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Jean Koh Peters, a prominent children's advocate, will discuss how lawyers can break free from personal assumptions and biases to remain focused on and relate better to clients from vastly different cultural, socioeconomic, ethnic and racial backgrounds.

Peters, clinical professor of law and supervising attorney at the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization at Yale Law School, will outline five "habits" of cross-cultural lawyering at noon Wednesday, Nov. 6, in Rubloff 140, Northwestern University School of Law, 375 E. Chicago Ave.

Free and open to the public, the talk is sponsored by the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law as part of its 10th anniversary commemoration events.

Peters recommends that lawyers learn to think about how much they do not know about their clients before rushing to judgement and to brainstorm about alternative explanations for youngsters' puzzling or annoying behavior.

To heighten cultural understanding, she also advocates that children's lawyers take stock of differences and similarities between lawyer and client; chart cases to sort through the many dynamics affecting representation; identify faltering communications and learn how the clients' words and actions are actually intended; and review critical incidents of their own behavior to determine what factors predispose them to cultural misunderstanding.

A graduate of Harvard College and Law School, Peters is the author of "Representing Children in Child Protective Proceedings" (Lexis Law Publishing), which advocates representation for each child in his or her unique context. The text for law students nationwide, Peters' book cautions lawyers to guard against representing their own values, experiences and wishes, advising how to represent clients based upon a three-dimensional, textured understanding of the child's perception of her life and history.

Peters previously worked as associate director at the Child Advocacy Clinic of Columbia University School of Law and as attorney for the Juvenile Rights Division of the Legal Aid Society of New York.

(For more information call Toni Curtis at 312-503- 0396.)

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