#055: Emily Dunlap - Attorney for Trafficked and Exploited Persons

In this episode I speak with Emily Dunlap who is a Senior Staff Attorney at Advocating Opportunity in Columbus, Ohio, an organization dedicated to providing comprehensive, holistic, trauma-responsive legal and support services to persons who have experienced sex and labor trafficking. In her practice she focuses specifically on immigration law, post-conviction relief, family law, housing issues, and other civil matters. She is also as an educational and organizational resource who conducts trainings on anti-human trafficking activities.  Emily started her career as a post-graduate Greif Fellow in Juvenile Human Trafficking at the Ohio State University College of Law from which she also holds her JD. Emily is also an alum of the Americorps Vista program and a graduate of Ohio University. In our conversation we discuss her path to the law and more specifically to working with trafficked individuals, connecting with and gaining trust from clients who have gone through challenging situations, the importance and centrality of trauma-responsive and narrative-based lawyering in her practice, the benefits of providing different types of legal services to a single client, ways to separate her work and personal life, and the importance of developing a professional network of people you can trust along the way. If you enjoy this episode, make sure to sign up for future episodes at www.howilawyer.com or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is sponsored, edited, and engineered by LawPods, a professional podcast production company for busy attorneys.