Clinical Law Prof Blog

JOBS: Clinical Opening at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law

Via Professor Tamar R. Birckhead, Director of Clinical Programs:

Position Announcement: Clinical Faculty Appointment for Consumer Financial Transactions Legal Clinic

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law seeks an experienced, versatile legal practitioner with a passion for justice and teaching to supervise the Consumer Financial Transactions (CFT) Clinic. The Law School’s Clinical Programs have a long and proud history of providing high quality, free legal representation to under-resourced individuals, organizations and communities in North Carolina while training the state’s next generation of lawyers.

The CFT Clinic supervisor will be hired as a 12-month, fixed-term faculty member. This is a one-year renewable contract. UNC Law School has guaranteed funding for the CFT Clinic and the faculty supervisor through the 2017-2018 academic year.

The CFT clinic supervisor will report to the Director of Clinical Programs and supervise a clinic in which law students represent low- and moderate-income clients who hold home mortgages that are at risk of foreclosure or are being foreclosed upon. The Clinic also represents clients in other consumer financial matters such as unfair debt collection practices and abusive practices related to credit cards, short-time loans, student loans, and check-cashing services.

Applicants must have a J.D. from an accredited law school. The ideal candidate will have a minimum of five years practice experience and either experience or a demonstrated interest in teaching. S/he will have a background in representing under-resourced clients in mortgage foreclosure cases as well as other consumer financial transactions. The CFT Clinic supervisor must be, or become prior to starting the position, licensed to practice law in the State of North Carolina. S/he will also be flexible and adaptable and able to work as a member of a team in a fast-paced law clinic environment.

Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. Applications must be submitted electronically at http://unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/80876. Click on the preceding direct-link URL from any browser to apply. Applications should include a resume or curriculum vitae, a letter of application, and contact information for four references. We particularly encourage candidates from members of groups under-represented in legal education.

Confidential inquiries are welcome; such inquiries may be made to Professor Tamar R. Birckhead, Director of Clinical Programs by email: [email protected].

For more information about the UNC-CH School of Law, please visit our website: www.law.unc.edu. For more information about our Clinical Programs, please visit: http://www.law.unc.edu/academics/clinic/.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer and welcomes all to apply regardless of race, color, gender, national origin, age, religion, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. We also encourage protected veterans and individuals with disabilities to apply.

JOBS: Clinical Positions at Texas A&M

Via Prof. Terri Lynn Helge (emphasis added):

TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW seeks to expand its academic program and its strong commitment to scholarship by hiring multiple exceptional faculty candidates for tenure-track or tenured positions, with rank dependent on qualifications and experience.  Candidates must have a J.D. degree or its equivalent.  Preference will be given to those with demonstrated outstanding scholarly achievement and strong classroom teaching skills.  Successful candidates will be expected to teach and engage in research and service.  While the law school welcomes applications in all subject areas, it particularly invites applications from:

1)      Candidates who are interested in building synergies with Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School, with an emphasis on scholars engaged in international business law who focus on cross-border transactions, trade, and economic law (finance, investments, dispute resolution, etc.);

2)      Candidates who are interested in building synergies with the broad mission of Texas A&M University’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, which include but are not limited to scholars engaged in agricultural law (including regulatory issues surrounding agriculture), rural law, community development law, food law, ecosystem sciences, and forensic evidence; and

3)      Visionary leaders in experiential education interested in guiding our existing Intellectual Property and Technology Law Clinic (with concentrations in both trademarks and patents), Entrepreneurship Law Clinic, Family Law and Benefits Clinic, Employment Mediation Clinic, Wills & Estates Clinic, Innocence Clinic, Externship Program, Equal Justice/Pro Bono Program, and Advocacy Program, with a particular emphasis on candidates who may have an interest in participating in our Intellectual Property and Technology Law Clinic or developing an Immigration Law Clinic.

Texas A&M University is a tier one research institution and American Association of Universities member.  The university consists of 16 colleges and schools that collectively rank among the top 20 higher education institutions nationwide in terms of research and development expenditures.  As part of its commitment to continue building on its tradition of excellence in scholarship, teaching, and public service, Texas A&M acquired the law school from Texas Wesleyan University in August of 2013.  Since that time, the law school has embarked on a program of investment that increased its entering class credentials and financial aid budgets, while shrinking the class size; hired eleven new faculty members, including nine prominent lateral hires; improved its physical facility; and substantially increased its career services, admissions, and student services staff. 

Texas A&M School of Law is located in the heart of downtown Fort Worth, one of the largest and fastest growing cities in the country.  The Fort Worth/Dallas area, with a total population in excess of six million people, offers a low cost of living, a strong economy, and access to world-class museums, restaurants, entertainment, and outdoor activities.

As an Equal Opportunity Employer, Texas A&M welcomes applications from a broad spectrum of qualified individuals who will enhance the rich diversity of the university’s academic community. Applicants should email a résumé and cover letter indicating research and teaching interests to Professor Timothy Mulvaney, Chair of the Faculty Appointments Committee, at [email protected].  Alternatively, résumés can be mailed to Professor Mulvaney at Texas A&M University School of Law, 1515 Commerce Street, Fort Worth, Texas 76102-6509.

 

JOBS: Clinical Director and Tenure Track Positions at South Carolina

Via Josh Gupta-Kagan:

The University of South Carolina is soliciting applications for several clinical faculty positions, including director and tenure track positions.  Here is Prof. Gupta-Kagan's note, followed by the formal position announcements:

The University of South Carolina School of Law is hiring clinicians.

We are looking for candidates to apply for several (yes, several) clinical positions at the University of South Carolina School of Law, located in Famously Hot™ Columbia, SC. 

The University of South Carolina School of Law is hiring for two tenure-track clinical professors, and for a clinic director (our long-standing director Lewis Burke is now enjoying retirement).  We are looking for outstanding candidates interested in developing their own clinic, who are committed to teaching excellence, and who show scholarly promise.  We are truly open to a variety of subject areas and would love proposals from candidates.  Please note that clinical professors are tenure-track, and that we invite applications from entry-level candidates, candidates who have a non-tenure track position and who wish to switch to a tenure-track job, and candidates who have completed their first or second year of teaching and are interested in exploring new opportunities.

For the clinic director position, we are looking for someone with a minimum of five years in clinical legal education.

We will be at the AALS hiring conference in DC, and applicants can apply through the FAR process.  Anyone who is interested may also contact me directly – I am on the hiring committee -- or apply directly to the full committee.  The formal postings are here:

 

Clinic director

The University of South Carolina School of Law invites applications for a tenured or tenure-track Clinical Director position to begin fall semester 2016. Candidates should have a juris doctorate or equivalent degree and a minimum experience of five years in clinical legal education. Additionally, a successful applicant should have a record of excellence in academia or in practice, the potential to be an outstanding teacher, and demonstrable scholarly promise.  Interested persons should send a resume, references, and subject area preferences to Prof. Eboni Nelson, Chair, Faculty Selection Committee, c/o Kim Fanning, University of South Carolina School of Law, 701 S. Main St., Columbia, SC 29208 or, by email, to [email protected] (electronic submissions preferred).

The University of South Carolina is committed to a diverse faculty, staff, and student body.  We encourage applications from women, minorities, persons with disabilities, and others whose background, experience, and viewpoints contribute to the diversity of our institution.

The University of South Carolina is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the base of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender, or veteran status. 

 

Tenure-track clinicians

The University of South Carolina School of Law invites applications for tenured, tenure-track, or visiting faculty positions to begin fall semester 2016. Candidates should have a juris doctorate or equivalent degree. Additionally, a successful applicant should have a record of excellence in academia or in practice, the potential to be an outstanding teacher, and demonstrable scholarly promise.  Although the School of Law is especially interested in candidates who are qualified to teach in the areas of taxation, clinical legal education, environmental law and small business, we are equally interested in candidates who can contribute to the diversity of our law school community whose teaching interests may fall outside of these areas.  Interested persons should send a resume, references, and subject area preferences to Prof. Eboni Nelson, Chair, Faculty Selection Committee, c/o Kim Fanning, University of South Carolina School of Law, 701 S. Main St., Columbia, SC 29208 or, by email, to[email protected] (electronic submissions preferred).

The University of South Carolina is committed to a diverse faculty, staff, and student body.  We encourage applications from women, minorities, persons with disabilities, and others whose background, experience, and viewpoints contribute to the diversity of our institution.

The University of South Carolina is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the base of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender, or veteran status. 

Building on Best Practices

I am a bit of a Veruca Salt when it comes to certain things, including books, especially ones that promise to be transformative--“I want it and I want it now, Daddy!” And so last December, I demurely offered to copy edit Building on Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education in a Changing World before it went to the publisher. This was no sacrificial duty on my part. I had the opportunity to read a couple of the chapters in draft form earlier in the year and I was impatiently hungry for more—a lot more, and now! The pedagogical feast did not disappoint. 

The editors describe the goals of Building on Best Practices  as a “[R]eflection on the best of current and emerging practices in legal education that will guide individual teachers and law school administrations in designing a program of legal education that meets the needs of the lawyers of tomorrow. Today's law students will enter a profession vastly different from the one their predecessors experienced, for which different skills, knowledge and values are necessary. This book is an attempt to synthesize important developments in legal education that have occurred since the publication of Best Practices for Legal Education. It is designed as a resource for anyone who hopes to contribute to the betterment of legal education and wishes to explore positive opportunities for change.” 

As promised, the book builds on Best Practices in Legal Education, which was written by Roy Stuckey et al. and published by CLEA in 2007. Building on Best Practices takes into consideration the crisis in legal education, advances in technology, the diversification of students in U.S. law schools, changes in the profession, new accreditation standards, the further development of educational research into how we learn, and much, much more.

Coincidentally, I was reading the book while attending the 2015 AALS Annual Meeting, and as I moved from the sessions and discussions at the Annual Meeting back into the pages of the book, I was struck by the level of synchronicity between the concerns raised by our colleagues at the meeting and the insights and guidance provided by Building on Best Practices. The book is both timely and relevant at a time when legal educators need help—badly. Legal education is at least in flux, and possibly, in crisis, and it is crucial that we recognize our challenges and collaboratively identify and implement solutions to help us move forward into a new stage in history.

That collaboration is evident from cover to cover in Building on Best Practices. Edited by Deborah Maranville, Lisa Radtke Bliss, Carolyn Wilkes Kaas, and Antoinette Sedillo Lopez (eds.), it includes contributions from more than 50 legal educators from law schools across the country. The publisher, LexisNexis, is making the $50 print book available to every legal educator in the U.S. at no cost and has already made the ebook version available (also at no charge).   

Here's the link to the ebook, in case you, like me, just can’t wait to devour more: http://www.lexisnexis.com/store/search/search-results.jsp?_requestid=31396\.

Atticus Finch's Causes in To Kill A Mockingbird

Harper Lee is publishing Go Set A Watchman this week, and I am worried about it. I am worried about its provenance, its timing and its quality.  I am not worried that we will learn that Atticus Finch is a racist.  If we read To Kill A Mockingbird closely, that will come as no surprise.   

I have a tendency to talk about Atticus Finch and the events of To Kill A Mockingbird as if they are historical.   TKAM is my canon, and Atticus is a hero.   I’m an Alabama lawyer. I wear seersucker, even in California.   I avoided seeing the Gregory Peck movie until well into my 30s because the images in my head from the novel were too sacred to interrupt with a Hollywood vision.   I taught Law & Literature one summer in Montgomery, and my students joked that it should have been the Law & Atticus Finch.  My second daughter’s middle name is Scout.  I love me some Atticus Finch and take these matters seriously.

My love for the novel and its people and places certainly isn’t rare.   It is transformative, holy writ in American letters, law and justice.   Along with so many other adoring readers, the late release of Go Set A Watchman has troubled me much.   I am relatively satisfied now that people and powers are not exploiting Harper Lee, although releasing the once rejected book now is bizarre and problematic.   Even so, I am excited to read it, unless, as Maureen Corrigan suggests that this new-old-revised-previous Atticus is “different in kind, not just degree.”

Some, however, appear to be shocked to discover that Atticus Finch is a racist who doesn’t mind segregation all that much and just wants to treat his neighbors kindly without rocking the boat, a Southern white man alarmed at the Supreme Court’s intrusion into the equilibrium of Southern culture.   We often give folks a pass on complicity by saying they are people “of their time.”  Atticus is a man of his time, a thriving presence in his town, a pillar of his community.  That time, town and community are all manifestations of reconstructed, impoverished, racist, segregation, and it’s not Atticus’s plan to disrupt it.  His plan is to get Tom Robinson to trial alive and to try hard to make that trial fair.   He does this on the strength of his own reputation, not by indicting Jim Crow. 

In TKAM, Atticus is a hero lawyer, but he is not a hero for racial justice.   He was a courageous, kind, benevolent, paternal white man on the top of a segregated social order, and he did nothing to change that.  He’s not really offended or outraged by it.  He did not challenge it among his neighbors, and his defense of Tom Robinson was not a crusade for racial reconciliation.  Atticus’s heroism was in the service of the law, the rule of law, procedural fairness and access to justice.   Atticus was decent and true, honest and courageous, but the causes that led him to risk his reputation and his family’s safety were his own honor as a lawyer and his devotion to the rule of law.  He was no agitator, no prophet. 

The New York Times’s early review susses out the new ideas of Go Set A Watchman, that Atticus Finch, decades after the Tom Robinson trial, is not a radical warrior for racial justice.   Scout returns to Alabama from New York as a hard working 20-something woman to find her father and her fiancé angry about Brown v. Board of Education.  Atticus resists integration and is a common white professional in Alabama in the 50s, conservative and reticent, stoic and diligent, benevolent but not interested in uprooting a social structure reliant on white supremacy and segregation.

This should not be a huge shock.  When Atticus tells Jem that he shouldn’t judge a man until he has walked in his shoes, he’s talking about their white neighbors, not the black folk.  When he says it’s a sin to kill a songbird, it’s a patriarchal metaphor rooted in chivalrous noblesse oblige.     Atticus makes sure his white peers are not made unduly uncomfortable by his court appointed case.  He wants a fair trial for Tom Robinson, but he doesn’t mean to offend anyone by it.  He soft sells the town’s racism to keep the jury engaged.  

Atticus guards the jailhouse from the lynch mob with astounding courage and inspiring pacifism.  He guards it literally with illumination (the lamp), knowledge (the newspaper) and himself.  But he was standing his ground in the defense of the American jury trial and the client to whom he owes loyalty and zealous advocacy.   He was willing to put himself, unarmed and guarded only by his own ethos and honor, between the mob and his client, but it wasn’t to dismantle segregation.  He and his children guarded the mob from itself, too, pulling the culture back from the brink of lawless violence to make sure the work of the court could go on.   

If Atticus had tried to lead a movement against segregation and white supremacy, he very likely would have lost the trial worse than he did, and along the way, he would have lost his practice, his seat in the legislature and his standing in the community.  He would have exposed his client’s family and his own to terror.  It would not have served his client, even if it was the righteous cause, so even if he would have railed against racism, he made a savvy move to craft a different narrative. 

In the trial, Atticus’s principal move to seek an acquittal was to pit Tom’s credibility against the Ewells.  Here he tries to pit one bias against another, hoping that disdain for the white-trash, irreligious rednecks will overcome the blunt racism against a black man who works hard for his family.   The jury can’t do what he asks, and he never really expected them to.   He fought to give Tom a fair trial, like the best kind of public citizen lawyer, and he called on the jury to do their democratic duty under the law.  He did not call out their own racism or impugn the segregated system that funneled them all into the courthouse in the first place.

Atticus knew he would get an appeal and intended to take it, but Tom was shot and killed trying to escape because he realized there were forces beyond his lawyer’s control, finally.   Ewell got his justice when he tried to defend his own honor on the Finch children, but even then, the Sheriff forced Atticus to concede that to prosecute or celebrate Boo Radley would be unfair to Boo and disruptive to the balance of the town.  It was the hardest pill Atticus had to swallow, admitting that the law and process might not render real justice, but he realizes it only when it affects his own.    

Atticus Finch is the personification of Southern duality: hospitable, honorable, generous, honest and profoundly committed to community and family, and complicit in systemic injustice, self-destructive mythology and a strong preference for nostalgic stasis.   Peace, order and stability trump the disruptions and discomfort necessary for real justice and reconciliation.  

Atticus Finch is my hero, but he is not a perfect archetype.  He is flawed, tragically.   He is a great lawyer, a great neighbor, honest and true, the kind of person and attorney who does the work that must be done regardless of the price.  The lawyer whom everyone trusts to do the work they will not do themselves.   He sacrificed himself and his family for his client, for the law and for the fairness of the justice system.  He called his community to its better angels. He is creative, dogged and deeply devoted to the law, demanding by his presence that his client receive a fair trial.    

In all of that, he does not publicly critique segregation or the systems that oppress and divide.  He doesn’t call people from their inherited ways.  He knows who he is, who his neighbors are, what the system is, what the culture wrought, but his is the way of a lawyer with a client.  He is not a prophet with a cause.  He provides comfort and courage within the boundaries of his own world and people, making an incremental nudge towards decency, not a revolution.  

Go Set A Watchman may change all this and call Atticus into disrepute. I hope it doesn’t.  Atticus is already plenty nuanced, human, striving and failing.   As with most mythology, the reality is much more compelling than the pleasant stories we choose to remember. 

Vacation, all I ever wanted...or needed?

It’s July. Let’s talk about vacation. More specifically, have you booked yours?

I’d like to invite us to consider vacation as a matter of professionalism. Vacation as duty to ourselves, to our clients, to our students and the profession. A bit too far-reaching? I actually don’t think so.

I’ve spent the better part of the past two years researching, thinking, talking and writing about well-being, self-care and work-life balance.  The way I see it, we are a part of a profession with a longstanding tradition of workaholism and compromised mental health, one that leads other industries in depression, alcoholism, substance abuse and career dissatisfaction. Unfortunately, we are doing far to little to turn the ship. It seems that it's a ship that we would want to turn for our own sakes, of course. However, the task seems all the more important for us as clinical professors, given that we spend our days teaching and mentoring the next generation of lawyers. 

The causes and remedies to these problems are by no means uncomplicated, but one central theme continues to surface in these kinds of conversations: the need for self-care. Taking care of ourselves can feel selfish or privileged, especially as we serve clients and communities who cannot imagine such luxuries as paid vacation time or holiday travel. However, thanks to work being done in other people-centered fields like social work, I have become convinced that the best gift I can give my clients and the community that I serve is for me to be alert and energetic, thoughtful and ready to take on the day's work. For me, failure to recharge and step away from the difficulties of my practice results in a burnout that dances dangerously on the border of malpractice.  And I don't think I'm alone. We're finding that, for both individuals and for companies, failing to recharge "simply isn't sustainable." And according to a recent study cited in the Harvard Business Review, it is those who take vacations that are more likely to be promoted.

 Which brings us to summer: the perfect time to take stock of our work-life rhythms and to hit the reset button on our self-care. Studies show that we typically leave over a week of paid vacation unused. In fact, advertisers have begun to realize that few Americans are convinced to take time away for their own sakes, and have begun to use the “kid angle.” Last summer’s Mastercard "One More Day" campaign featured children citing the benefits of even just one more day of vacation per year. The ad featured kids reacting to the fact that over 400 million paid vacation days go unused each year. This year, homeaway.com partnered with internet sensation “Kid President” to promote the idea of a "whole vacation." Clever as always, Kid President contrasts a whole vacation with it’s common competitors: “vague-cations” and “fake-cations,” insisting that parents must unplug from work and other responsibilities and fully engage with their loved ones for the vacation to "count." Apparently, Kid President would not be in favor of the" work-cation" recently suggested in the Wall Street Journal. Those lovely days in Palm Springs for our AALS Clinical Conference do not count.

Much has been said about the fact clinicians have the opportunity to guide students as they learn how to "act like lawyers." Lately, I've been thinking about what it looks like to guide them in how to" live as lawyers." I want to instill and demonstrate a reflective practice that considers what it is to fully live while practicing law. What does a full or satisfied or multi-faceted life look like?  What are healthy rhythms of work and rest in the midst of a productive career? How do we perform differently when we are well-rested and recharged? Do we have any personal experience upon which we might make such a comparison? As we look toward a better balance in our full lives, these are the kinds of questions we need to be processing with our colleagues and our students.

 So take a break, good colleagues! Find a weekend getaway or a last-minute trip abroad on your favorite discount travel site, skip out early for your local concert in the park, book a massage, buy those summer concert tickets, go for a hike or a stroll this weekend. And then, reflective practitioners that we are...let's jot down a few notes about what these practices did for us and to us. How did time away affect the way we relate to those around us? How long did it take us to unwind?  Did any new ideas come to us as we stared aimlessly at the ocean/lake/forest? (Or while daringly climbing Mt. Hood as our colleague, Warren Binford, wrote about last month?) Finally, let's share our reflections with our students and encourage them to do the same. Let's normalize the idea of getting away and encourage our students to embrace opportunities to both work hard and recharge.

I’m gearing up to turn my email to auto-reply, turn my phone on airplane mode, and cram my family of six into a tent cabin in Yosemite. Relaxing? No, not a bit. But we'll have stories to tell! And I’m convinced that my family, my clients, my students, and I will benefit from the time away.

Where are you headed this summer?

 

RFP: Externships 8, March 3-6, 2016 at Cleveland-Marshall (deadline Oct. 2, 2015)

Via Carole O. Heyward:

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: EXTERNSHIPS 8 CONFERENCE
March 3-6, 2016, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland, Ohio
DEADLINE: Friday, October 2, 2015

Externships 8:

Building on Common Ground: Externships, Clinics and Practice-Based Legal Education
Externships have become a steadily more prominent component of experiential
education, drawing increased attention from the ABA, from scholars and from law
schools. The recently adopted ABA standards on experiential courses chart new paths
for field placement teaching while recent scholarship has produced a new statement of
best practices for externships, resources for teaching externship seminars and works on
outcomes, assessment, and evaluation of student learning. Finally, externship courses
continue to grow in number and to diversify in approach, from full-time
semester-in-practice programs to externship components in traditional classes.

The Externships 8 Conference, to be held March 3-6, 2016 in Cleveland, Ohio, will focus
on the roles that externship courses play alongside other forms of experiential legal
education, including in-house clinics and simulation classes. It will address the distinct
features of externship courses, discuss how they relate to other kinds of experiential
courses and explore the many different ways to assess and enhance their unique
aspects.

The conference will also focus on the fundamentals and best practices of externship
teaching. Separate tracks for new and for experienced externship teachers will offer
both familiar and new ideas on core externship challenges: how to deliver a seminar;
how to train and collaborate with site supervisors; how to teach the skill of reflection
and use it in the course; and how to translate what students learn into transferable skills
and values for the future.

Topics

We encourage you to propose a topic that will develop the dual conference themes of
externships’ relationship to other forms of experiential education and best practices in
externship design and delivery. We append to this RFP a list of specific ideas as
prompts for proposals.

Attendees

Externship teaching involves an increasingly broad range of law school personnel:
tenured or tenure-track faculty; long-term or short-term contract clinicians; part-time
faculty; administrators; field supervisors; career services professionals; and others. The
conference theme focuses on the common ground between externships and other
clinical experiences; accordingly, we invite participation by those who teach in-house
clinics and simulation courses and who are interested in integrating practice-based
learning into the curriculum. We also solicit active participation by international
clinicians, both as participants and presenters.

Proposals for New and Experienced Clinicians

The Organizing Committee expects to offer programming both for those new to field
placement work and for experienced clinicians. We plan to offer sessions in each time
slot that will attract attendees in each group. We ask that you identify which audience
you plan to address – new or experienced or both - in your proposal.

Formats and Publication

The Organizing Committee seeks proposals in several different formats. We solicit
proposals for concurrent sessions to last a full concurrent time slot. We also seek
suggested topics for and facilitators to convene affinity groups, designed for those
attendees who would like to meet with others to discuss common issues. Groups may
form according to geographical region, subject matter (e.g., prosecutorial externships),
or concerns (e.g., ABA issues).

We may also offer sessions consisting of short, “TED Talk-like” presentations of 10 to 20
minutes. We also invite proposals for poster presentations.

Lastly, we welcome proposals to present scholarly works-in-progress, to last 20
minutes. The Clinical Law Review has agreed to consider papers emerging from the
conference (whether from a works-in-progress session or any other conference session)
for publication in a special issue. No guarantee of publication exists; all papers will be
reviewed in accordance with the Clinical Law Review’s normal standards. Potential
authors must submit final drafts of manuscripts no later than June 1, 2016, for
consideration.

Proposal Selection Criteria

In general, the Organizing Committee will favor proposals that address the conference
theme, are relevant to conference attendees, are well-defined and focused, are timely
and important, and show care and thoughtfulness in development. In addition,
proposals should:

– demonstrate innovation, either in the choice of topic or in the angle of
approach to a familiar topic;

– include presenters who have significant expertise in the topic or a base of
experience that provides a unique or useful vantage point on the topic;

– indicate specifically how the presentation will encourage active learning,
including specific methods for engaging in interaction with the audience; and

– describe how attendees will be offered strategies for implementing new ideas
when they return to their schools.

Finally, we value diversity, both in the composition of presenting teams and in your
topic’s presentation of diversity and inclusiveness as a concern in field placement work.
The Organizing Committee will consider diversity in terms of race, gender, ethnicity,
disability, sexual orientation, geographical location, years of experience, type of school,
type of program and other factors.

Deadlines and Instructions:

Consultation:

We encourage you to contact members of the working group responsible for conference
content to discuss your ideas as you prepare a proposal. This group includes:

Carole O. Heyward, [email protected]
Bob Jones, [email protected]
Carolyn Wilkes Kaas, [email protected]
Alex Scherr, [email protected]
Beth Schwartz, [email protected]
Kelly Terry, [email protected]

Application:

This document includes both a cover sheet for proposals and a template for a more
detailed description of the proposal.

Complete the Cover Sheet AND the Detailed Proposal and submit them no later than
Friday, October 2, 2015 to:

[email protected]

By Friday, October 30, 2015, we will notify the contact person for each proposal. We
may contact you sooner to discuss modifications or to suggest collaborations. After
confirming your participation, we will assign a member of the Organizing Committee
to your group to help you to prepare and to assure that your eventual presentation and
materials meet the expectations stated in the criteria for selection.

POSSIBLE TOPICS FOR PROPOSALS

-- Ideas about best practices in externship teaching.

-- Integration of externship courses into the experiential curriculum, including the
sequencing and scaffolding of externships, in-house clinics and other courses.

-- Distinctive features and opportunities of externships as practice-based education.

-- Participation and status of externship clinicians in law schools, alongside in-house
clinicians and other faculty.

-- Employing externship teaching methods in non-externship classes (e.g., hybrids,
practicums, pop-ups, and add-ons).

-- Working effectively within law schools to promote externships and to secure the
resources necessary for effective program operation.

-- Management of the complex administrative tasks associated with externship courses.

-- “How to” sessions on externship pedagogy, including:

- Student supervision by both site supervisors and externship teachers;

– The classroom experience, both traditional and non-traditional, as a vehicle for
reforming students’ experiences of law school;

– The role of field supervisors as teachers, the training of and ongoing
collaboration with supervisors, and the selection of field placements; and

–Reflective practice as an important aspect of education reform, including
methods for encouraging, teaching and assessing reflection.

--Design and delivery of externship opportunities for students in part-time programs.

–Field placement courses in other countries, and a comparative assessment of those
courses, including differences in cultural, structural and financial pressures.

– The impact of newly revised ABA and state-level standards.

-- The growth, role and administration of semester-away programs.

– The use of technology in field placement programs.

Cover Sheet for Proposal for Externships 8

Send this cover sheet and proposal via e-mail by October 2, 2015 to:
[email protected]

The Organizing Committee will use the information on this cover sheet both to review
proposals and to prepare the conference brochure. Please include a contact person and
the name of all known presenters. We will correspond only with the contact person.

Make sure that all information is complete and accurate.

Please note: Presenters must pay the same conference registration fee as participants.
Program Title:
Contact Person’s Name:
Name of School (as listed in the AALS Directory):
Address:
E-mail:
Voice:
Fax:
Others Presenters and Schools (as listed in AALS Directory):

Format (check all for which you are willing to have your proposal considered):
_____ Full concurrent session
_____ Workshop/affinity group discussion by geographic region (e.g., urban,
Southeast U.S., international)
_____ Workshop/affinity group discussion by topic or practice area (e.g.,
judicial, criminal defense, semester-away)
_____ Scholarly work-in-progress (20 minutes)
_____ Short presentation (10–20 minutes, TED Talk or similar format)
_____ Poster presentation

New or Experienced Clinicians Track:
_____ New
_____ Experienced
_____ Both

Will you prepare a paper based on your presentation? ____ Yes ____ No

Detailed Proposal for Externships 8

Title:

Abstract of your presentation: Describe the content of your presentation. In doing so,
identify the points of innovation in the topic or in your approach and describe the
expertise or experience base of the presenters. For concurrent sessions, specify the
preferred length of the session. We are considering sessions ranging from 60-90
minutes. If you propose to convene a workshop or discussion for an affinity group,
identify the potential participants and the goals for your gathering.

Method of presentation: Describe how you propose to present your material. In doing
so, describe how you will assure active learning by your audience and discuss how you
will provide strategies that attendees may use to implement your ideas when they
return to their schools. Finally, describe any materials you propose to distribute before
or during your presentation.

 

New Veterans Initiatives at Pepperdine

At Pepperdine, on the foundation of a generous gift from a private foundation, we have been able to build some exciting new programs to serve veterans and other former service members in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties in California.   These projects began with a year-long needs assessment for veterans legal needs.  The study then helped us identify new collaborations with hard working, creative professionals in these communities which in turn have led to new opportunities for law students to expand and improve access to justice for this critical population. 

Here is the news release this week describing our projects for veterans at the School of Law.

Happy Independence Day!

Terry Wright Moves to Willamette

The dean of the Willamette University College of Law announced today that the university has hired Terry Wright as the law school's new Externship Director. Willamette began a complete renovation of its externship program ten years ago, which increased the number of credits students can earn, the variety of placements available, and added a more rigorous academic component. Willamette's clinical law faculty played key roles in this expansion and overhaul.

Most recently, Professor Gwynne Skinner both taught and supervised the Externship Program, while further redesigning it to increase enrollment and add a full-time offering. She did this over a two-year period while directing her human rights, immigration, and refugee law clinic and teaching non-clinical courses. Professor Skinner also chaired the search committee that resulted in the recommendation of Professor Wright as the law school's first permanent Externship Director.

Professor Wright is a Willamette alumna who taught in the clinical law program in the late 1980's.  She then moved to Lewis & Clark where she spent the next 25 years as a popular and highly respected Clinical Law Professor. She has been a leader in the clinical community for decades, especially in the Northwest. The Willamette community is thrilled to have Terry Wright return home!