Lillian Chen represents students and families in the Bay Area to advocate for their right to special education, including when threatened with expulsion, as well as their right to an education free from harassment, discrimination, and bullying. Her mission is to empower young people and their caregivers to obtain justice from the institutions meant to serve them.
Her legal practice includes:
- Special education: eligibility, denial of services, representation at Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings, and filing due process complaints in the Office of Administrative Hearings.
- School-based harassment, discrimination, and bullying: advocating for school districts to investigate and address harassment, discrimination, and bullying based on race, gender, sexual orientation, and/or disability.
- Regional Center: eligibility, denial of services, representation at Individualized Service Plan (ISP) meetings and through the fair hearing process for clients with developmental and intellectual disabilities.
- Trainings, consultation, and data analysis: working with groups of young people and caregivers to train them on how to enforce their rights, requesting and analyzing data from school districts to be able to address patterns of discrimination, and providing community-based consultation in an effort to make the law accessible to all, especially communities historically marginalized by public institutions.
Prior to opening Chen Law Office, Ms. Chen was the Supervising Attorney of the Youth Justice Project at Bay Area Legal Aid, a nonprofit law firm. She previously worked as an attorney at Public Counsel Law Center’s Statewide Education Rights Project and as a policy fellow at the ACLU of Northern California.
You can reach Ms. Chen at (510) 671-5837 or LillianChenEsq@gmail.com.