Before he stepped foot into a law school classroom, Andrew Block spent his post-college years teaching in rural Kenya and taking troubled children out of locked facilities and into the wilderness of New Mexico and Utah.
Block said those experiences helped him understand how the community a child comes from affects how he is treated when he makes bad choices. His travels started him on the path to founding the Legal Aid Justice Center’s JustChildren Program and later becoming the director of the University of Virginia law school’s Child Advocacy Clinic.
Since the 1990s, Block has transformed from being a man interested in children’s rights and laws to a lawyer with a reputation for defending children. Jeffrey Aaron, a psychologist at the Commonwealth Center for Children & Adolescents with whom Block has worked, said Block is well-respected.
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“He is held in high esteem by a wide variety of people across the state and perhaps beyond who work on children’s issues and see him as a powerful, effective advocate for kids,” Aaron said. “He’s also known … to be a really nice guy, very genuine. He wouldn’t be doing what he’s doing if he didn’t care deeply.”
Block said his first job out of law school as a public defender in Seattle transitioned into a position with TeamChild, a youth advocacy program that joined civil legal aid lawyers with public defenders on juvenile cases to meet all of a child’s needs. He was drawn to Charlottesville after meeting his wife, Kelli, and had lunch with Legal Aid’s executive director, Alex R. Gulotta.
Gulotta said Block wanted to replicate TeamChild in Virginia. Funded by a fellowship, Block founded JustChildren at Legal Aid.
JustChildren, which provides free legal representation to low-income children, eventually expanded its role into advocating for local and state reforms in education, foster care and juvenile justice systems.
Block, a father of four, said growing JustChildren while raising a family was a challenge.
“My wife, Kelli, would half-jokingly say when we all started this is, JustChildren can’t be about just other people’s children,” Block said.
Gulotta said Block has accomplished much for children across Virginia.
“We don’t care for our children in the way we should,” Gulotta said. “We need strong advocates to stand up for them to give them a fair shot. That is who Andy Block is.”
Block has won a handful of awards, including the Virginia State Bar’s Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year in 2007 and the first Virginia Bar Association’s Robert F. Shepherd Jr. Award for excellence in child advocacy in 2009.
He announced in early 2010 that he was leaving his position at JustChildren for an expanded role with the UVa clinic. The Legal Aid program, which founded the clinic, works with clinic students.
The clinic has produced several current Legal Aid lawyers. Angela Ciolfi, a former clinic student who took over Block’s position as legal director of JustChildren, said she wasn’t ready for Block to leave JustChildren and is glad that he’s still close by.
Ciolfi said the disappointments that JustChildren’s attorneys have experienced during cases didn’t slow Block down.
“He never admits defeat,” Ciolfi said. “There is nothing too intractable or expensive to tackle. When most people would give up, he thinks, ‘I have to be more creative or work harder.’”
Block’s students have gotten a taste of what it means to represent a child. Kristin Weissinger, a third-year UVa law student who is in the Child Advocacy Clinic, said that a child’s lawyer usually enters the situation after the child has gotten in trouble and various adults have worked with him or weighed in on his situation. Weissinger said Block has helped her see herself as a lawyer who can break the other adults out of their routine in hopes of improving the situation for the child.
Not only is Block an effective teacher, Weissinger said, but he knows how to interact with clients.
“A lot of people talk down to kids and over kids’ heads,” she said. “He talks to them with respect and like kids at the same time.”