Attorney Magdalena Bartolik Wilk (Magda) focuses on family-based immigration and deportation defense, representing clients before the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State, and the Department of Justice. She combines her personal experience of emigrating to the United States from Poland at the age of twelve with years of experience to provide high-quality, professional, and compassionate legal representation to the immigrant community. She is also currently a Lecturer in Politics at Lake Forest College, where she teaches Immigration Law and Policy.

Magda previously worked as an attorney at Prairie State Legal Services in Waukegan, IL, where she provided comprehensive legal representation to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking by representing clients for civil protection orders and family and immigration related law cases.

While at The John Marshall School of Law, Magda worked as an extern at the Chicago Immigration Court, Executive Office for Immigration Review, Department of Justice, where she completed complex legal research and wrote on asylum, withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture. She also competed in the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court competition as a brief writer and oralist. Her team took second place at regionals in New Orleans, Louisiana, and competed as an oralist in the international rounds in Washington, DC.

Before attending law school, Magda used her undergraduate degrees in International Relations and Communication to work for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs as a Program Coordinator in the Council’s Corporate and Diplomatic Programs division, managing and executing the logistics for select corporate and diplomatic programs.

Magda is a member of the Association of Women Attorneys of Lake County, the Lake County Bar Association and the American Immigration Lawyers Association. She speaks Polish fluently.