Rachel Koch is an assistant public defender for Cook County, Illinois. She currently works in the Child Protection Conflicts Division where she represents parents when the state petitions to take their children from their care. Prior to her work for Cook County, Koch had a solo practice where she represented clients in at all stages of litigation in criminal defense, family law, civil forfeiture, family law, civil and administrative cases; she also worked in private practice. Koch has recorded several Continuing Legal Education videos for ApexCLE, a private CLE company.
While a DePaul law student, she was a Sullivan Fellow at the International Human Rights Law Institute and an assistant to the late Professor Emeritus M. Cherif Bassiouni. She also attended programs abroad in Costa Rica and Italy, focusing on International Law.
Koch comes to the law after 20 years of experience teaching both young people and adults in New Mexico, Chicago and Ecuador, and she employs the tools from all her work experiences in her current teaching practice.