Kenneth P. Sherman

Kenneth P. Sherman has been a practicing child custody litigator in juvenile dependency cases for over thirty years. He was a UCLA undergraduate and received his Juris Doctor from Southwestern University School of Law. He is well known for his experience in juvenile dependency law and has earned a reputation as one of the most effective and zealous advocates in the juvenile dependency system in Los Angeles County.

Ken began his legal career in private practice, with an emphasis on family law and juvenile dependency litigation. In 1990, he joined the Children’s Law Center (CLC) of Los Angeles (formerly Dependency Court Legal Services) as a senior trial attorney, specializing in juvenile dependency cases. From 1997 to 2005 Ken was the Law Firm Director of one of the three independent law firms of the Children’s Law Center, supervising over fifty lawyers and staff and representing thousands of children in the juvenile dependency system. From 1999 to 2003 he was also the Co-Executive Director of the Children’s Law Center of Los Angeles. While at the Children’s Law Center, Ken was instrumental in substantially increasing the funding, personnel, and support services for abused and neglected children in the dependency system in Los Angeles County.

Ken has represented thousands of parents, relatives, foster parents, and children in the dependency system and authored numerous statutes, protecting the rights of pre-adoptive parents, the rights of siblings to grow up together, parents’ due process rights, and a child’s right to maintain the confidentiality of privileged communications.

While he was a Law Firm Director at CLC, Ken’s office was instrumental in shaping the law in the juvenile dependency arena, including the representation of the child in In Re Jesusa V., a landmark paternity action before the California Supreme Court. Ken was a founding member of the Los Angeles Affiliate of the National Association for Counsel for Children, participated on numerous policy committees of the Los Angeles Superior Court, Juvenile Division, was an Adjunct Professor and Director of the Legal Aid Clinic at the University of West Los Angeles School of Law for 20 years, and has lectured and presented at numerous conferences on Juvenile Dependency Law.