Clinical Law Prof Blog

JOBS: Executive Director of UCLA's Office of Public Interest Programs

Via Prof. Lisa Mead:

 

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

OFFICE OF PUBLIC INTEREST PROGRAMS

UCLA SCHOOL OF LAW

The UCLA School of Law is seeking a creative institution builder with sustained experience in public interest work to lead the School’s Office of Public Interest Programs (OPIP). OPIP is the principal intellectual and information center for public interest at UCLA School of Law. OPIP’s mission is to engage law students, faculty, lawyers, and the broader community in public service, through education, dialogue, and career development.

OPIP, as our overall public interest umbrella, has a range of important functions. OPIP engages students, alumni, and faculty in dialogue on a range of public interest topics by hosting a speaker series. It also serves as the career services office for students interested in pursuing summer and post-graduate positions in public interest and government, including by hosting panels on career choices, coordinating an annual public interest career day and other recruiting events, facilitating pro bono volunteer opportunities, and participating in and supervising public interest and government career counseling for students and alumni.

OPIP also oversees UCLA Law’s Summer Public Service Fellowship program, post-graduate public interest fellowships, and Loan Repayment Assistance Program for alumni in public service careers.  Finally, and importantly, OPIP administers our distinctive David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy (the Epstein Program, often known as EPILP), which attracts students with exceptional public interest backgrounds and trains them to become effective lawyers and leaders in a range of public interest settings.

The Executive Director will plan and oversee all aspects of OPIP, in close collaboration with the Epstein Program Faculty Director and Core Faculty, as well as other relevant law school faculty and administrators. The Executive Director will be responsible for the initiatives described above and will have the opportunity to expand and grow OPIP. The Executive Director will work to advance the School of Law’s public interest curricular offerings, including the Epstein Program’s core curriculum, and provide individualized academic counseling to support Epstein Program students in completing the Specialization. The Executive Director will serve as the principal spokesperson of OPIP both within the School and to external audiences, including through presentations and participation in conferences and other public events, and will strengthen existing relationships and develop new relationships with public interest alumni, public interest employers, and other allies. The Executive Director is expected to have substantial experience in and commitment to public interest work, as well as leadership and fundraising capacity, which will be crucial to the growth and development of OPIP.

This is a year-round, academic, non-tenure track position with an expected start date of June 1, 2017.

Minimum academic requirements include a J.D. or equivalent advanced degree from a U.S. school and an excellent academic record. The ideal candidate will have at least five years of practice in public interest and/or government work or comparable experience, as well as significant leadership capacity and initiative. The salary and level of appointment will be commensurate with qualifications and experience.

Confidential review of applications, nominations and expressions of interest will begin immediately and will continue until an appointment is made. To ensure full consideration, applications should be received by Friday, January 13, 2017 but will be considered thereafter until the position is filled. Please apply online at https://recruit.apo.ucla.edu/apply/JPF02706 by submitting a cover letter, resume, and the names and addresses of at least three professional references.

The University of California seeks to recruit and retain a diverse workforce as a reflection of our commitment to serve the people of California, to maintain the excellence of the University, and to offer our students richly varied disciplines, perspectives and ways of knowing and learning. The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age or protected veteran status.

5 Questions for Emily Broad Leib

In the spirit of thanksgiving and the abundance of food most of us partook in last week, I thought this would be a great time to continue that theme and learn about the amazing Food Law and Policy Clinic that Emily Broad Leib supervises at Harvard.  Here's a recent interview I had with Emily about the interesting work she is doing.  Enjoy!

1. I recently saw that Fortune and Food & Wine Magazines named you as the number one most influential woman in food and drink for 2016. This seems like a pretty big deal! 

For the past three years, Food & Wine and Fortune Magazine have put out a list of the most innovative women in food & drink. I was incredibly surprised and humbled to be included at the top of the list! This honor was mostly in recognition of the work of my clinic, the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic (FLPC), on the issue of food waste. 62.5 million tons of food is wasted annually in the U.S., presenting a grave threat to our economy, health, and environment. While there are a variety of reasons for this pervasive waste, we’ve come to learn that much of this waste results from laws regulating the food system.

My work in date labels and the broader issue of food waste began from a clinic project we conducted on behalf of Daily Table, an organization that aims to increase access to healthy and affordable food by rescuing and selling surplus foods that would have otherwise gone to waste. To answer Daily Table’s legal questions, clinic students examined the laws in Massachusetts regarding date labels on food. When we zoomed out from Massachusetts to see what surrounding states were doing, we found a dizzying array of state laws, many of which restrict sale or donation of past-date foods. This is despite the fact that these dates are generally intended as indicators of quality, not safety, and for the most part food will still be safe and wholesome after that date has passed. Our work on date labels continues, and we’ve branched out to tackle other policies impacting food waste, such as food safety regulations, tax incentives for food donation, and liability protections for food donation.

2. You are currently (among many other things), the Director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic. There are few law schools, if any, that have this type of clinic.  Could you please take a moment to describe the impetus for this clinic and the types of projects and cases on which students work?

When I was in law school, my main focus was human rights law. I didn’t know anything about food policy until my post-law-school fellowship in the Mississippi Delta, working with community partners improve health and economic opportunity in that region. Early in my time, community partners asked for legal assistance regarding local farmers markets. Food is closely linked to both health and economic opportunity. The Mississippi Delta is an agricultural region, yet there was hardly any production of food, and severe food access challenges. At the same time, many Mississippians were exploring opportunities to produce and sell farm products, but faced legal barriers. Communities around the country were struggling with similar legal and policy questions, and I learned that law students were eager to work on these issues. The Food Law and Policy Clinic aims to meet these needs. The mission of the clinic is to increase access to healthy food, support small-scale and sustainable food producers in breaking into new commercial markets, and reduce the waste of healthy, wholesome food.

In order to better explain the type of work that we do, I’ll continue on the topic of date labels described above. Since our initial project with Daily Table, students have had the opportunity to create a range of reports, resources, and materials, including:

• Preparing a confidential legal memo on date label laws, liability protections, and food safety risks for our client organization, Daily Table.
• Drafting a major national report, The Dating Game: How Confusing Food Date Labels Lead to Food Waste (published in partnership with the Natural Resources Defense Council), which analyzes the laws regarding date labels and explains how these labels contribute to an alarming amount of unnecessary food waste.
• Helping to plan, produce, edit, and distribute a short film about the problem of misleading date labels, entitled EXPIRED? Food Waste in America.
• Providing guidance to federal legislators in drafting of the Food Date Labeling Act, which was introduced in 2016 in the U.S. House and Senate and aims to clarify and standardize date labels nationally.
• Helping me to prepare and provide testimony on date labels and other food waste policy issues to the House Agriculture Committee as part of the first-ever federal hearing on food waste, entitled Food Waste from Field to Table.

When I first started FLPC, we were the only food law and policy clinic in the nation, but this field is growing, and we are working hard to help build the field. The past two years, we hosted the Food Law Student Leadership Summit, which brought together 100 law students from 50 law schools nationally to learn about pressing food law and policy issues and network with one another and with leading faculty and attorneys in this field. And this year, we helped launch the Food Law Student Network (for students) and the Academy of Food Law and Policy (for faculty and institutions). This academic year, we are leading a consortium of nine clinics and programs at seven law schools to examine and propose recommendations for the U.S. Farm Bill. It is exciting to see this field grow, and to work with fantastic colleagues and partners around the country!

3. As a clinician, I think it’s so important for our students to see our passion for the clients and issues we serve.  Why do you have a passion for the type of legal advocacy you are taking part in at Harvard through the Food Law and Policy Clinic? 

I feel incredibly lucky that my work aligns with my passions. As mentioned above, I went to law school to pursue a career in human rights. What can be more basic than helping communities to pursue the right to food, by providing access to affordable, safe, and healthy food? I also value the opportunity that I have to be creative. Food law and policy is still a nascent field, which provides ample opportunities for finding new solutions and brainstorming creative approaches. Lastly, I love the educational part of my work – exposing law students to the field of food law and offering them opportunities to practice policy and advocacy skills, which have not typically been part of the law school curriculum.

4. You are also the Deputy Director of the Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation. I can potentially envision synergies between both of the clinics you supervise.   

Yes, there are incredible synergies! The FLPC is one of two clinics housed within the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation; the other is the Health Law and Policy Clinic (HLPC). While there are certainly distinctions between the substance of the two clinics, there is also a lot of overlap and we have worked together on several major initiatives. One is a project called Providing Access to Healthy Solutions (PATHS), which was a four-year project focused on state and federal policy solutions to reduce type 2 diabetes. The other is our Food is Medicine initiative, which identifies key legal and policy levers to help increase access to healthy food as part of both prevention and treatment of chronic disease. The concept of food is medicine is still novel, but is quickly gaining traction. Our team undertakes a variety of research and advocacy to promote the effective integration of food into healthcare coverage where applicable.

5. Speaking of synergies, what are some creative ways the directors/faculty/supervisors of the numerous legal clinics at your school stay connected with each other?

Harvard is lucky to have a very large and robust clinical program, but because of the size it is difficult to stay connected. Fortunately, we have a variety of cross-clinical working groups and committees, including a clinical workshop committee that organizes workshops on topics such as clinical scholarship, use of technology, and better addressing race and diversity in our clinics. We also have periodic social gatherings and holiday parties that bring together clinicians. I also work closely with our other clinics, as food overlaps with many other topics. In addition to our collaboration with the Health Law and Policy Clinic (mentioned above), we have also conducted clinical projects in partnership with the Emmett Environmental Law Clinic, International Human Rights Clinic, and Transactional Law Clinics. I love these cross-clinic partnerships because they offer a great opportunity to bring together different expertise to help solve problems!

Pepperdine's Ninth Circuit Appellate Advocacy Clinic Advocating for Prisoner Rights

I am very proud of our brilliant students in the Ninth Circuit Appellate Advocacy Clinic, under the direction of Prof. Jeremy Rosen.  Please see this story with video of their recent oral argument in San Francisco where they represented our client, a detainee suing the Maricopa County (Arizona) Jail for civil rights violations. They did excellent work. 

Here is a brief description of the case:

The Ninth Circuit appointed the Pepperdine Ninth Circuit Clinic to represent pre-trial detainee Charles Byrd who filed a section 1983 lawsuit challenging Maricopa County’s practice of having female guards routinely observe male inmates at extremely close quarters while they are using the toilets and taking showers. Such cross-gender observations have been routinely disallowed when the guards are male and the prisoners are female and case law suggests the same should be the case here. The district court exercised its authority under the Prison Litigation Reform Act to dismiss Byrd’s lawsuit at the screening stage. The students argued on appeal that such dismissal was improper because Byrd plainly stated a claim for constitutional violation.

Sunrise in Kingston

Dear All,

Exercising gratitude seems to be more akin to a skill than anything else.  It is not something that comes naturally to me, though I wish I could claim the opposite. I would love to be a person who walks around in the Disney version of the world, singing with a bluebird on my shoulder, believing the best in myself and in my fellow humans, but unfortunately this just isn’t my innate reality.  In fact, as I age, I find myself more inclined to pessimism, pragmatism, realism (whatever your flavor). I crave comfort, stability, and certainty and yet, the older I get, the more I also realize that this is a way of being which I will never be given. The world is a spectrum with no black or white, composed of varying stages of gray that muddle, nuance and jumble up the certainty I so desire.

The truth reveals itself to me over and over and over again: you are constantly changing, everything is movement, in flux, shifting, even those things you believed would last forever can become distant memories, but do not worry, you have and always will adapt. Sometimes this adaptation process is miserable.  It can be incredibly myopic, panicked and painful to trudge through; there are times when I fail to use healthy coping skills, falling into co-dependent relationships, eating every cookie in my path, and isolating from those who bring me home to myself. And there are also times when I adapt with a little more grace. One tool that has helped me accept uncertainty with wonder instead of fear is gratitude: holding it widely and expressing it liberally and openly, is one of the ways I move into better space. During these moments, I realize that darkness and difficulty absolutely have their place in my life. Without these, I would never experience the joy, empowerment and pride that comes with triumphing over adversity.  Without these, I would take for granted and fail to relish that which I find precious in my life.  Sad songs wills always have their place in my world.  Trouble and dissonance will as well. For with these hardships, opportunities for transformation abound. So today, I’m shouting from the blogosphere my gratitude because I deeply want this to be a time of great transformation for me personally and for society. Right now, I’m calling it -- we are about to become much more complex, amazing and beautiful versions of ourselves, even if it hurts. And I will get through the hurt by embracing what I am grateful for over and over and over again. So...

To the safety-pinners, thank you for showing me that I am valued even when I have received messages telling me that my life and my vote do not matter. To community activist, educators and leaders, who I aspire to be like and push me to do more, who say we can never rest, and who unceasingly remind me that I need to continually educate myself and learn from people who are impacted by whatever cause I happen to be fighting for: “because those closest to the problem are often closest to the solution,” thank you. To those friends who have become family, I can never thank you enough for how you’ve bounded us together with ties of unending and constant presence, through all the busy, over oceans, with songs and videos, laughter and commiseration, lifting me up and bringing me home to myself, reminding me of my beauty and my value when I start to doubt it; my only desire is that I can return all that you have given me.  To those who voted differently from me but who have taken time to have meaningful conversations about their reasons, helping me to form a more complete picture of the range of viewpoints and ideas that exist beyond my own, thank you. And to the sun who teaches me a great lesson daily, you cause me to sweat pools of sweat that I didn’t even know I could while you dry my clothes that are out on the line, you burn my skin while I swim in the ocean that you heat, you seemingly disappear during your omnipresent cycle, but I’m always happy to see the light you bring upon your return; your capability to both sustain and destroy, amazes me -- my health and my humanity are tied up in learning how and when to bask in you and take shelter from you.

Eternally grateful,

Inga N. Laurent

(Sunrise in Kingston) 

Call for Proposals: ILTL Summer Conference: Teaching Cultural Competency and Other Professional Skills Suggested by ABA Standard 302

Via Prof. Kelly Terry:

 

CALL FOR PRESENTATION PROPOSALS

 

Institute for Law Teaching and Learning—Summer 2017 Conference

Teaching Cultural Competency and Other Professional Skills Suggested by ABA Standard 302

July 7-8, 2017

University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law

 

ABA Standard 302 requires all law schools to establish learning outcomes in certain areas, such as knowledge of substantive and procedural law, legal analysis and reasoning, and the exercise of professional and ethical responsibilities.  While requiring outcomes in these areas, however, the ABA also has given law schools discretion under Standard 302(d) to individualize their programs by establishing learning outcomes related to “other professional skills needed for competent and ethical participation as a member of the legal profession.”  These other professional skills “are determined by the law school and may include skills such as  interviewing, counseling, negotiation, fact development and analysis, trial practice, document drafting, conflict resolution, organization and management of legal work, collaboration, cultural competency and self-evaluation.”  This language encourages law schools to be innovative and to differentiate themselves by creating learning outcomes that are consistent with their own unique values and particular educational mission.  

The Institute for Law Teaching and Learning invites proposals for conference workshops addressing the many ways that law schools are establishing learning outcomes related to “other professional skills,” particularly the skills of cultural competency, conflict resolution, collaboration, self-evaluation, and other relational skills.  Which, if any, of the outcomes suggested in Standard 302(d) have law schools established for themselves, and why did they select those outcomes?  How are law professors teaching and assessing skills such as cultural competency, conflict resolution, collaboration, and self-evaluation?  Have law schools established outcomes related to professional skills other than those suggested in Standard 302(d)?  If so, what are those skills, and how are professors teaching and assessing them?

The Institute welcomes proposals for workshops on the teaching and assessment of such skills in doctrinal, clinical, externship, writing, seminar, hybrid, and interdisciplinary courses.  Workshops can address the teaching or assessment of such skills in first-year courses, upper-level courses, required courses, electives, academic support teaching, or extracurricular programs.  Workshops can present innovative teaching materials, teaching methods, course designs, assessment methods, curricular, or program designs.  Each workshop should include materials that participants can use during the workshop and also when they return to their campuses.  Presenters should model best practices in teaching methods by actively engaging the workshop participants.  

The Institute invites proposals for 60-minute workshops consistent with a broad interpretation of the conference theme.  To be considered for the conference, proposals should be one single-spaced page (maximum) and should include the following information:

• the title of the workshop;
• the name, address, telephone number, and email address of the presenter(s);
• a summary of the contents of the workshop, including its goals and methods; and
• an explanation of the interactive teaching methods the presenter(s) will use to engage the audience.

 

The Institute must receive proposals by February 1, 2017.  Submit proposals via email to Kelly Terry, Co-Director, Institute for Law Teaching and Learning, at [email protected].

 

Conference Details

 

Schedule of Events:

The UALR Bowen School of Law will host a welcome reception on the evening of Thursday, July 6.  The conference will consist of concurrent workshop sessions that will take place at the law school all day on Friday, July 7 and until the early afternoon on Saturday, July 8.  

 

Travel and Lodging:

A block of hotel rooms for conference attendees has been reserved at the Little Rock Marriot Hotel, 3 Statehouse Plaza, Little Rock, AR 72201.  The discounted rate will be available until June 5, 2017.  Reservations may be made online by using this link: Group rate for UALR School of Law Room Block July 2017.  Reservations also may be made by calling the hotel’s reservations department at 877-759-6290 and referencing the UALR Bowen School of Law/ ILTL Conference Room Block.

 

Fees:

The conference fee for participants is $400, which includes materials, meals during the conference (two breakfasts and two lunches), and the welcome reception on Thursday evening, July 6.  The conference fee for presenters is $300.  

 

For more information:

Please visit our website (http://lawteaching.org/conferences/2017/) or contact one of the ILTL Co-Directors:

 

Professor Kelly Terry

[email protected]; 501-324-9946

 

Professor Emily Grant

[email protected]; 785-670-1677

 

Associate Dean Sandra Simpson

[email protected]; 509-313-3809

In Praise of a Colleague

I have the honor of running a mediation clinical program at Columbia Law School with Alexandra Carter. I should note that Alex is the Director of the Clinic and I am the Associate Director. I have to note that distinction to help you understand how much of an honor it is to run this clinic with her. Because, even though Alex is the boss, it never feels that way to me. She never treats me like she’s the boss. When she introduces me, she always says, “This is my colleague.” My ideas for curriculum, for projects, for partnerships, etc. all the way down to the minutia are considered with equal merit to her own—and, if I’m wrong about that, then she does such a great job of making it seem that way that the factual difference is meaningless.

That little preface above brings me to this: her ideas are better than mine. A clear example of this fact seems worth sharing, now more than ever. When our President Elect Designate was still just the Republican nominee a report hit the media about his various sexual assaults. These weren’t accusations and they weren’t second-hand accounts. These were descriptions of assaults that he, himself, admitted willingly to a reporter on a tour bus in 2005. He offered a defense of his comments: these remarks were made in private (or so he thought), and they were mere locker room talk amongst the boys.

I had plans to take a minute and address the comments in our class. Alex had a different idea, and, like I said, her ideas are better than mine.

I was supervising a case a team of our students were mediating on the Tuesday after the story broke. It was a difficult, emotionally charged mediation that drained the team of students and me. So, when I got a text from Alex saying that we were holding class in the Dodge Fitness Center on Columbia’s main campus I didn’t have the mental or emotional capacity left to think anything about it other than I needed to make a mental note not to go to our regular classroom. The mediation ran long which made the students and I late to class. When we arrived there the class sat, in a tiny, sweltering locker room in a circle, passing a talking piece, talking about “locker room talk.” Alex decided to depart from our regularly scheduled program to bring us an important message about law school education: we oughtn’t forget that the law affects people. Our leaders’ words and actions affect people.

Any professor reading this knows how precious classroom time is. Alex willingly gave away 3 hours of class time to find a way for our students to talk about the law, our leaders, and the people they affect. She also modeled responsible reaction for our students. She honored their emotional response to President Elect Designate Trump’s words and facile explanation, but didn’t allow them to live in the righteousness of outrage. She showed them that taking offense wasn’t enough--they also had to take action. She showed them how to reclaim the locker room space for a new and better kind of “locker room talk.”

Oh, and remember how I told you above that Alex treats my ideas with equal merit to her own? Well, having the class sit in a circle and pass a talking piece is a technique she learned from me. It’s a technique American Indian tribes have been using since time immemorial to prevent and address conflict. It’s a technique that I was able to show Alex because when I was a law student in her mediation clinic I undertook a project to design a curriculum to begin teaching tribal dispute resolution in law schools. It’s a project, a student project mind you, that she took so much interest in that it became a course of legal study at Columbia Law School. From there it spread to several law schools: New Mexico, Oklahoma, Yale, to name a few. It was my idea to create a curriculum to make tribal dispute resolution a course of legal study in law schools. It was Alex’s idea to actually implement the curriculum and actually launch a course—the first course of its kind in an ABA accredited law school. Like I said, her ideas are better than mine.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Linked here is an article the Wall Street Journal wrote on the locker room class Alex led (caveat: it's behind a pay wall). My only note is that it describes a Peacemaking Circle as a "mediation technique" and it is not. It’s a technique Indigenous People around the world--especially in America--have been using since before history began being recorded.