Attorney Shannon L. Kennedy is a founding partner of the Kennedy Law Firm in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She works to protect the civil and constitutional rights of her clients, both representing clients unjustly criminally charged and clients seeking full compensation for their pain and suffering in their unlawful arrest, equal protection and personal injury suits. She also seeks on behalf of her clients injunctive relief and punitive damages to deter and prevent future acts of harm, discrimination, and governmental abuse.

In 1991, after receiving an honors degrees in International Studies and Spanish from the University of Oregon, Ms. Kennedy began law school in New York City. While attending CUNY School of Law, she worked in their nationally recognized public interest law clinic on behalf of battered immigrant woman and at the United Nations Human Rights Project on behalf of female victims of torture seeking political asylum. She was awarded a Revson Fellowship to work with a farm worker?s project in New Mexico and transferred into the University of New Mexico?s dual degree program in Latin American Studies and the law. After receiving her Masters in Latin American Studies and her JD, she took a position with the Alaska Public Defender where she was able to take numerous misdemeanor and felony matters to trial.
In 1994, she returned to New Mexico and began focusing her practice on representing adults and children in civil rights violations. Over the last eighteen years, in addition to her active trial practice, Ms. Kennedy teaches Continuing Legal Education classes for the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association, the Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, the American Civil Liberties Union of the New Mexico (ACLUL-NM) and courses on preventing restraint and excessive force in juvenile detention facilities.

Over the last eighteen years, in addition to her active trial practice, Ms. Kennedy teaches Continuing Legal Education classes for the Children?s Law Institute, the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association, the Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, the American Civil Liberties Union of the New Mexico (ACLUL-NM) and courses on preventing restraint and excessive force in juvenile detention facilities. Ms. Kennedy is currently focusing her practice in prosecuting claims on behalf of child and adult victims of sexual abuse, sexual molestation, and hazing by public employees in schools and residential treatment facilities. Ms. Kennedy prosecutes whistle-blower claims on behalf of public employees and claims of sexual abuse by pre-trial detainees by detention and police officers.

Additionally, the Kennedy Law Firm is prosecutes class actions claims on behalf of school and disabled children wrongfully handcuffed and restrained and on behalf of property owners whose money or homes have been forfeited without due process or in violation of the New Mexico forfeiture act.