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Brooklyn Defender Services was founded in 1995 by Lisa Schreibersdorf, who envisioned a public defender office that would provide excellent legal services to people who could not afford to retain an attorney.

Ms. Schreibersdorf proposed to the City of New York that a new office, called Brooklyn Defender Services, be given a contract to represent 10,000 people who were arrested each year in Brooklyn. That contract was granted. Today, Brooklyn Defender Services represents 18,000 people each year and has represented over 160,000 people who found themselves in police custody.

Brooklyn Defender Services represents clients in a wide variety of cases, including serious felonies and misdemeanor cases as well as Family Court matters. Attorneys at Brooklyn Defender Services focus on the individual client's needs, addressing the case from the standpoint of how that case will affect the client's life.

Brooklyn Defender Services attorneys are highly skilled and dedicated. They are provided with excellent investigators to research the facts of a case, find witnesses, look into defenses and make sure that every client's case is fully explored from a factual standpoint. Attorneys obtain all documentation regarding a client's case. Conferences with clients yield information that is thoroughly investigated to protect the client from wrongful claims or exaggerated charges.

Attorneys at BDS are highly qualified and prepared to proceed to trial with their clients' cases. In situations where a trial is ill-advised, they work hard to achieve the best plea bargain for their clients. In many cases, they help clients address the underlying cause that brought them to the point of arrest, by placing them in drug treatment programs, mental health programs, youth programs and other alternatives to incarceration. BDS has a social worker on staff to assist in such placements and many clients' cases are sent to Drug Court or Mental Health Court.

Special care is taken to avoid negative consequences to clients, such as deportation, loss of housing, loss of employment and other indirect results of a criminal conviction.

In the 11 years since it was founded, Brooklyn Defender Services has achieved a national reputation among public defender offices for the excellent quality of advocacy the attorneys provide on behalf of their clients.

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