Francesca Acocella, J.D., M.S.W. is the Senior Director of Student Life and an adjunct professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Francesca is the immediate past Chair and current Professional Development chair of the NYC-area Well-Being Consortium, a group of law school staff and faculty focused on law student well-being.

Francesca is currently pursuing a PhD in Social Welfare at the Wurzweiler School of Social Work, where she plans to study law student mental health needs. Her clinical social work focuses on attorney and law student mental health and substance use, including as a counselor at the New York City Bar Association Lawyer Assistance Program. Her social work research, which she most recently presented at the prestigious Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR), explores vicarious trauma among lawyers. Francesca is also certified in mental health first aid. She is a frequent speaker on lawyer and law student mental health, including at the National Association of Law Student Affairs Professionals (NALSAP) and Institute for Well-Being in Law conferences. She was published in the AALS Student Services Section Publication “Insights from the Field” in 2023.

After graduating from Cardozo, Francesca clerked in New Jersey Superior Court, Family Division, Essex County. She was then a Staff Attorney at the Center for Family Representation, representing low-income parents with ACS involvement whose children were predominantly in foster care. Her work in law school focused on LGBTQ civil rights at Lambda Legal, the ACLU LGBT and HIV Project, the National LGBTQ Task Force, and the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund. In the Cardozo Civil Rights Clinic, she represented a transgender woman incarcerated in a men’s maximum security facility. While at Cardozo, Francesca was an active student leader and the recipient of numerous awards, including for service to the LGBTQ community, for a commitment to public interest work, and for significant contributions to the Cardozo community. Francesca was published in the Cardozo Journal of Public Law, Policy, and Ethics on family law protections for children in two-mother families.

Francesca has a B.A. in Political Science from Wellesley College, where she received the Woodrow Wilson Writing Prize in Political Theory, American Politics, and Law. While in college, she interned for the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, the National Women’s Law Center, and a member of Congress.