features
fall 2024
Growing up in Chelsea—where her father taught and coached at Chelsea High School (and where the auditorium bears his name)—wove into Nechtem’s worldview the values of kindness and of lifting up your neighbor.
By Alyssa Giacobbe Photography by Adam DeTour
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The Corcoran Room on the seventh floor of Suffolk University’s Sargent Hall offers a cinematic view of Boston: the Public Garden and the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House straight ahead; Government Center to one side and the Theater District to the other. On its balcony one day in early August, Chief Justice Amy Nechtem, JD ’85, stands presiding over the familiar bustle of Tremont Street down below. “I just love the energy of a city,” she says.
She’s three or so months into her “rewirement,” as she’s taken to calling this unfamiliar, not exactly comfortable, new season of her life, following an extremely decorated 40-year career in public service dedicated to the well-being of the state’s most vulnerable children and their families.
In June, Nechtem retired from the bench after 23 years, ten of which she served as chief justice of the Massachusetts Juvenile Court, overseeing 42 judges in 11 counties, and introducing new practices and multidisciplinary approaches now used across the state. Some have even served as national models, such as Pathways, a groundbreaking approach to case management aimed at getting children out of dangerous situations and into permanent homes more quickly by facilitating communication and action between several groups involved in the child welfare community.
“She’s a pioneer and an innovator,” says Suffolk University Law School Dean Andrew Perlman. Pathways is just one of several models Nechtem leaves as part of a legacy devoted to intervention and prevention—in which she invited a multidisciplinary team of child welfare and public health advocates, social workers, clinicians, and lawyers to pool resources and together develop broad strategies to address the complex challenges of child welfare and juvenile justice.
“As a woman, I think she had an important and unique perspective,” says Justice Fernande R.V. Duffly, HLLD ’12, a retired Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court justice and one of Nechtem’s early mentors. “She had a deep caring and understanding of children and their needs. Genuinely—it wasn’t about being a judge. It was, ‘I want to help these children in the best way possible and with everything that I’ve got.’”
Even though Nechtem is on a break, at least, from office hours—and even though outside temperatures are in the mid-80s—she arrives impeccably dressed, wearing a vintage Dolce & Gabbana chevron-stripe suit, acetate frames with gold flecks, statement earrings, heels. Throughout her career, Nechtem has fought the persistent, if slowly diminishing, idea that women who care about fashion, or how they look, can’t possibly be taken seriously. As a young prosecutor in the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office, she’d spend her lunch hours across the street scouring the racks of the old Filene’s Basement. Fashion brought her joy. She never understood what “business casual” even meant, though she was certain it didn’t appeal to her. “I can’t think in flats,” she says. She is tall and has the posture of a ballerina, which she was, having commuted with her mom from their home in Chelsea to dance with the Boston Ballet School as a child. She has not stopped dancing since.
Growing up in Chelsea—a vibrant, tight-knit city, “full of hard-working people who took care of each other,” as her daughter, Kate Clayman, JD ’09, puts it—wove into the fabric of Nechtem’s worldview the value of kindness. “She believes respect for community and lifting up your neighbors are really what matter, and Chelsea was a big part of that,” says Kate. Nechtem was the youngest of three children born to Saul and Gladys Nechtem, first-generation Americans and high school sweethearts at Chelsea High, where Saul played four sports and was, by most accounts, the best athlete to come out of the school in a century. (The auditorium now bears his name.) At Boston University, he remains one of only two of the school’s athletes to ever earn 12 varsity letters. He enlisted in the Navy during World War II, and, later, returned to Chelsea to teach high school and coach at his alma mater. “He could have done anything,” says Nechtem. “But he was a grounded guy, with a real sense of humanity and humility, and that brought him back to Chelsea.”
Today, she traces her own commitment to public service to the power of her father’s example. “It was always about looking to the next generation, and giving them opportunities,” she says. “For both my parents, the focus was on giving back and doing good.”
The late Larry Smith, BSBA ’65, who serves with Nechtem on the Suffolk University Board of Trustees, of which Nechtem is vice chair, was one of Saul’s star basketball players at Chelsea High. Before he passed away this fall, Smith recalled how “her father would have her occasionally visit the gym, so I’ve known Amy since she was just a young girl. Even then, she had a bright, uplifting presence," and he said he felt great pride in “watching her rise to where she is today, without ever losing that warmth and positivity.”
One of Nechtem’s more vivid childhood memories was the elementary school teacher who informed Saul and Gladys that their daughter was an “underachiever.” What may have been meant as a disparaging remark ultimately became a motivator, Nechtem says. She was, she would learn, capable of quite a lot.
“She didn’t always believe in herself, and I think that was a benefit,” says Justice Duffly. “She is very competitive and very confident and knows what she’s good at, but she had to learn that about herself. And I think that made her a strong and empathetic leader for children and families, and for the people and causes she cared about.”
After graduating from Chelsea High, where she was an A student and varsity cheerleader, Nechtem went to Simmons College (now University) to study nutrition science. The topic did not bring her joy. But getting through—excelling, even—in subjects like organic chemistry gave her confidence in her intellectual capabilities. She was in her mid-20s and working for the Massachusetts Department of Education when her then-husband, the late Richard Clayman, JD ’72, a well-known and beloved prosecutor and defense attorney known widely as “Richie from Chelsea,” encouraged her to go to law school. He saw in her someone who, like him, found both purpose and passion in fighting on behalf of those who needed a champion.
Nechtem enrolled in Suffolk’s Evening JD program, where she loved that her classmates were diverse and relatable and, like herself, largely working professionals, of all ages and backgrounds and stages of life. She was in a Constitutional Law class when she started to go into labor. She made it through class, then headed to Brigham & Women’s with Richie and gave birth to a baby girl, Kate.
After graduating with honors, Nechtem went to work in the Suffolk County DA’s office, where she eventually rose to the role of assistant district attorney, prosecuting child abuse and major felony cases. She loved and respected the law, and learned to stay positive even in the face of heartbreaking circumstances, even when a decision didn’t go her way. “The children were so brave,” she recalls. “We had 8-year-olds testifying in front of juries.” She used her courtroom experiences as motivation to look at the root causes of the situations with which she was now intimately familiar. It was not unlike the training she’d received in nutrition science, where the urgent issue at hand is usually the product of a multitude of conditions that had, in fact, been conspiring for a long time. In the case of child abuse, there was often evidence of addiction, food insecurity, mental illness, going back generations, with not enough done to address those conditions. And until more was done, she realized, it was unlikely anything would change.
She spent 15 years as a prosecutor before being appointed in 2001 by Governor Jane Swift to the Massachusetts Juvenile Court, where she presided over cases involving child protection and juvenile delinquency. Although there were, undoubtedly, immense challenges to being a working mom, she underplays them now, recalling only that she felt incredibly lucky to have found work that brought her a sense of true purpose and a family life that was equally fulfilling. “I never thought about work-life balance,” she says. “It was all just life. The law was ingrained in our family. I always felt so inspired, and so grateful, to be doing this work.”
She taught Kate that you could have it all—you just had to prioritize. “My mom just handled it, whatever ‘it’ was,” says Kate, who later followed her parents to Suffolk Law and is now a deputy administrator in the Massachusetts Trial Court. “She’d come home in her suit and say, ‘I need a minute. I’ve got to have some potato chips, a glass of wine, and then I want to hear all about your day.’”
Back when Nechtem was a prosecutor, she would rehearse her closing arguments to Kate, still a youngster; later, she’d bring her daughter to the courtroom, where Kate would sit with child victims to help them feel a little less scared or simply take in the scene. On the bench, says Kate, Nechtem was in her element and she was always herself—beautifully dressed, in high-heeled shoes. “She didn’t hide the fact that she loved that piece of the job, and I think for women in the legal profession, that’s so important to see—that I don’t have to be a certain way,” says Kate. “I can be authentically who I am, whatever that looks like, and still be successful.”
Simmons had introduced Nechtem to the power of the sisterhood, to what can happen when women have the freedom to support one another instead of competing for limited opportunities. Throughout her career, she sought to do the same for other women, and to expand those opportunities. In 2011, she was elected president of the National Association of Women Judges (NAWJ), an organization that exists to empower and amplify the voices of women in the judiciary. She spoke nationally and internationally on topics relating to systems change, women and families, and judicial leadership, and met some of her most treasured and inspiring colleagues and friends through the NAWJ, including Duffly, who’d frequently read Nechtem’s speeches before she delivered them.
Perry Bitter interned at the Massachusetts State House. “Just being exposed to this type of environment has opened my mind and broadened the scope of my entire life,” she says. Photograph: Michael J. Clarke
“She had a deep caring and understanding of children and their needs. Genuinely—it wasn’t about being a judge. It was, ‘I want to help these children in the best way possible and with everything that I’ve got.’”
—Justice Fernande R.V. Duffly, HLLD ’12
Fashion brings Nechtem joy. She never understood what “business casual” meant, though she was certain it didn’t appeal to her. “I can’t think in flats,” she says.
In 2014, after Nechtem was appointed to the role of chief justice and no longer deciding cases, she became laser-focused on prevention and intervention strategies—and ways in which the system could be adjusted to enable the courts to tailor their decisions to community and individual needs. “I wanted to address the underlying issues upstream, instead of trying to fix problems downstream,” she says.
That meant calling for a large-scale overhaul of the policies in child-serving systems, across disciplines and involving all three branches of government. In addition to Pathways, she introduced Upstream, a first-of-its-kind initiative to identify resources in the community and address gaps in service. Nechtem developed training for judges on topics such as trauma and resiliency, and a bench card for the judiciary that focuses on assessing danger, risk, and safety. Under her leadership, the Massachusetts Juvenile Court Department was awarded a $1.5 million grant to create PATHS: Prevention and Treatment for the Health and Stability of Children and Families, which established a standardized needs assessment, and redefined and expanded Family Treatment Court best practices throughout the state.
This March, after several years of laying the groundwork, she launched the Family Treatment Court Initiative. Based on a national model, the statewide program connects parents struggling with addiction to support services, including parenting classes, with the goal of keeping families intact and, ideally, out of the courts.
She spent the summer doing a lot of thinking (in heels, of course) about what’s next. Certainly, “rewirement,” though a change, will include staying active in bettering the experience of others, in various forms. As vice chair of the University Board of Trustees, she’s active in diversifying the board and continuing to improve the quality of life and learning for Suffolk students, faculty, and the community. She is eager to expand upon that work with a group of people she says she truly enjoys on both professional and personal levels.
“Amy is a force,” says Board Chair Robert Lamb, the former chief financial officer of Fleet Bank. “She’s engaged, compelling, and fiercely committed. She’s a voice of reason and also brilliant. I knew the moment I met her that I wanted to work with her as part of the board.”
Nechtem loves to travel and dance. Once a week, she teaches at a community studio space in Salem. She’s loved seeing the changes in her students’ posture, their attitude, their way of being in relationship with their bodies. She has loved seeing the joy that dancing brings, especially to those who never imagined they could.
In 2017, Nechtem (a Summa Society member), Kate, and the Clayman family established the Richard I. Clayman Scholarship in memory of Richie, who died in 2013. The scholarship fund benefits Suffolk Law students, with preference given to students from Chelsea, with financial need and an interest or background in public service.
Sharifa Garvey, JD ’24, was working in justice reform when she met Nechtem at a meeting on the state of the Massachusetts juvenile justice system. Garvey recalls how the chief justice stayed behind after speaking to talk with some of the women who attended. She handed one of the young women her card and asked her to stay in touch. “And she actually meant it,” says Garvey, who knew she wanted to attend Suffolk as soon as she met Nechtem. “She was very passionate about wanting to create space for women in the system and about helping them stay out of the system, by providing opportunities and empowering them.”
On Garvey’s first day of orientation, Nechtem cleared her calendar for the entire morning. “She took me to the bookstore and got all of my books, and stayed with me until I was comfortable,” Garvey recalls. “She checked in and has been very supportive—and also very honest with me when she needs to be if I’m not doing something I should. She’s tough but supportive. She pushes me to be better.”
As an attorney, the late Richard Clayman, JD ’72, was famous for going the extra mile, always quick to say “I got it” to those who needed his help. Since Nechtem, their daughter, Kate Clayman, and the Clayman family established the fund in 2017, the memorial scholarship that bears his name has been doing something similar for Suffolk Law students. To date, more than 175 donors have contributed to the fund. Learn more or contribute at Suffolk.edu/claymanscholarship.
Shortly before her retirement, Juvenile Court Chief Justice Amy Nechtem announced plans to expand a new kind of family treatment court tailored to meet the needs of parents at risk of losing their children because of substance abuse.