Clinical Law Prof Blog

A Message from Anne Hornsby and the Alabama Law Clinics Honoring Liz Whipple and Shelly Darling

Please read this message to the clinical community from Prof. Anne Hornsby, Associate Dean for Clinical Programs at the University of Alabama:

By now, many of you know that the Law Clinics at Alabama lost our colleagues, Liz Whipple and Shelly Darling, in a tragic electricity-related accident at Lake Tuscaloosa.  We are stunned and heartbroken, as are their families.  The two were great friends, and shared a love for their work, rescue dogs, stylish boots, and a quirky and totally irreverent sense of humor that regularly gave way to big laughter.  They were our self-appointed social directors, and could find an excuse for a party on any given occasion.  For those of you who did not know them, I’ll share a little about their time here.

Liz had been a student in our first Domestic Violence Law Clinic, and was coaxed back to Alabama from her DV work in Atlanta to serve as director of that clinic in 2015.  She was a natural teacher, and her legal skills and compassion in dealing with survivors of violence inspired others.  Active in the Tuscaloosa community and the larger DV services community, she chaired the Tuscaloosa Domestic Violence Task Force, was on the board of the local women’s shelter, and reached out to train law enforcement on the issues about which she was passionate.  She continued to be active in Georgia, as well.  Her impact on her students, the law school, and the community will be lasting.

Shelly came to UA Law in 2014 as a staff attorney in the Elder Law Clinic.  Due in large part to her bright intellect and high energy, she instantly fit into the work and into the organization.  She had a special rapport with clients, some of whom would call her at all hours for advice on all manner of things.  Her patience with them was remarkable.  Students found her to be an excellent role model as an attorney, a formidable advocate with a practical nature.  Aside from her work, she could not resist picking up stray dogs, and, likely as not, keeping them.  She will be greatly missed.

Today our law school community gathered for an informal remembrance of Liz and Shelly.  The stories shared brought home the importance of the work that we do. We will strive to honor their lives by following the examples of service they set for us.

Sincere thanks to each of you who have reached out with support and a shared sense of loss.  

With sadness,

Anne Hornsby, on behalf of the Law Clinics at Alabama

JOBS: UCLA Assistant Dean for Experiential Education

UCLA School of Law

Job Posting

Assistant Dean for Experiential Education

The position of Assistant Dean for Experiential Education requires a talented and enthusiastic individual to build and oversee the operational excellence of the UCLA Law program of clinical and experiential education.  The Assistant Dean will report to and work under the general direction of the Faculty Director and/or Vice Dean of Experiential Education and will be expected to work independently with multiple faculty and staff within the law school.  The Assistant Dean will participate in the Law School’s academic and curricular planning and support the Faculty Director and/or Vice Dean in expanding and promoting excellence in the law school’s program of clinical and experiential education.  The Assistant Dean will also develop and maintain systems to ensure the provision of excellent legal services to clients and excellent pedagogical opportunities for students.  These duties will require the Assistant Dean to build strong relationships within the law school community, as well as with external governmental and nonprofit entities with which the law school is collaborating.  The person in this position should have some background and familiarity with clinical legal education, the ability to exercise creativity and good judgment about the law school program, and a deep interest in educating students and providing legal services to clients and communities in the region.  The person in this position has the possibility of spending up to approximately 25% of his/her time teaching in a clinical program, to be determined in consultation with the Faculty Director/Vice Dean. 

Minimum requirements include an excellent academic record; a J.D. or equivalent advanced degree; at least five years of substantial legal practice or related experience; and demonstrated management, administrative, and organizational skills, with successful prior experience inclinical legal education preferred.  The salary and level of appointment will be commensurate with qualifications and experience.  This position is a full-time, year round, non-tenure track academic appointment with an expected start date of July 1, 2017.  This appointment is subject to the rules and regulations of the Regents of the University of California, which are mostly embodied in The UCLA CALL and the University of California Academic Personnel Manual.  (See https://www.apo.ucla.edu/policies/the-call; and http://www.ucop.edu/acadpersonnel/apm/welcome.html.)

Confidential review of applications, nominations and expressions of interest will begin immediately and continue until an appointment is made.  To ensure full consideration, applications should be received by Tuesday, June 13, 2017 but will be considered thereafter until the position is filled.  Please apply online at https://recruit.apo.ucla.edu/apply/JPF02951 by submitting pdf copies of a cover letter, CV or resume, and the names and contact information for at least three professional references.  Applicants with teaching experience should also include their teaching evaluations, a summary thereof, or other testimonials concerning their teaching experience.

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. For the complete University of California nondiscrimination and affirmative action policy see: UC Nondiscrimination & Affirmative Action Policy (http://policy.ucop.edu/doc/4000376/NondiscrimAffirmAct).

Religious Diversity at Religious Universities

I have spent most of my education and career in Christian universities. They, like all institutions, struggle with their identities in various ways, wrestling to understand themselves as parts of ancient traditions, within rapidly evolving worlds, seeking the ideals of liberal education while adhering to faith commitments and obligations.  

This Inside Higher Ed piece from my friend and colleague, Prof. Michael Helfand, is wise and right. He writes from his experience as an Orthodox Jew at our university affiliated with the Churches of Christ, my home tradition. He discusses a commitment to religious diversity as a core commitment for a university with a faith mission, not as an exception to it.  This is one of the things we get right, I think, at Pepperdine Law, and our Jewish, Sikh, Muslim, Catholic, Mormon, Church of Christ, Episcopal, Evangelical, Etc. law faculty is all the stronger because of it.

Next year, I will be one of the faculty advisors for our Interfaith Student Council, and I believe Michael's words are true:

The key to maintaining this balance is a university administration and faculty that does not simply expect faculty members of other faiths to work parallel to the university’s faith-based mission. Capitalizing on religious diversity within a faith-based university works best -- both from a student and from a faculty perspective -- when the university actively seeks to incorporate that religious diversity into the faith-based mission of the school. It gives students a more multifaceted educational experience and gives faculty an increased sense of institutional value -- and, in turn, increases buy-in to the institution’s mission.

Be the Bridge

A few weeks ago, I had a moment.  I suppose you could call it a “teaching moment,” since it occurred in the classroom, but really, it felt more like a moment, moment. You know, the kind where the world seems right, even if just for a few minutes. When somehow it all falls into place with stunning alignment and grace and we are a taught a lesson; the kind that resonates deeply in the body, like ancient knowledge that you can’t quite name or fully grasp but you know it when you see it.

At 10:00 pm the night before the first ever REEL (Re-imagining Excellence through Empowering Leadership) Conference, I quickly agreed to jump in and teach a 45 minute workshop on restorative justice when one presenter cancelled. My audience would be teenage boys, who attend the Kingston YMCA alternative education program. Most of the boys live a very difficult reality; they come from garrison communities[1] where violence and retribution are the norm. Looking back, I realize the arrogance and potential foolishness of my haphazard decision, but I’m glad I didn’t have that awareness at the time, as my second-guessing could have easily turned into a “no.”  One lesson I will most certainly take with me from my time here in Jamaica is that sometimes I just need to get it done, loosen the choke hold of that perfectionist bent, settle on “some is better than none,” and handle it.  

After the haze of the late-night, last minute decision wore off, I acknowledged how stunningly out of my depth I would be. My Americanness, including my comparative wealth, which allows me augmented “safety” and “control” over my environment was directly at odds with the boys’ lived experience. The story I played in my mind was one of doubt: am I going to be able to convey, and in such a short amount of time, an alternative to retribution, another potential way of being in the world, a chance for possible repair instead of reprisal and the creation of more harm. Is that even possible? Is it even my place to try?

Luckily, another story simultaneously played. I’ve attended enough Clinical Law Conferences to have developed a fairly sturdy (even if at times tentative) trust in the power of teaching techniques, and so I would rely on those. Tactile learning, a circle and intuition would be my guides. In the classroom, I was adamant that the chairs, which were in rows had to be in circle. This meant the 20 minute task of re-arranging them prior to the boys arrival, but put those chairs in a circle we did (it must have seemed silly to everyone -- even to myself to a degree -- but I just knew we needed to see each other).  Once everyone walked into the room, I patiently but diligently stuck to the format. I made all of us, including the teachers, sit inside the circle and we removed all empty chairs. We started with my request “tell us your name, your favorite junk food (a universally important question) and what you want to be in the future.” Pulling this information was difficult, the boys did not have much confidence or practice in speaking this way. I had to ask several times for quiet, push through the snickering, re-direct, constantly re-affirm the importance of each person’s response and ask countless times for everyone to speak up. And though there were fleeting moments of wondering whether this was the best use of our time together, I felt a strong pull; the act of naming and staking a claim on the future felt important and so even though it was a little tenuous, the circle held.

Next, I had the boys pretend to be actors (victim, police, community members, judge, offender, lawyers, etc.) in both the traditional and the restorative justice systems, using physical space and proximity to illustrate the concepts. The method seemed effective and we had fun. On the grand scale, I moved the room from the immediate “I would shoot his family dead” response to a consideration of “maybe” when asked if anyone would be willing to listen to the offender’s story. I considered this a success, but I’m kind of a glutton; I wasn’t satisfied, I pretty much always want more and because it just didn’t quite feel like enough or like it was done, I scrapped the script and started talking from the heart. It was messy, but it provided the opening we needed.

First, I acknowledged my privilege and then we talked…about anger, about witnessing horrific events, about endless cycles of violence, and about how as a society we instruct people not to do harm often through the use of state sanctioned forms of harm, control and force. The teachers, feeling more confident in this space, joined in, and together we validated feelings and passed along information about the effects trauma can have on our lives. We did our best to try and affirm the worth and dignity of everyone in the room (the future firefighter, graphic designer, lawyer, the one who likes KFC, Lavonte, “Tony,” and the one I ran into at the bus station…) Looking around, I could tell the boys heard it, many even appreciated the sentiment, but there was still a disconnect, a gap that I was desperate to, but didn’t have the words or experience or time to close.

And then it happened, as it often does, at the last minute, when you’ve got nothing left…

One of the teachers, who had been participating and asking questions throughout the workshop (which if I’m being honest, unnerved me a bit because of our tight time frame and because I thought “this is a workshop for the boys, not the teachers”) raised her hand again just in time for the final comment. By her insightful questions, I could tell that she was working through something and so even though the questions took us a little of “my course,” I had done my best to provide space and answer them.

And so in those last minutes of our time together, Ms. Taylor closed us out and brought us home. And somehow, she did it, she managed to fuse it all together: my words, their words, my knowledge, and their lived experiences. She spoke in the way that only a Jamaican woman could, only in a way that someone who has worked for a long time to gain trust and garner respect could, and only in a way that a mother who intimately knows suffering could. 

She opened up and told us her story. It was a deeply personal story, one that I’m not sure her colleagues even knew, filled with pain, loss, restitution and redemption; one of those stories where the universe delivers both the poisonous sting and the antidote simultaneously rolled into one bitter-sweet pill. She was restorative justice personified. And we were stunned and silent; the room reverent as the energy shifted and stilled. We heard and finally we understood the power of forgiveness and the healing that can bring. I have no doubt that her story has wedged itself into the hearts of those young men the way it flowed directly into mine. And as we go forward to maneuver the difficulties of this life, I know we will all hear her words echoing inside us, providing us with choices which we couldn’t see before, a wider spectrum of possibilities that now exist in all our worlds. 

And so I learned once again about the real value of restorative justice and why I do this work, and I learned once again about myself. Ms. Taylor’s lesson was the re-enforcement of what so many have tried to teach me over and over again...trust the process, trust yourself, check your ego at the door along with those western, hierarchical methods of learning, get out of the way, and just be the bridge, let it simply be an honor to be the conduit that facilitates the real knowledge residing in all of us.

 

[1] The nature of poverty in the garrison constituencies in Jamaica, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/095624780501700207