The Hon. Margot Botsford (Ret.) was an associate justice of the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts. She was elevated to the seat by former Governor Deval Patrick in 2007. Botsford retired in 2017 after reaching the mandatory age of retirement.
Prior to her elevation, she had served as an associate justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court since receiving an appointment to the bench by former Governor Michael Dukakis in 1989.
Botsford received a B.A. from Barnard College in 1969. She also completed a J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law (1973) and an M.P.A. from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (2007).
After law school, she began her legal career as a law clerk to the Hon. Francis J. Quirico with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Upon completing her clerkship, Botsford went on to serve as an assistant attorney general with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office and then as an assistant district attorney in the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office, where she worked for six years and was chief of the Appeals Bureau.
Botsford also spent four years in private practice, first as an associate at Hill & Barlow and later as a named partner at Rosenfeld, Botsford & Krokidas.
In 2001, she helped organize The African American Scholars Program at Brookline High School.
Botsford is a Trustee Emerita of Northeastern University having also previously served as a member of the University's board of trustees.
She also served as an instructor at Northeastern University School of Law, Boston University Law School, the National Judicial College, and Flaschner Judicial Institute.
Botsford received a Judicial Excellence Award from the Massachusetts Judicial Conference and the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys as well as the Haskell Cohn Distinguished Judicial Service Award and the President’s Award from the Boston Bar Association. She holds honorary degrees from Northeastern University School of Law and New England Law.
Botsford was born in New York, New York and was later a resident of the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston.