Kayla K. Brochu, is a seasoned, highly acclaimed Litigator, Expert, and Professor. Based in Washington, DC, with offices in San Francisco and Philadelphia, she is the founder of a law firm that focuses on human trafficking, child sexual exploitation, & gender-based abuse. She is also currently leading an initiative to guide practitioners and legislators on generative AI’s impact on online child exploitation and other image-based offenses.
Blue-Chip Experience
Ms. Brochu is a former federal prosecutor who pioneered much of modern legal practice in these human trafficking and online child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) while serving at the Department of Justice’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Prosecution Units for nearly a decade. Following her criminal-prosecution career at the Department of Justice, she served in Vienna, Austria as the United Nations’ foremost expert on technology-facilitated, child exploitation offenses. While there, she led a ground-breaking, public-private, transnational law-enforcement collaboration initiative and authored the authoritative global treatise on tech-facilitated child exploitation. She also previously served as the North America delegate for the Global Model Child Protection Law initiative by the International Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
Private Public Interest Practice
She founded and leads a private public-interest practice. She is the only attorney in the country with “360-degree” experience in human trafficking law – federal-level criminal prosecution, civil litigation including class actions, victims’ rights advocacy, immigration / trafficking-visas expert work, family law for people involved in trafficking, and direct-service legal aid for human trafficking. Her child exploitation legal experience is similarly comprehensive and also draws on technological acumen and long-term institutional knowledge of the field. As a global advocate for protections against gender-based violence, she has a unique perspective on strategies to litigate within the sector.
Her case works draws on best-in-class training and target research on trauma-informed interviewing of vulnerable victims, the neuropsychology of abused children and adolescents, and the reliability of memory of adult survivors of child abuse. She is also well-versed on the issues of corporate complicity and inventive strategies to hold corporate entities accountable for their roles in facilitating harm. Importantly, Ms. Brochu has served as a thought leader on the intersection of technology’s role in both exacerbating and mitigating online abuse for more than 20 years.
Litigation Work
Primarily, Ms. Brochu partners with the highest-caliber plaintiff-firms to co-counsel litigation and co-chair trials. Among other matters, she is co-counsel in the largest class-action against a private detention center, which is alleged to have forced its detainees to work in menial jobs for a mere dollar per day. In addition, she frequently provides expert guidance & testimony for trafficking-visa petitions, and for criminal and civil proceedings. She also represents victim-witnesses during their participation in the criminal proceedings. In this respect, she is uniquely skilled at strategically managing that process to preserve clients’ interests for subsequent immigration and civil matters.
In addition, Ms. Brochu is the Professorial Lecturer of the flagship Human Trafficking course at The George Washington University, Elliott School of International Affairs. There, she is currently leading research projects on the nexus between child labor and immigration policy in the United States and on European trends on sex work laws. As noted above, she is fast-producing work to guide practitioners and policy-makers on the impact of AI in her sectors. Beyond case work, expert testimony, teaching, research, and writing, she advises philanthropic organizations, including The M. Night Shyamalan Foundation and provides subject matter expertise for large-scale research projects.
Court Admissions & Education
Licensed in and primarily working from Washington, DC, she is licensed to practice in the states of California and Pennsylvania as well. She belongs to The American Association for Justice (for Trial Lawyers), The National Crime Victims Bar Association, and The Federal Bar Association. Ms. Brochu is admitted to multiple United States Federal District Courts, Federal Appellate Courts, and she is a Member of Bar for The Supreme Court of the United States.
Ms. Brochu holds a law degree from Harvard Law School and a Masters of Business Administration from Harvard Business. School. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with high distinction from the University of Virginia, where she studied the interdisciplinary field of Children, Psychology & The Law.