Clinical Law Prof Blog

Let’s Dance

“It is music and dancing that make me at peace with the world.” ― Nelson Mandela

My father was hiking in Mammoth Lakes with his wife, their 5-year-old daughter, and one of his cross-country runners last month when he unexpectedly had a heart attack and died.  He was 75 years old and still went to work six days a week, eleven months a year.  He had just arrived for a high altitude training camp for his runners.  It was his favorite week of the year in a job he loved.

The only thing he loved more than coaching was his family.  Thus, at the age of twenty, when he had his first of seven children, he began a lifetime tradition of packing up our entire family (and often a couple of neighborhood friends), driving us to the 405, and asking, “North or South, East or West?”  We never knew at the beginning of these month-long vacations whether we would wind up in the Canadian Rockies, a Kansas farm belonging to a third cousin, or the White House.  These summer journeys became our sacred time--a time to rejuvenate, reflect, and cocoon as a family, away from work and school.

When I learned of my father’s death, I was in the midst of one of these sojourns with my older sister and our two families.  We had just arrived in Ireland for a work-free week of family vacation. Somehow I had managed to complicate my first two weeks away from campus with two law conferences, a grant application, the presentation of two papers, and several professional meetings with potential collaborators.  Needless to say, I am no John Binford. 

Returning to campus three days after my father’s burial, I immediately threw myself headlong into work—focusing on meeting the end of summer writing deadlines, and preparing to survive the late August tsunami of students and clients and committees.  I became friends with midnight and a stranger to my children. 

Transitioning from work to sleep one early morning, I read the following article in Times Higher Education (“THE”) on the link between relaxation and work, which reminded me that working longer hours can often compromise productivity, not increase it.  It brought to mind a New York Times essay I read last year that cited similar research.  Somehow between infancy and high school, I became caught up in America's "Busy Trap," and here in mid-life, I have still not learned to break free.  Was this busy-ness compromising my productivity as a professor?  Did it make me a poor role model for my students?  Was I missing out on motherhood because I mistakenly thought that working 14 hours a day would make me more successful or helpful to those in need or a better provider or whatever it is that is driving me?

What would happen if we stepped back and experimented with some new approaches to productivity, such as those suggested in this Forbes article?  What if we set aside three hours a day, away from our students and family and clients and colleagues just to write, and broke those hours into 90-minute blocks?  What if we made it a priority to sleep at least eight hours a night?  Should we turn off email for hours at a time as suggested in this New York Times op-ed?  What if we silenced all notifications when we wanted to think or needed to meet with people?  Could we stop sleeping with our iPhones next to us?  Better yet, what if we declared our time away from work a digital-free zone?  Would that make us smarter, more present, productive, efficient, relaxed?  Is it possible to be at peace with not at least trying to answer every email every day?  Would it possibly make us more professional to manage our time and communications more proactively, rather than go through life with an “Always Open” neon sign across our chests?  Maybe my dad was right about the sanctity of summer vacations.  Should we, could we stop trying to work on vacation?  According to NPR, adults need recess, too.  What about dancing and singing and loving?  Will these make us better teachers, scholars, attorneys, people?  Maybe we should find out.

Care to dance with me this semester? 

 

 

RFP: 2015 AALS Conference on Clinical Legal Education

The AALS Request for Proposals for Concurrent Sessions, Workshops, Poster Presentations and Session Moderators for the 2015 Conference on Clinical Legal Education, via its email to members of Aug. 25, 2014:

 

2015 AALS Conference on Clinical Legal Education Leading the New Normal: Clinical Education at the Forefront of Change Request for Proposals for: - Concurrent Sessions - Workshops - Poster Sessions - Session Moderators   DEADLINE: Friday, October 3, 2014           The 2015 AALS Conference on Clinical Legal Education will be held from Monday, May 4 to Thursday, May 7, 2015, at the Westin Mission Hills in Rancho Mirage, California. The bi-annual Clinic Director's conference will take place before the start of the main conference on Sunday, May 3 and Monday, May 4.             The Conference Planning Committee seeks proposals for concurrent sessions, workshop sessions, and posters. We also seek volunteers to serve as session moderators for working groups.             We invite proposals from individuals or multiple presenters for all categories of presentation at the conference.*   We encourage faculty who have not presented before or who have not presented in the past few years to submit proposals. We also encourage collaboration across institutions. Proposals are due by the close of business on Friday, October 3, 2014. Selections will be made and participants notified by November 7, 2014. All proposals should be emailed to [email protected] by the October 3rd deadline, and include "Proposal for 2015 Clinical Conference" in the subject line of the email.   * Full-time faculty members and fellows of AALS member law schools are eligible to submit proposals. Fellows should include a CV with their proposals. The following individuals may participate as panel members, but may not submit proposals: faculty members at fee-paid non-member schools; international faculty; visiting faculty (without a full-time position at an AALS member law school); adjunct faculty members; graduate students; and non-law school faculty.   Concurrent session presenters, workshop leaders, poster presenters and session moderators must pay the registration fee and are responsible for their own expenses related to attendance at the Conference.       I. Conference Theme             Legal education confronts a period of intense change. These changes include drops in enrollment, a market downturn in jobs for graduates, transformations in law practice, and a rethinking of the roles of and the need for lawyers. Some argue that law schools must address these changes or lose control over legal education. Proposals to eliminate the third year, to revamp the traditional curriculum, to graduate "practice-ready" lawyers, and to permit students to take the bar early, all act as the forward edge of reform in legal education. A "new normal" seems to be taking hold.             Clinicians have long been at the forefront of change in legal education. From the early years of CLEPR, clinical legal education has led in developing new models for pedagogy and in advancing social justice. The sheer growth of this conference evidences the expanding presence and influence of clinical faculty on legal education. At many schools, clinical and field placement faculty have been asked to take the reins of change: not just in clinical courses but in other parts of the curriculum; and not just in individual courses, but in the sequence and structure of the curriculum as a whole.             This conference will explore whether and how clinicians should lead in the "new normal" of legal education. Definitions of the phrase stress how "a previously unfamiliar or atypical situation . . . has become standard, usual, or expected" or describe "a current state of being after some dramatic change has transpired." We hope to hold conversations that will help us to understand and to engage productively with the situation we now face.             Plenaries and concurrents will be organized along three broad themes: (1) What is the New Normal?; (2) What is the Role of Clinicians in the New Normal?; and (3) What is the Future in the New Normal?             Before turning to specifics, we recognize that many of the most useful sessions at these conferences share ideas about how to keep doing what we do best. Clinicians who have had success in teaching, supervision and service delivery in any clinical setting are now, as always, welcome to present their developing strategies and techniques and to help participants develop their skills as clinical teachers. In short, while we ask you to focus proposals towards the conference theme, we will review all proposals with this more general criterion in mind.   Track One: What is the New Normal?              This track focuses on the new realities that profoundly affect legal education in general and clinical education in particular. We will ask how law schools and clinicians are responding to calls for reform in legal education, the problems of reduced resources, declining enrolments, and an uncertain job market. We seek proposals for concurrent sessions that frame and describe the "new normal", either directly or implicitly, through new approaches to teaching, service delivery or course design. We encourage presenters to describe and assess how they have adjusted their work to new realities, thus helping participants to respond to change at their schools. Proposals can also focus on institutional concerns, including the impact of the "new normal" on staffing, status and diversity of clinical faculty and of clinical legal education.    Examples of possible Track 1 Concurrent Session Topics How do or should law schools frame the "new normal"? Clinicians at schools that have struggled with institutional questions posed by the new context could create sessions that help participants understand and contribute to their own school's responses to this new context. What effect has the "new normal" had on clinics and externships? Has it altered the role that clinic and field placement courses play in the overall curriculum? Concurrent sessions might introduce participants to ways to rethink and redesign their programs or to integrate them with other parts of the curriculum. Have changes in the job market impacted how clinicians design and deliver their work, including course content, interactions with students and partnerships outside the law school? Proposals could focus on the challenges of teaching for transfer beyond the clinic experience, on ways to engage other stakeholders in the training of students, or on the special role that clinicians play in career counseling with students. Is "practice-readiness" a useful outcome for legal educators generally and clinicians specifically? Do we mean to create "practice-ready" lawyers in our work as clinicians, or is the concept either too simplistic or too complex to be useful? Presentations might present particular ways that clinics can address the pressure for "practice-ready" lawyers, and help participants understand how "practice-readiness" can help (or hinder) their efforts as clinicians. How does the "new normal" affect the staffing of clinical courses, and the status, participation, voice, and compensation of faculty who work in clinics? A concurrent could work with CSALE or other data to help clinicians understand possible alternatives in staffing. Clinicians at schools with different patterns of hiring clinical faculty could help participants identify and deploy strategies for the hiring of clinical faculty at their schools.   Track Two: "What Role Should Clinicians Play in the New Normal?"             Clinical programs are at the center of the reform movement in legal education. We may at last have become "normal." Our methods are now well-accepted and are being adopted and adapted, for better or for worse, in new ways. We are being asked to take leadership roles in legal education in ways that are unfamiliar to many of us and troublesome to some. We must also ask whether and how the "new normal" affects our long-standing commitment as social justice educators. Concurrent sessions can help participants to better identify and achieve the goals of our work in this new context. Examples of possible Track 2 Concurrent Session Topics As teachers with particular expertise in helping students to learn from experience, what roles/responsibilities should we take on in our schools? Teachers who have succeeded or failed in taking on the added responsibility of teaching the traditional faculty and others in the clinical method can help participants to understand how to do this at their own schools. What are the potential costs/risks of clinicians taking on a leadership role in the "new normal"? People from schools that have appointed a "Dean of Experiential Education" or that are considering whether to do so might engage us in how the move affects our clinics, our students, our clients, and ourselves. What are the risks and benefits of the "new normal" to our clients, their communities, and our social justice mission? Is it possible both to grow our programs to meet student demand and to maintain our commitment to high-quality social justice lawyering? Presenters who have addressed these issues might engage us in strategies for achieving social justice goals while serving a larger, more anxious, and more ideologically diverse student population. What are the risks and benefits to our pedagogy of taking on a more expansive role in the "new normal"? Particularly in light of the proliferation of experiential opportunities across law school curricula, is there a risk to the future of the in-house clinic itself? Clinicians might develop a panel that considers the importance of maintaining the traditional model and identifies the various threats to that model that the "new normal" poses. Clinicians could also help participants assess different ways of integrating and sequencing different clinical methods. How should we address the challenges of resource limitations in the design of our programs? People who have struggled with creating programs at lower cost or adapting existing programs to accommodate more students might help others who face these questions brainstorm the related problems and to find better solutions.   Track Three: "What is the Future in the New Normal?"             On this track, we look at the future in the "new normal," both for the practice of law and for legal education. Concurrent sessions in this track should help us anticipate and prepare for what's coming next. As to law practice, we hope to address how clinical and field placement faculty can understand the rapid and profound technological change that could well remake law practice and how those changes can advance our work for social justice. We want to explore how changes in service delivery and structure of law practices can and should impact our work both in clinics and in field placements. And we hope to address how clinical and field placement faculty can better use technological advances and insights from learning sciences in their work.   Examples of possible Track 3 Concurrent Session Topics Clinics have a role to play in responding to changes in the practice of law as it relates to client representation. A panel in this track could present a particular vision of how law practice will change, and help participants plan their courses to prepare students for that change. How can clinicians be at the forefront of framing a "new normal" for legal practice and social justice lawyering in the face of technological change? Concurrents help participants understand ways to integrate new and existing technology into their work for clients: for example, by navigating the physical distance between clients and lawyers. Concurrents on this track could provide tools for clinicians to rethink program design in light of innovations in technology. How can clinics prepare students to be entrepreneurial in solving access to justice or other social justice issues? Clinicians could describe how different schools have met success in encouraging a more entrepreneurial approach by students, and help participants to transfer those successes to other contexts. The pace of technological change also affects law school teaching generally and clinical teaching specifically. How can clinicians adapt new technology into their teaching? Demonstrations and explanations of particular teaching approaches (the flipped classroom, video, MOOCs, or remote externship supervision) provide potential topics for concurrents. Sessions could also address how different approaches to technology can aid and alter our interactions with students, including tools for clinical practice and for assessing and giving feedback to students. How can clinicians use knowledge and experience from multiple disciplines and social perspectives to shed new insight on barriers to legal empowerment? Multi-disciplinary clinics present particular opportunities and challenges; concurrent sessions can help participants understand how these collaborations work, and how to identify and develop multi-disciplinary opportunities at their schools. How can clinicians use new ideas in design theory to connect people to law, legal information, and legal services? We encourage proposals that describe new and innovative approaches to making this connection, and that help participants assess ways they might use this approaches at their own schools.   II. How to Make a Proposal             The conference starts Monday, May 4, 2015, with a Law Clinic Director's conference from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The opening plenary for the main conference occurs that evening from 6:00 - 6:45 p.m., followed by the AALS reception with poster presentations. The conference continues with sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday, and ends with lunch on Thursday, May 7. It will include full plenaries, mini-plenary sessions along the three tracks, concurrent and poster sessions, working groups, and in-depth, multi-session workshops. Participants may follow along one track, or mix and match mini-plenary sessions and concurrent sessions to best fit their goals for the conference.    A. Concurrent Sessions             The Committee seeks proposals for concurrent sessions to develop the themes presented along the different tracks. The conference provides five time periods for concurrent sessions: Tuesday, May 5 from 9:45 - 11 a.m. and 2:45 - 4:00 p.m.; Wednesday, May 6 from 9:00-10:15 a.m.; and Thursday, May 7 from 8:30 - 9:45 a.m. and 10:00 - 11:15 a.m. Submission of a concurrent session proposal includes a willingness to have that proposal scheduled in any of the concurrent session time slots.              Submission guidelines for concurrent sessions             To propose a concurrent session, send an e-mail to [email protected] attaching your proposal. Each proposal should contain the following four elements: Description, including goals and objectives for the session: A one (1) page proposal description. Include how you intend to draw on the theme of the conference and its three tracks. Please specifically identify the goals for the session and the learning objectives for the attendees of the session. Takeaways: Where you have in hand documents (such as rubrics, surveys, evaluation forms, or schematics) or materials (such as a syllabus, bibliography, or teaching exercise instructions), please include them with the proposal. Structure: Include your ideas about the structure of the session; the ways in which it will be engaging and interactive, which can include time for self-reflection and processing through quick writes or thinking time; and whether you plan to use other teaching methodologies or aids. Whatever teaching methodology you employ, we ask that you do it in furtherance of your goals and learning objectives for the session. The planning committee encourages presenters to be creative in their approaches to these sessions. Ideally, these sessions will deepen attendees' engagement with the conference themes while maximizing individual or group participation and utilizing technology, and/or techniques such as demonstrations, role plays, and audience exercises. Presenters: Identify all individuals who you expect will participate in the session, including the identity of their institution, whether the person comes from another discipline or has interdisciplinary experience, and any other information about the person(s) that you think relevant. We encourage presenters to collaborate with clinicians from other institutions. Also, for each presenter, please indicate whether the person has presented at the AALS Clinical Conference in the past two years, and, if so, the title of the session, and whether the session was a plenary or concurrent one.   B. Workshops             In 2014, the Clinical Conference offered a small group of people the chance to explore the topic of clinic design over the course of several working group time slots during the conference. The workshop allowed participants to explore the topic in depth, over the course of four sessions, rather than in single concurrent session.             The workshop format was successful. We hope to expand the number of these workshops in the 2015 Conference, which will take place during the working group session time slots. Conference attendees will be asked to identify whether or not they would like to participate in a workshop as part of their conference registration. Workshop groups should convene remotely before the conference to prepare for their in-person work during the conference. Some workshops may take place in two sessions, while others may take four sessions.             We solicit those with an interest in leading a workshop in two ways: for identified topics; and for new topics. Identified topics: We have identified several subjects that may be ripe for workshopping, listed below. We solicit people interested in planning, organizing and delivering workshops on: Clinic design: setting the goals and structure for a clinical course, including problems of implementation and evaluation; Supervision: understanding and developing the working relationship between clinician and clinical student; Assessment and feedback: different approaches to assessing student performance and to delivering assessment to students; Creating teaching videos: how to create video teaching materials, including both the creative process and advice on technology. New topics: in addition to the topics identified by the Planning Committee, we also solicit other ideas for workshop topics. We will review new topics for their breadth of appeal and their suitability to a multi-session format.             Leading these workshops will require more time and preparation than a typical concurrent. Workshop leaders will play a major role in designing workshop content for either two or four 75-minute sessions and in preparing for the workshop before the conference. We plan to enroll participants for workshops in advance, and will encourage workshop leaders to assign materials to participants and to convene them remotely before the conference begins.             Finally, we encourage proposals from groups of workshop planners and presenters. Workshop leaders should be prepared to work with the Planning Committee to identify other participants and session leaders for the proposed workshop. We expect to ask that workshop leaders work in teams with others interested in the same topic.             Submission guidelines for workshop leaders             To volunteer as a workshop leader or to propose a workshop, please send an e-mail to [email protected] stating your interest. Each proposal should address the following criteria: Identify the workshop topic on which you want to present, whether one we identify above, or a new one. If you propose a new topic, include a short one-paragraph statement of why you propose this topic for the workshop format. In your statement, please address why you think your topic has a broad appeal and/or why it is particularly suited to the multi-session workshop format. Please also indicate whether you think this new idea requires four sessions, or can work in two sessions. Identify the people who will collaborate with you on the workshop, if you know them. Make sure to specify who the contact person for your group will be. These workshops will be successful only if workshop leaders have a background with the topic and a history of reliably delivering high quality conference sessions. Please identify your qualifications (and those of other proposed leaders) for leading the particular topic. These qualifications could include: scholarship on the topic; a history of presentations on the same or similar topic; past experience developing sessions for other conferences; and/or a demonstrated experience in the particular subject of your proposal.             The Planning Committee will consider all proposed workshop leaders, and will decide on leaders based on all of the proposals that we receive.   C. Poster Sessions             The Opening Reception on Monday, May 4, 2014, provides an opportunity for presenters to display posters and discuss their materials as conference participants circulate. The posters will remain on display in the general session room during the rest of the conference. Poster sessions, an integral feature of professional conferences for many disciplines, allow for wide participation and for greater dissemination of information beyond a single concurrent session. Posters are particularly useful for presenting descriptive information or other material not well presented in the more interactive format of a concurrent session.             Submission guidelines for poster sessions             To propose a poster, send an e-mail to [email protected]. Please submit a one (1) page description of your proposal, your specific goals for the poster, how the poster relates to the conference themes and the objectives, or takeaways, you have for each attendee who engages with your poster. Please identify all individuals who you expect will be participating in the poster presentation and any other information you believe is relevant. Bear in mind that many universities offer assistance in poster design and printing.             You can find good tips on creating posters, with examples, at http://staff.science.uva.nl/~bcate/esslli03/posters.html and at http://www.cis.udel.edu/~pollock/fse04/posterauthorinst.html   D. Session Moderators (formerly "Working Group Leaders")             Working groups facilitated by session moderators will be organized by clinic subject-matter, affinity groups, and mixed groups to share ideas and reactions and to engage in problem-solving.             The scheduling of working groups will be a bit different from recent conferences. The number of subject area groups that the annual conference can accommodate is always limited by the number of smaller-sized rooms available at the hotel. As a result, small and emerging groups have had difficulty achieving recognition as working groups. This year we will have a larger number of groups, but will only guarantee each group a room for two of the four available time periods. We expect to be able to hold open a group of rooms for those groups who do want to meet for all four sessions. Groups that want to meet more than twice can request additional meeting rooms and times, or can meet in public spaces at the conference facility.             We solicit volunteers to serve as moderators of these working sessions. In the past, we have entitled this role "Working Group Leader," but the designation does not reflect the hard work and importance of the role to the success of the conference. Each session moderator will be identified by the subject matter of his or her session; for example, "Criminal Law Session Moderator" or "Externship Session Moderator."             Session moderators will be asked to talk before the conference to prepare for the group; to facilitate their working sessions; and, if necessary, to arrange for additional meeting space beyond the two slots that we guarantee.             Submission guidelines for session moderators             To volunteer to serve as a session moderator, send an e-mail to [email protected]. Please identify the subject areas you would be comfortable moderating. Please state whether you have served as a session moderator (or working group leader) in the past, how often and in which areas. We attach a list of proposed working group subject areas at the end of this RFP.   E. AALS Section on Clinical Education Committee Meetings:             We will reserve three slots on different days of the conference for committee meetings of AALS Clinical Section Committees.     III. Conclusion             To submit a proposal for a concurrent session or a poster session, and to express an interest in serving as a workshop leader or as a session moderator, please send the information we have requested to [email protected] no later than the close of business on Friday, October 3, 2014.             If you have questions, please feel free to contact any member of the Planning Committee. Thank you for reading this far, for your interest in the conference, and for all the work you do.         2015 AALS Conference on Clinical Legal Education Planning Committee   Kimberly Ambrose [email protected] Claudia Angelos [email protected] Eduardo Capulong [email protected] Michele Pistone [email protected] Laura Rovner [email protected] Alex Scherr, Chair [email protected]         2015 AALS Conference on Clinical Legal Education   List of Areas for Working Sessions Alternative Dispute Resolution Appellate Litigation Civil Rights/Discrimination/Race Clinic Administrators Community Economic Development Community Lawyering Criminal Law Critical Theory Education Law Elder Law Environmental Externships Family/Child Advocacy Family/Domestic Violence Family Law Gender / Gender Identity / Sexual Orientation Health and Disability Housing Immigration Interdisciplinary (Medical/Legal) International Human Rights Juvenile Law (Criminal) Legislative/Policy Lawyering Poverty Law Scholarship Support/Development Securities Arbitration Tax Transactional Law/Small Business

 

Call for Participation: 12th Annual LatCrit-SALT Junior Faculty Development Workshop

From Dr. Saru M. Matambanadzo of Tulane University School of Law, please see this Call for Participation in the Twelfth Annual LatCrit-SALT Junior Faculty Development Workshop.  The FDW is a yearly effort to support junior faculty and aspiring faculty whose work is committed to critical and progressive perspectives. 

Call for Participation
Twelfth Annual LatCrit-SALT

Junior Faculty Development Workshop

October 9, 2014

University of Nevada-Las Vegas

Las Vegas, NV

LatCrit, Inc. and the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) are pleased to invite interested participants to the Twelfth Annual Junior Faculty Development Workshop (FDW), immediately preceding the SALT Teaching Conference.  This annual workshop is designed for critical, progressive, and social justice oriented pre-tenure professors, including clinicians and legal writing professors, as well as those who may be contemplating a teaching career.  However, we also encourage more senior members of the profession to attend, share their experience, and serve as resources and mentors.

The FDW is designed to familiarize critical, progressive, and social justice oriented junior faculty with LatCrit and SALT principles and values and support them in the scholarship, teaching, and service aspects of professional success.  In addition, the FDW seeks to foster scholarship in progressive, social justice, and critical outsider jurisprudence, including LatCrit theory, among new and junior faculty, students, and practitioners.  Finally, the FDW aims to cultivate a community of scholars interested in the continuation of this and similar projects over the years.

To facilitate community building through shared experiences and the exchange of ideas, we strongly encourage all participants to attend the entire workshop.                                                                          

If you have questions about the workshop or would like to attend, please email [email protected].  Although we will make efforts to accommodate all interested participants, RSVPs are strongly suggested by September 30, 2014​

Call for Papers: Applied Feminism and Work

From Prof. Margaret Johnson of the University of Baltimore School of Law, please see this Call for Papers for the Eighth Annual Feminist Legal Theory Conference: 

 

CALL FOR PAPERS: "APPLIED FEMINISM AND WORK"

The University of Baltimore School of Law’s Center on Applied Feminism seeks submissions for its Eighth Annual Feminist Legal Theory Conference.  This year’s theme is “Applied Feminism and Work.”  The conference will be held on March 5 and 6, 2015.  For more information about the conference, please visit law.ubalt.edu/caf.

As the nation emerges from the recession, work and economic security are front and center in our national policy debates.  Women earn less than men, and the new economic landscape impacts men and women differently.  At the same time, women are questioning whether to Lean In or Lean Out, and what it means to “have it all.”  The conference will build on these discussions. As always, the Center’s conference will serve as a forum for scholars, practitioners and activists to share ideas about applied feminism, focusing on the intersection of theory and practice to effectuate social change.  The conference seeks papers that discuss this year’s theme through the lens of an intersectional approach to feminist legal theory, addressing not only the premise of seeking justice for all people on behalf of their gender but also the interlinked systems of oppression based on race, sexual orientation, gender identity, class, immigration status, disability, and geographical and historical context.

Papers might explore the following questions:  What impact has feminist legal theory had on the workplace? How does work impact gender and vice versa?  How might feminist legal theory respond to issues such as stalled immigration reform, economic inequality, pregnancy accommodation, the low-wage workforce, women’s access to economic opportunities, family-friendly work environments, paid sick and family leave, decline in unionization, and low minimum wage rates?  What sort of support should society and law provide to ensure equal employment opportunities that provide for security for all?  How do law and feminist legal theory conceptualize the role of the state and the private sector in relation to work?  Are there rights to employment and what are their foundations?  How will the recent Supreme Court Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and Harris v. Quinn decisions impact economic opportunities for women?  How will the new EEOC guidance on pregnancy accommodation and the Young v. UPS upcoming Supreme Court decision affect rights of female workers? 

The conference will provide an opportunity for participants and audience members to exchange ideas about the current state of feminist legal theories.  We hope to deepen our understandings of how feminist legal theory relates to work and to move new insights into practice.  In addition, the conference is designed to provide presenters with the opportunity to gain feedback on their papers. 

The conference will begin the afternoon of Thursday, March 5, 2015, with a workshop.   This workshop will continue the annual tradition of involving all attendees as participants in an interactive discussion and reflection.   On Friday, March 6, 2015, the conference will continue with a day of presentations regarding current scholarship and/or legal work that explores the application of feminist legal theory to issues involving health.   The conference will be open to the public and will feature a keynote speaker. Past keynote speakers have included Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, Dr. Maya Angelou, Gloria Steinem, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Sheryl WuDunn, Senators Barbara Mikulski and Amy Klobuchar, and NOW President Terry O’Neill.

To submit a paper proposal, please submit an abstract by Friday, 5 p.m. on October 31, 2014, to [email protected].  It is essential that your abstract contain your full contact information, including an email, phone number, and mailing address where you can be reached.  In the “Re” line, please state:  CAF Conference 2015.  Abstracts should be no longer than one page.  We will notify presenters of selected papers in mid-November.  We anticipate being able to have twelve paper presenters during the conference on Friday, March 6, 2015. About half the presenter slots will be reserved for authors who commit to publishing in the symposium volume of the University of Baltimore Law Review.  Thus, please indicate at the bottom of your abstract whether you are submitting (1) solely to present or (2) to present and publish in the symposium volume.  Authors who are interested in publishing in the Law Review will be strongly considered for publication.  Regardless of whether or not you are publishing in the symposium volume, all working drafts of symposium-length or article-length papers will be due no later than February 13, 2015.   Abstracts will be posted on the Center on Applied Feminism’s conference website to be shared with other participants and attendees.   Presenters are responsible for their own travel costs; the conference will provide a discounted hotel rate, as well as meals. 

We look forward to your submissions.  If you have further questions, please contact Prof. Margaret Johnson at [email protected].

Opportunity at University of Ulster

Ciaran White, Senior Lecturer in Law and Director of the Ulster Law Clinic at the University of Ulster, has asked me to share this opportunity with the clinical community.  The University of Ulster is hiring a permanent Lecturer in Law to be associated with the Ulster Law Clinic at the Jordanstown campus, seven miles north of Belfast (at the base of the South Antrim Hills).  Details can be found here.

 If you have not been to Belfast recently, it is undergoing dynamic transformation as a result of the reconciliation efforts being made by many.  It is now the safest city in the United Kingdom, and has a rich and vibrant culture with strong Irish, Scottish, and English influences.  The complex political and economic history in the region makes the award-winning Ulster Law Clinic ideally situated for those committed to access to justice, especially in peaceful post-conflict settings.  There continue to be socio-economic disadvantages faced by large segments of the population, and there is a concerted effort to create a more just and integrated society. 

 In addition to the engaging setting of this opportunity, the opportunity to collaborate with someone like Ciaran White is exceptional.  I recently had the opportunity to visit with him and his family in Belfast and he is a perfect blend of intelligence, wit, humility, and humor.  His dedication to social justice is inspiring, and greatly needed in the Belfast community as it continues to move toward greater reconciliation and healing.  If you are in the position to consider an opportunity like this, I strongly encourage you to apply. 

 Ciaran can be contacted at [email protected] if you have any questions.

Student Life, Relationships & the Law: Confronting Domestic Violence in Higher Education

In recent days, several stories have highlighted dating violence and intimate partner violence in college.   Here is NPR from today, and here is an important piece in HuffPost on the intersections of campus culture, dating violence and sexual assault.   Here the Washington Post reports on Coach Nick Saban inviting speakers to address the Alabama football team on domestic violence and human dignity.    

Registration is now open for Pepperdine’s conference on DV/IPV on college campuses, October 10 - 11, 2014, at the School of Law in Malibu, California: 

Student Life, Relationships & the Law: Confronting Domestic Violence in Higher Education

Joining me on the organizing committee are Prof. Tanya Cooper of Alabama, Dr. Alesha Durfee of Arizona State,  Prof. Margaret Drew of UMass, Prof. Leigh Goodmark of Maryland, and my colleagues, Profs. Carol Chase, Maureen Weston, Janet Kerr and Tony Miller of Pepperdine.  

So far, multidisciplinary panels include professors, lawyers and activists from Alabama, North Carolina, UC-Davis and the UC system, Cincinnati, West Virginia, Vanderbilt, Pepperdine and other schools.    These panels will discuss critical topics including Title IX and Clery Act compliance and strategic interventions, intersectional critiques of institutional responses to DV/IPV, and comprehensive strategies to address campus culture through Greek life, student health, and model bystander programs.    

Please join us to discuss and illuminate this epidemic crisis in higher education.  Please share this information with leadership, administration, counsel, staff and faculty at your schools so that we may advance justice, peace and well-being among our students.   

Sacred Space and Justice Work

This week, besieged by news of injustice, violence, oppression, war, disease and death at home and around the globe, I have felt insulated in privilege and virtually helpless to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice.   I have cast about for ideas and action to take beyond shouting into the social media storms, and I remember this powerful weapon against injustice:

 

This is the new classroom for clinics at Pepperdine.   We just moved into new quarters at the School of Law, and this room will serve our clinic seminars, case rounds and externship workshops.   Presently, it is plain and simple, with temporary furniture and awaiting all of the technology of modern classrooms.   Even without projectors, computers, wired tables and ergonomic chairs, it is sacred space.  

Classrooms are our sanctuaries, and into that space we enter with students who are becoming lawyers, operatives and guardians of the Rule of Law.   They will be the public citizens responsible for ensuring the fate of the Republic.   Whether they are prosecutors or defenders, impact litigators or corporate counsel, in Congress or in a basement, they will enter communities with power and skills to shape society.   In our classrooms, we do not indoctrinate, but we work with students to shape who they will be, to guide how they will use their gilded brains and technical prowess.    This is holy ground.     

This is why I insist that students call me Professor. The title marks the relationship, the obligations and purpose of our undertaking.    Like we name judges, clergy and representatives, so we mark the office of teacher.  We remind ourselves and our students of the important work of preparing for work in the world.   They will take lives, families, liberty, fortunes and justice into their hands, so we do not take their training casually.   This is justice work.     

This week we had a brilliant full-moon.   My nine-year old daughter and I went out to look at it rising over the mountains around our house.   She said that she had never been able to understand the Man in the Moon.   She couldn’t envision it, couldn’t make her mind see the shapes in an image that everyone else could see.   I explained that the image was really shadows on the craters of the moon and described it as an abstract picture of a face that covered the whole circle of the moon, with wide eyes, a squiggly nose, an open mouth.   She said, “Oh, I see it!  Like it’s saying, ‘Oh!’”   She saw it, and she will see it forever.   She will forget that she could ever look at a full moon without seeing it. 

This is our best teaching.  We explain and demonstrate the concrete facts, the reality, but we infuse the cold, hard edges with ancient wisdom and the vision to see what might be.   We inspire imagination as we impart knowledge.   We interpret a vision that will forever shape the hearts and minds of students, and we must be careful.  We must show them the world as it is but lead them to imagine what can be.   

Our students go forth into the world to amplify our lessons to everyone in their worlds and to future generations.  In dark days, when doing my job seems ridiculously inadequate to the task, I take hope from the realist wisdom of Reinhold Niebuhr:

The fight for justice in society will always be a fight. But wherever the spirit of justice grows imaginative and is transmuted into love, a love in which the interests of the other are espoused, the struggle is transcended by just that much.

 

Five Questions for Stacy Caplow

Prof. Stacy Caplow is the Associate Dean for Professional Legal Education & Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School.   Brooklyn recently announced the addition of several new clinical faculty to support new and expanding programs.

 

1.  Recently you shared an announcement of several new hires on the Brooklyn clinical faculty.   Who are the professors joining you, and what will they be teaching?

Brooklyn Law School was able to hire four new clinicians this year.  The first, Jodi Balsam, is filling a newly created position of Director of Civil Externships.  Jodi most recently taught in the Lawyering Program at NYLS and before that in the Lawyering Program at NYU.  She worked for a major NYC law firm, the NFL and clerked in the federal court in both the SDNY and Second Circuit.  We have one of the most extensive externship programs in the country (not difficult in NYC) in which students work in judges’ chambers, law offices (both private and public interest) government agencies, and corporations.  More than 200 students each semester participate in externships (and that’s on top of the approximately 100 in our in-house clinics and another 50 in our hybrid clinics).  Jodi will bring experience as a both a teacher and practitioner to help us harness this program by creating better designed reflective components, working more closely with adjunct faculty, and reviewing all of the placements.  It’s a huge job but she’s already hard at work. 

Two clinical faculty members were recruited through our Center for Urban and Business Entrepreneurship (CUBE) a new center at Brooklyn Law School that stresses introducing students to the skills and values of being business lawyers, particularly to new enterprises.  We already have three popular and established transactional clinics —Community Development, Corporate Real Estate (affordable housing) and BLIP (Brooklyn Law Innovation & Policy-tech working with start ups and policy).  Expanding our clinics to enroll more students and to handle more and different types of projects has been a key goal of CUBE.  Our two new clinical faculty will work in these three clinics.  Ted DeBarbieri, an alum of the Community Development Clinic, has worked for years at the Urban Justice Center particularly in organizing worker’s coops.  Ted is a true ‘economic justice’ lawyer who most recently co-taught in a clinic at NYU.  The other new clinician, Marjorie White, stands in contrast to Ted.  She has spent her entire career in the private sector, both law firms and corporations, in a sophisticate global transactional practice.  Marjorie will work primarily in the BLIP clinic bringing her expertise in corporate law to Brooklyn Law School students.

Natalie Chin is the director of our newest offering, Advocates for Adults with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Clinic. This program was funded with a four-year grant to serve a very underrepresented group within the community of the disabled.  Natalie was most recently a Clinical Fellow at Cardozo where she co-taught in their Guardianship Clinic.  The AIIDD Clinic will assist individuals transitioning into adult services in employment and housing, and will also work to help draft and create instruments to assure the care and security of individuals as their own long-term caregivers age.  Natalie will spend this semester planning the program and we’ll enroll its first students in January.

 

2.  That is significant growth for a program in one year.   How did you, the deans and faculty at Brooklyn plan and prepare for the addition of these clinics and teachers?

It certainly is… and it’s more growth than we’ve experienced in a long time.  There are at least two explanations for this burst of activity.  First, we have a new Dean who is very supportive of our clinics and externships.  He truly understands that we need to provide the best designed, most thoughtful and most diverse opportunities to our students.  He cares about quality not just quantity.  Second, we have been really lucky in our fundraising.  It should come as no surprise that donors respect and are excited by the kind of education that takes place in clinics.  But this is really the first time in the law school’s history that we have raised so much private funding (the late lamented DOE and LSC money did wonders but that’s long gone) that does not merely allow us to expand temporarily but to do some serious long term building.  Third, it’s no accident that this is happening at a time that law schools are undergoing seismic changes.  Our school has distinguished itself for a long time by having a large, diverse and exciting clinical program.  The message about learning from practice as a way of preparing for a career is resonating even more loudly these days. Applicants to the school see these opportunities, and employers value our students’ clinical experiences.  Why wouldn’t a school support one of its most enduring and valuable pillars!?  In fact, our faculty voted a practical skills course requirement this year too.  It was easy to persuade them to do this since all but 17 students in last year’s graduating class had taken at least one semester of a clinic or externship

 

3.   What are your strategies and visions for the program in coming years after such a big year of expansion?

Obviously we are not likely to experience such dramatic growth often.  We will be looking for one more new clinician once Natalie starts in September since our grant also funds a fellow/staff attorney position.  So that will make 5!  But one of our senior, tenured clinicians is retiring at the end of next year so my immediate goal is to engage our faculty in thinking about what kind of clinical program should be our next step, and to start a tenure-track hiring process.  Ask me next summer if I managed to persuade my faculty that this would be an important next step.  We are also hiring a new Director of Legal Writing so I am hoping to collaborate with my new colleague to bring more writing and skills classes to the upperclass elective curriculum.  Over the past decade, most of our expansion took place in hybrid programs.  With all of these new programs and the expansion of existing programs, we should be reorienting ourselves to expanding or at least holding fast to our in-house offerings and making sure we have a strong faculty infrastructure for all of our programs

 

4.  How has the expansion of your programs affected your work as program director and your own teaching and clinical practice? 

Funny you should ask!  I had a sabbatical last semester but worked harder than ever recruiting all of these new hires and pushing through other projects.  After about a year of effort, I am launching a new program this fall that I’ll be teaching.  It’s called the Public Interest/Public Service Fellowship Program.  It’s modeled after and owes a big debt to the Lawyers for America Program at Hastings.  Nine students will be doing year-long, full-time externships at six different law offices (6 public interest, 3 government placements) and taking a 4-credit seminar with me that also satisfies the Professional Responsibility requirement.  After they take the bar exam, they will return to their placements as paid Fellows for one year.  In most cases, their salaries are comparable to entry-level hires at these offices.  While there is no guarantee that they will find permanent employment at the host office, at the end of two years they will have had a lot of valuable experience and will be admitted to the bar (hopefully).  And by the way, I’m still supervising students in the Safe Harbor Immigration Project and teaching immigration law.  My academic dean gave me a break this fall and allowed me to not teach Criminal Law for the first time in more than twenty years.

 

5.  In California, the state bar is ready to enact rules to require 50 hours of pro bono and 15 units of professional skills classes as a requirement for admission to the bar.  New York already has such rules; how have New York’s bar rules affected your work in clinics and externships?

Not really since the 50 hour requirement includes all clinics and externships in the public sector, even judicial, so our students have no trouble meeting the requirement.  As I mentioned above, we passed a skills course requirement (excluding simulations) with no controversy.  We’ve found that more than 60-70% of our students take two semesters in either a clinic or externship. 100% of the class take a skills course, including simulations.

It's a GREAT day for clinical law

Yesterday, the ABA House of Delegates voted to approve a number of law school reforms, including one that would require students to “take a minimum of six hours in a legal clinic or other ‘experiential’ environment,” the National Law Journal reports.  Kudos to Kate Kruse and Claudia Angelos, who have led this charge for positive change on behalf of the Clinical Legal Education Association or CLEA, whose mission is “to advocate for clinical legal education.”  In their most recent update for the spring 2014 CLEA newsletter (p. 3-4), they recount the history behind “the most sweeping changes to the ABA Standards to come in the area of law school curriculum” and CLEA’s petition to the ABA that, compared to numerous other professions to require practical training, “the law lagged far behind.”  Of course, as Bob Kuehn writes in the fall 2013 CLEA newsletter (p. 6), several “states are stepping into the breach to address the lack of adequate practice-based training in law school” by requiring new candidates for admission to their bar to have prior experiential education.  Even though, as Kruse and Angelos note, “implementation of the 6-credit experiential education requirement will go into effect three years after enactment,” this is a great day for experiential law; congrats to all.

For Clinicians, “Happiness is the Truth”

This has been a Happy year for artist Pharrell Williams, and also for clinical law school teachers.  Lawyer happiness (well-being and career contentment) was a central theme at this year’s AALS Clinical Conference, Becoming a Better Clinician, where several clinicians presented empirical research (see Nancy Levit, et al.’s bibliography on p. 89-90).  Turns out that factors like professional autonomy in a supportive environment, a genuine sense of serving a benevolent purpose, and alignment of work/personal values really matter when assessing job satisfaction, as Larry Krieger and Ken Sheldon’s 6200-subject study on what makes lawyers happy found.  In a summary for the spring 2014 CLEA newsletter (p. 27-8), Krieger puts his study’s “striking” findings in context for clinicians: “they showed that the hierarchical, competitive, and materialistic priorities common to many law schools and law firms can undermine lawyer happiness and satisfaction. . . . For example, when comparing subjects by practice grouping, the group with the highest mean pay and class ranks, lawyers in ‘prestige’ jobs, were less happy, and felt less competent in practice, than the group with the lowest mean grades and pay, lawyers in public service positions.  Thus, both ‘success’ and ‘competence’ as traditionally measured in law school do not appear to translate to real lawyers in actual work settings.”

In the real world, too many lawyers are unhappy, as Leigh McMullan Abramson wrote in last month’s The Atlantic.  Abramson left the law, disenchanted with her large-firm experience, and was surprised to learn there is an industry devoted to helping people leave the profession.  “Law-firm associate consistently ranks at the top of unhappy-professions lists and despite starting salaries of $160,000, law firms experience significant yearly associate attrition.” (hyperlinks in original).  “The problem,” Abramson notes, “can begin with the choice to go to law school, which is often made for reasons having nothing to do with the actual practice of law and without diligence about whether the profession is really a fit.” 

Finding your fit in the profession is precisely how some law schools help students address this lawyer-burnout problem.  At the University of Alabama School of Law, for example, Pamela Pierson has created The Business of Being a Lawyer, a mandatory ethics course that explores topics like the ever-changing legal market and employment trends, basic personal finance planning, emotional intelligence (see also Dr. Martin E.P. Seligman’s Authentic Happiness questionnaires), and how to effectively become a “free agent” given that “the average attorney will change jobs seven times in a career,” and “attorneys need marketing skills to position themselves for multiple employment situations and transitions throughout their careers.” 

Another reason for lawyers’ blues, Abramson highlights, is the “disconnect between the training students receive and the skills required in practice.”  Too many new grads feel ill-equipped for practice.  Enter experiential learning.  If only it was ubiquitous and mandatory.  That should change since the ABA voted yesterday that new “standards for law schools would require students to take a minimum of six hours in a clinic or other ‘experiential’ environment,” the National Law Journal reports.  The data does not however suggest, Krieger explains, that either clinical or externship experience in law school contributes to lawyer wellbeing; instead, “the most important factors relating to well-being are also factors that would tend to develop more in experiential programs – autonomy, competence, relatedness to others, interest in/passion for one’s work, and valuing altruistic service.” 

Speaking of legal education reform, Montré Carodine suggests in her article for Ozy that law profs get back to practice: the “key to innovation in law schools is having policy makers immersed in the real world for substantial periods of time.”  As a clinician, I relish that daily privilege.  Practicing with students keeps me informed about how the law is interpreted and justice meted out in everyday scenarios that usually involve the poor, unpopular, and often disenfranchised segment of local society.  In those opportunities, I learn what is and how to teach best practices, and it is satisfying.  Clients and students alike report similarly positive outcomes, and how they felt treated and able to participate in the process.  We are, according to Jane Aiken, Provocateurs for Justice.  On occasion, a monumental case with issues of law and fact of first impression will arise, and we can contribute to its common lawmaking.  We especially get to interact with those people affected and that makes a big difference in our experience and ability to convey their plight, and the responsibilities and rewards abound.  And I for one am happy to clap along.

The U.S. Feminist Judgments Project: Call for Applications

Prof. Kathryn M. Stanchi of Temple University Beasley School of Law and her co-editors share this call for applications for contributors, authors and editors for The U.S. Feminist Judgments Project:

The U.S. Feminist Judgments Project seeks contributors of revised opinions and commentary for an edited collection entitled Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court. This edited volume is a collaborative project among feminist law professors and others to rewrite, from a feminist perspective, key Supreme Court decisions relevant to gender issues. Editors Kathy Stanchi, Linda Berger and Bridget Crawford seek prospective authors for 20 to 25 rewritten Supreme Court opinions covering a range of topics including reproductive rights, equal protection, the state’s use of criminal power, privacy, the family, women’s political participation, Title IX, employment discrimination and substantive due process. The editors also seek authors for commentaries of 1,500 to 2,500 words to put into context each of the rewritten cases.

The U.S. Feminist Judgments project was inspired by the successful collection and publication in Britain of Feminist Judgments:From Theory to Practice, edited by Rosemary Hunter, Clare McGlynn, and Erika Rackley. This volume, which included feminist versions of twenty-three key British decisions from the Court of Appeal and House of Lords, was published in 2010 and has been very well received. Like the sister project in Britain, the U.S. Feminist Judgments Project endeavors to pioneer “a new form of critical socio-legal scholarship” that illustrates how cases could have been decided differently had a feminist method been employed. We believe that U.S. Supreme Court law is ripe for this kind of scholarly treatment.

Those who are interested in rewriting an opinion or providing the commentary on one of the rewritten opinions should fill out an application here.

Applications are due by September 15, 2014 at 5:00 p.m. eastern. Editors will notify accepted authors and commentators by October 7, 2014. First drafts of rewritten opinions will be due on February 1, 2015. First drafts of comments on the rewritten opinions will be due on March 15, 2015. The editors are in the process of identifying a publisher; publication of the final volume is anticipated for late 2015.

A list of cases tentatively scheduled for rewriting is available here.

Applicants may indicate their preferences among the list of cases. Applicants also may suggest other cases for rewriting. The tentative cases were chosen with the input and advice of an Advisory Panel of distinguished U.S. scholars including Kathryn Abrams, Katharine Bartlett,Devon Carbado, Mary Anne Case, Erwin Chemerinsky, April Cherry, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Martha Fineman, Margaret Johnson, Sonia Katyal, Nancy Leong, Catharine MacKinnon, Rachel Moran, Melissa Murray, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Nancy Polikoff, Dorothy Roberts, Dan Rodriguez, Susan Ross, Vicki Schultz, Dean Spade, Robin West, and Verna Williams.

Professor Ken Dunham

My friend, Ken Dunham, begins his last semester teaching this week.  He is retiring after a long, fruitful career first as an accountant, then a lawyer for decades, then reborn as a mediator and clinical law professor.  I met Ken at Faulkner University Jones School of Law where I started teaching as the school’s first dedicated clinical director.  

The truth is that Ken had been the clinical director there before there was a clinical program to direct.   He started the first clinic there, JSL’s Mediation Clinic, even as he founded the school’s center on alternative dispute resolution and as he helped design and shape Alabama’s systems for alternative dispute resolution.  He researched, designed and launched the school’s externship program, all before the school moved from state-accreditation to full approval by the ABA.   Ken wisely navigated complex local politics, using his training and experience as a mediator and negotiator to help guide JSL through great and disruptive transitions.  

Ken laid the foundation for the clinical program which I led for a long season as a rookie law professor, and he only ever encouraged and empowered me.  We became and are fast friends, and he is a wise, calm and committed colleague with a heart for justice.   We coached JSL’s ABA Negotiation Competition and the ABA Representation in Mediation Competition teams, and won a national championship in 2013.   In these competitions, we traveled the country together with students, and I discovered Ken’s secret weapon.   He knew really good restaurants in every single city we ever visited, and this is knowledge not to be underestimated.        

Professor Ken Dunham is a loving, funny teacher, and he has had a formative effect on generations of students at JSL.   He has transformed Alabama’s system and culture of alternative dispute resolution.   He has been indispensable in the building of a strong and scrappy law school that serves Montgomery and Alabama with excellence.   He is a great friend to many and is a wise mentor to young lawyers throughout the South.   He is devoted as a husband and father, and he tells great stories without end.   He is an excellent, practical lawyer.  

Thoreau wrote, “Do not be too moral.  You may cheat yourself out of too much life.   Aim above morality.  Be not simply good; be good for something.”   Ken Dunham is moral, and he is good.  He lives a full and abundant life, and he has been good for something.     He has earned retirement, but he will strive to teach and love students for one more semester.  His legacy is secure. 

But How Do I Teach...? Good question, now that summer's about over.

If you are like me, summers go way too fast.  One of the challenges of being a clinician is that your summers are more often than not filled with roll-over cases/students, summer classes, externships, and miscellaneous writing/vacations/activities.  Sooner than we know, it is fall semester again, and we are once again faced with new students, new cases, new challenges and an impetus to energize ourselves and our curriculum.  As I am not quite ready to face that yet, and others of you might feel similarly, I thought I would post a distraction instead, to get us through the remainder of summer. My summer ends in 11 days, and I plan on making the most of it!

It's around this time of year that I take a few minutes at work to recycle, clean my office, water my neglected plants and look for new office decorations to get me through another academic year.   Some of my favorite works are by an artist called Brandon Bird.  Brandon gained a decent reputation when he developed a Law and Order Coloring Book several years ago, which if you haven't seen it, is available here and offers up a few chuckles: http://brandonbird.com/lno_color.html.  As further incentive, it contains a dot-to-dot of the cop character Lenny Briscoe, which is always useful on a day you need something to procrastinate with.

My most recent work purchase is a print called "A Night Away" (image below from http://brandonbird.com/lno_camping.html).  I like it for its subtlety and because students usually do a triple take once they see the print.  And because, let's be honest, sometimes we all just need a night away.  Even Lenny Briscoe and Jack McCoy.

Here's to all of us having a good rest of our summer and a fresh start to the new academic year.  May your offices be free of clutter, files neatly organized, withdrawals all granted and classes all prepped.  Best wishes for Academic Year 2014-15!

 

 

 

Immigration Profs Doing Remarkable Work

This week I am extremely proud to see coverage of some amazing immigration work by my friends and colleagues, Penn State's own Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia; and University of Baltimore's Liz Keyes.   Wadhia, who directs Penn State Law's Center for Immigrants Rights is the Samuel Weis Faculty Scholar, developed a toolkit for practitioners representing noncitizens in withholding only proceedings.  Read more about this important project she involved her clinic students in here:

http://law.psu.edu/news/immigration-clinic-creates-toolkit-withholding-only-proceedings

In related news, a recent Washington Post story profiled Elizabeth Keyes' Immigrant Rights Clinic at the University of Baltimore School of Law.  The story explains the clinic's work with Baltimore's Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) on cases involving unaccompanied immigrant minors:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/clinic-on-the-front-lines-of-immigration-battle/2014/08/02/0b899fe4-1a46-11e4-88f7-96ed767bb747_story.html

With the national spotlight shining on immigration issues, this important work by our colleagues reminds us why instilling the values of lawyering for social justice are critical to our work with law students. 

Prof. Terry Adamson, Pepperdine’s New Director of Externships

Today, Prof. Terry Adamson joins Pepperdine’s clinical faculty as our new Director of Externships.   Prof. Adamson has been a valuable part of the law school’s community for years, as an adjunct, coach and, most recently, as our Distinguished Jurist in Residence.   She is a former Commissioner for the Los Angeles County Superior Court where she served for nearly 20 years.   She was a prosecutor for the Los Angeles County District Attorney after law school at the University of San Diego.  

Terry has a teacher’s heart and loves our students.  She is an excellent, practical lawyer, and she has cultivated a vital network of friends and colleagues in Southern California.   With our Prof. Harry Caldwell, she is the author of CRIMINAL PRETRIAL ADVOCACY. 

We are working to expand and improve experiential learning at Pepperdine, with new programs, new space and new faculty.   Terry is a vital part of our school and brings new depth and focus to our field placement program.  As you have opportunity, please welcome her to the clinical community.          

Dr. Artika Tyner, The Lawyer as Leader: How to Plant People and Grow Justice

This summer, Professor Artika Tyner of the University of St. Thomas School of Law, published her book, The Lawyer as Leader: How to Plant People and Grow Justice.  Dr. Tyner teaches in the Community Justice Project Legal Clinic at St. Thomas’s Interprofessional Center for Counseling and Legal Services. 

The book, available here through the ABA, is a “roadmap designed to help you become an effective agent for social change and transformational leader.”   From Dr. Tyner’s site:

The social justice challenges of our time are enormous.  About one in seven U.S. residents live in poverty and the disparity between the haves and have-nots is wider than at any point since the Great Depression.  The poor are largely marginalized from the public policy process and often are unable to assert their legal rights in regard to basic necessities such as nutrition, health, shelter, income, education, and protection from violent physical abuse.  More broadly, the poor are perpetually victimized by systems which maintain and uphold discrimination, disparate outcomes, and subordination based upon one’s social identity.

Experienced educator and community advocate, Dr. Artika Tyner shows how you can make a difference in the world.  The book is a beacon call for those who wish to join the fight for social and economic justice.  Highlights include:

• The three pillars of new social justice lawyering: (1) Origins and theories of social justice lawyering, (2) Principles of servant and transformational leadership, and (3) The lawyer as policy entrepreneur and coalition builder.

• How to build your own leadership platform; how to create communities based on a shared vision of justice; and how to plant seeds to empower future leaders.

The Lawyer as Leader will provide those who are passionate about social justice with the inspiration, ideas, and tools to build and lead coalitions to fight for social and economic justice.

 

Fall is coming.

After we launched the blog with a bang at the end of the school year, we slowed down during the summer months.  We’re law professors, after all.   As we approach the new school year, we are committed to growing this community and contributing good information and ideas for the sake of justice and good teaching.  

If you have news to share, please do!  We love to amplify stories of clinical programs and teachers, new faculty additions, new programs, expanding initiatives, job postings, student successes, clients, causes and classrooms.  Please reach out to any of our contributing editors if you have stories, news and ideas to share.