delinquency courts in Los Angeles.

Prior to joining the faculty at Loyola Law School in 2008, Buckingham advocated on behalf of indigent clients for five years as a trial attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. At PDS, she represented adults and children charged as adults in criminal court with serious felonies, including homicides. Prior to becoming a lawyer, she taught high school at the Maya Angelou School, a Washington D.C. charter high school for adjudicated and at-risk youth.

Buckingham trains public defenders nationally through her work with Gideon’s Promise, the National Juvenile Defender Center, and the Pacific Juvenile Defender Center. Buckingham serves as teaching faculty for Harvard Law School’s Trial Advocacy Workshop. Buckingham has written extensively on developmentally appropriate practices with young people in juvenile and criminal courts and has served as a court-appointed expert on mitigation. She has also advised and trained judges and prosecutors nationally on trauma-informed practices with youthful offenders.