John H. Faricy Jr. Professorship for Empirical Research in the Law, Director, Clinical Education Program
Affiliated Professor, Institute to Transform Child Protection
Professor of Law
Professor Natalie Netzel serves as the director of clinical legal education, where she oversees Mitchell Hamline’s nationally recognized clinical program. Her teaching interests include criminal law, evidence, child welfare law, and resilient practice.
Her scholarly interests include trauma-informed lawyering, trauma-informed pedagogy, and law student and attorney mental health and well-being. She is involved with the American Association of Law Schools’ Section on Balance and Well-Being in Legal Education and the Minnesota State Bar Association’s Well-Being Committee. She serves on the Board of Directors for Minnesota Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers.
Professor Netzel is an affiliated professor with the Institute to Transform Child Protection (ITCP). She has extensive experience representing parents and relatives in child protection cases in district court and on appeal. She relies on that experience to train attorneys, judges, social workers, guardians ad litem, and other professionals on best practices in child protection proceedings.
Professor Netzel joined the faculty as a staff attorney with the ITCP in August of 2016. In her time at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, she has served in a variety of roles including the education and advocacy director of the ITCP and the director of the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project.
Prior to joining the faculty, Professor Netzel was a judicial law clerk for the Minnesota Court of Appeals. She received her B.A. from Hamline University, her M.S.E. in counseling from the University of Wisconsin-Superior, and her J.D. from Mitchell Hamline School of Law.
Education
J.D., magna cum laude, Mitchell Hamline School of Law
M.S.E., counseling, University of Wisconsin, Superior
B.A., cum laude, psychology, Hamline University
Experience
Mitchell Hamline School of Law: director, clinical education program, 2023–; associate professor of law, 2023–; co-director, clinical education program, 2022–23; assistant professor of law, 2018–23; education and advocacy director, Institute to Transform Child Protection, 2018–; staff attorney, Institute to Transform Child Protection, 2016–18; director, Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project, 2018–22; seminar professor, Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project, 2016–18
Minnesota Court of Appeals: judicial law clerk, Judge Denise Reilly, 2015–16
United States District Court, District of Minnesota: federal judicial extern, Magistrate Judge Leo I. Brisbois and Judge Susan R. Nelson
Duluth Denfeld High School, career counselor, 2011–12
