Schafran to receive ABA's Sharon L. Corbitt Award

 The American Bar Association Commission on Domestic & Sexual Violence has selected attorney Lynn Hecht Schafran as the recipient of the 2014 Sharon L. Corbitt Award.


The ABA Commission on Domestic & Sexual Violence created this award in 2008 to recognize service by lawyers from all areas of practice, including non-profits, large firms, solo practitioners, corporate counsel, and judges who demonstrate exemplary service to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and/or stalking, in the spirit of Sharon L. Corbitt.

Corbitt was an active member of the American Bar Association for 25 years, serving as a member of the Commission on Domestic Violence from 2002-2005 after completing her term as chair of the Family Law Section. In honor of her exemplary professional and personal contributions to victims of domestic violence throughout her career, this award recognizes a lawyer each year that embodies her spirit and dedication.

Lynn Hecht Schafran, Esq. is an internationally recognized attorney specializing in gender discrimination and sexual assault law and director since 1981 of the National Judicial Education Program to Promote Equality for Women and Men in the Courts (NJEP), a project of Legal Momentum in cooperation with the National Association of Women Judges. She has designed and presented courses for numerous national, state and federal judicial colleges and developed several model judicial education curricula. Much of NJEP’s work focuses on adult victim sexual assault and the intersection of sexual assault and domestic violence.

Schafran is co-author of a two-day judicial education curriculum, Understanding Sexual Violence: The Judicial Response to Stranger and Nonstranger Rape and Sexual Assault, presented across the country, a four-hour DVD version of the curriculum, and a short DVD titled The Undetected Rapist, recently cited in Time magazine’s cover story on campus sexual assault. She is also co-author of an interactive web course, Intimate Partner Sexual Abuse: Adjudicating This Hidden Dimension of Domestic Violence Cases, available free at www.njep-ipsacourse.org. Her other educational publications and curricula, include Risk Assessment and Intimate Partner Sexual Abuse: The Hidden Dimension of Domestic Violence, Writing and Reading About Rape: A Primer, Judges Tell: What I Wish I Had Known Before I Presided in an Adult Victim Sexual Assault Case, and self-contained, on-line curricula on topics such as Elder Victims of Sexual Abuse, Women in Drug Treatment Courts: Sexual Abuse as the Underlying Problem, and Interpreters in Adult Victim Sexual Assault Cases, all available free at www.njep.org.

Schafran was an original member of and then special advisor to the ABA’s Commission on Women in the Profession, for which she is now a liaison and member of the editorial board of Perspectives, the Commission’s magazine. She is a member of the ABA Standing Committee on Armed Forces Law, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and a member of the American Law Institute. She served for six years on the ABA Standing Committee on Amicus Briefs, was a presidential appointee to the Defense Department Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS), and chaired the Committee on Sex and Law of the New York City Bar Association. She also served as vice chair and special counsel to the New York City Commission on the Status of Women and as a member of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation Advisory Committee on Justice.

Schafran’s work has been recognized with numerous awards including the Distinguished Service Award of the National Association of Women Judges, the Smith College Medal, the Columbia Law School Public Interest Achievement Award, the American Bar Association Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award, and the End Violence Against Women International (EVAW) Visionary Award.