Clinical Law Prof Blog

Book Announcement: Reimagining Clinical Legal Education

By request of the publisher, Hart Publishing, an announcement for the new book, Reimagining Clinical Legal Education.

 

Reimagining Clinical Legal Education

Edited by Linden Thomas, Steven Vaughan, Bharat Malkani and Theresa Lynch

 

Clinical Legal Education (CLE) can be defined in broad terms as the study of law through real, or simulated, casework. It enables students to experience the law in action and to reflect on those experiences. CLE offers an alternative learning experience to the traditional lecture/seminar method and allows participants to take the study of law beyond the lecture theatre and library. CLE has been a part of English law schools for several decades and is becoming an increasingly popular component of a number of programmes. It is also well established in North America, Australia and many other countries around the globe. In some law schools, CLE is credit-bearing; in others, it is an extracurricular activity. Some CLE schemes focus on social-welfare law, whilst others are commercially orientated. A number are run in conjunction with third-sector organisations and many are supported by private practice law firms. This edited collection brings together academics, lawyers, third-sector organisations and students to discuss the present experience and potential of CLE. As such, it will be of interest to a wide and diverse audience, both within and outside the UK.

 

Linden Thomas, Steven Vaughan and Theresa Lynch are all researchers at the Centre for Professional Legal Education and Research (CEPLER) at the Law School, University of Birmingham.

Bharat Malkani is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Law and Politics at Cardiff University.

 

 

LawClinics@50: 50 Years of Clinical Legal Education at Georgia Law

This year marks the 50th anniversary of clinical legal education at the University of Georgia School of Law. We are celebrating this milestone with a series of events and collaborations, including CLEs, conferences, and awards.

As part of our LawClinics@50 celebration, we have entered into a partnership with the Online Platform of the Georgia Law Review. The clinical faculty will write a series of short articles addressing the past, present, and future of many of our individual clinic and externship courses.  The series starts with a reflection on 50 Years of Clinical and Experiential Learning at Georgia Law by current Associate Dean for Clinical Programs and Experiential Learning, Professor Ellie Lanier. Future articles will address our poverty, environmental, family violence, externship, veterans, criminal justice, and other courses.

I append below the flyer announcing this collaboration. Watch this space for links to each publication as it appears.

Alex Scherr

Director, Veterans Legal Clinic

 

 

Mid-Atlantic Clinicians' Writing Workshop Fall 2018 remaining sessions

The next session of the Mid-Atlantic Clinicians’ Writing Workshop is taking place at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law on Friday, October 27 at 9:30 am.  Lindsay Harris, Assistant Professor of Law, University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law, will present her paper entitled Withholding Protection.

The schedule for the remaining fall writing workshops is as follows:

At 10 am on November 16, Professors Medha Makhlouf of Penn State Dickinson Law and Tomar Pierson-Brown of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law will be presenting at Penn State Dickinson Law.

At 9:30 am on December 7, professors Nichole Tuchinda of Georgetown University Law Center, Saba Ahmed of the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law, and Kim Rolla of the University of Virginia School of Law will be presenting at Georgetown University Law Center.

Sessions of the Mid-Atlantic Clinicians’ Writing Workshop are open to all area clinicians.  For more information, please contact Katie Ladewski, Sherley Cruz, Andrew Budzinski, or Joe Pileri.

Clinical Law Review: Applications to the Board of Editors

Via Prof. Wendy Bach:

 

The Clinical Law Review seeks applications for three vacancies on the Board of Editors.  The Board urges you to think about whether you would be interested, and to think about others whom you would encourage to apply.

 

Members of the Board of Editors serve for a term of 6 years. The term of the new Board members will commence in January 2020. Board meetings customarily are held twice a year: once at the annual Clinical Law Review Workshop at the end of September and once at the AALS Spring clinical workshop or conference. Board members are expected to attend meetings regularly. Policy matters for the Review and status of upcoming issues are discussed at these meetings. Throughout the year, Board members are asked to work with authors to edit articles. Board members also customarily serve as small group leaders in the Clinical Law Review Workshop.

 

Applicants should explain their interest in the position and should highlight the aspects of their experience that they believe are most relevant. The Board seeks applications from people committed to the work of the Review and strives to select people with diverse backgrounds and varying experiences in and approaches to clinical legal education. Applications and supporting resumes must be received no later than April 1, 2019. Please email them to me at [email protected] with the subject line “Clinical Law Review Application.”

 

The committee to select new Board members is always chaired by a current Board member whose term is expiring. I will be serving this year as the chair of the Selection Committee. The other members of the committee have been designated by the three organizations that sponsor the Clinical Law Review -- AALS, CLEA, and NYU -- each of which designated two committee members.  This year’s committee consists of myself, Melanie Derousse, Marty Guggenheim, Randy Hertz, Praveen Kosuri and Danny Schaffzin.

 

I encourage you to contact me or other current or former Board members with any questions or for information about service on the Board. My fellow Board members and I have found it a very rewarding and informative way to continue the advancement of clinical legal education.

 

The members of the Board are: Muneer I. Ahmad, Amna A. Akbar, Sameer M. Ashar, Wendy A. Bach, Susan D. Bennett, Warren Binford, Martin Guggenheim, Jennifer Lee Koh, Jeffrey Selbin, and Kimberly A. Thomas.

 

The current Editors-in-Chief are Randy Hertz, Phyllis Goldfarb and Michael Pinard.

 

Those who previously served on the Board are: Jane Aiken, Tony Alfieri, Bev Balos, Margaret Martin Barry, Ben Barton, Juliet Brodie, Angela Burton, Stacy Caplow, Bob Dinerstein, Jon Dubin, Cecelia Espenoza, Keith A. Findley, Gay Gellhorn, Michele Gilman, Carolyn Grose, Peter Toll Hoffman, Jonathan Hyman, Peter Joy, Minna Kotkin, Deborah Maranville, Bridget McCormack, Binny Miller, Kim O’Leary, Ascanio Piomelli, Mae Quinn, Paul Reingold, Brenda Smith, Jim Stark, Paul Tremblay, Nina Tarr, Rod Uphoff, and Leah Wortham.

 

 

Call for Papers: 2019 Applied Legal Storytelling Conference

Sponsored by the Legal Writing Institute and CLEA, the Applied Legal Storytelling Conference brings together academics, judges, and practitioners:

The conference has previously convened in 2007 (London), 2009 (Portland), 2011 (Denver), 2013 (London), Seattle (2015), and Washington D.C. (2017). We are very excited to bring it back to the Mountain West (Boulder) in July 2019. Applied Legal Storytelling (AppLS) examines the use of stories—and of storytelling or narrative elements—in law practice, legal education, and the law. This definition is intentionally broad in order to allow people creativity in the way they think and present on the topic. Such topics may include: the ways in which fiction-writing techniques or narrative theory can inform legal storytelling; stories in the law, or law as stories; legal storytelling and metaphor; client story advocacy; legal storytelling and cognitive science; and ethical considerations in legal storytelling.

The conference is in Boulder, Colorado, July 9–11 2019. There are two deadlines for submitting proposals: January 21, 2019 (priority deadline) and March 11, 2019 (extended deadline).

Consider the full Call for Papers here: Applied Legal Storytelling 2019 CFP

 

Pepperdine Appellate Clinic Director Nominated to the United States District Court

Our brilliant friend, colleague, and law partner in the clinics, Prof. Jeremy Rosen, director of Pepperdine's Ninth Circuit Appellate Advocacy Clinic, is nominated to the United States District Court for the Central District of California. He has led our clinic to great outcomes, including published opinions advancing civil rights for prisoners, hourly employees, and access to justice to for clients in forma pauperis in the Ninth Circuit. He will be a great judge.

 

Here is our press release:

Director of Pepperdine Law’s Ninth Circuit Appellate Advocacy Clinic, Jeremy B. Rosen, has been nominated by the President to serve as District Judge on the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Rosen is a partner at the Los Angeles office of Horvitz & Levy LLP, where his practice focuses on appellate litigation. Under Rosen’s direction of the Appellate Advocacy Clinic, Pepperdine Law students have consistently won cases at the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

Former Tenth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Judge and Dean Emeritus Deanell Reece Tacha comments, “Jeremy Rosen is an outstanding choice for the U.S. District Court. I worked closely with him when we began the Ninth Circuit Appellate Clinic at Pepperdine Law. He is the model of intellectual, ethical, and professional excellence that characterizes the best judges in the nation. He will serve the Central District and the nation with distinction.”

Via The White House Nominations & Appointments announcement:

Jeremy B. Rosen of California, to serve as District Judge on the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Jeremy Rosen is a partner in the Los Angeles, California, office of Horvitz & Levy LLP. His practice focuses on appellate litigation, primarily in the Ninth Circuit, California Supreme Court, and California Courts of Appeals. He specializes in First Amendment cases, with expertise in both the Speech and Religion Clauses, and is a California Bar Certified Appellate Specialist. Upon graduation from law school, Mr. Rosen clerked for Judge William Matthew Byrne, Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, and he later clerked for Judge Ferdinand F. Fernandez of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Mr. Rosen received his B.A., magna cum laude, from Cornell University and a J.D. and L.L.M., magna cum laude, from Duke University School of Law, where he served on the Duke Law Journal.

The New Champions of the Presumption of Innocence?

Like many of you who were concerned about the confirmation and hasty swearing in of our newest Supreme Court Justice, I woke up this morning tempted to despair. As I caught up with the public statements of McConnell, Collins, and others, however, I realized that there’s no need to fear for the independence of the judiciary—especially as it relates to criminal justice reform and mass incarceration. Indeed, those of us who spend our days in prisons, jails, courtrooms, and classrooms—worried about the school to prison pipeline; implicit (and explicit) racial bias; institutionalization; and whether our indigent clients can ever get a fair shake in this country—now know for certain that we have new champions in our corner, new converts to our cause: Republican Senators!

Mitch McConnell, who for years has played a leadership role in the Senate, supporting, for example, the war on drugs, disparities between sentencing for crack cocaine and powder cocaine convictions, the federal death penalty, and limitation of federal habeas relief, has now proclaimed himself the Standard Bearer for the Presumption of Innocence! Mitch, welcome to the team! I would never have guessed that this was your pet issue! Criminal defense attorneys don’t judge, however; it’s never too late to start spending time with people of color just hoping they can get a jury of their peers to see them as human beings! As they say on The Price is Right (not a reference to your donor base)… Come On Down!

And Senator Susan Collins, dang girl! I’m totally borrowing from your statement in my next appeal challenging the sufficiency of the evidence of a criminal charge! This is good stuff:

...we will be ill served in the long run if we abandon the presumption of innocence and fairness, tempting though it may be. We must always remember that it is when passions are most inflamed that fairness is most in jeopardy...

I literally couldn’t have said it better myself. I know it must have taken a good deal of principle to risk alienating your base, which—let’s be honest—has supported you more for your votes supporting, say, withholding federal funding from sanctuary cities and authorizing (and extending) the Patriot Act. But you did it!! You planted your feet and stood up for the little guy facing the awesome power of the federal government arrayed against him. Well, not quite—but close enough.

So this is just an educated guess, but I suspect our new Presumption of Innocence Champions are going to start with national bail reform. I mean, that’s kind of low-hanging fruit, so it only makes sense. Divorcing considerations of wealth from considerations of whether a (presumed innocent) defendant will show up for court is a no-brainer! First, it supports the new Republican cause celebre (sweet! political points scored!). Second, it saves money (which is Republicans’ second favorite thing!) related to the expense of housing presumed-innocent defendants as they await trial—some for as many as several years. Third, it keeps families together until there has been a definitive adjudication of guilt. That only makes sense for Senators Collins and McConnell. I can’t wait to stand with them on this!

The next steps in criminal justice reform are anyone’s guess, really, and the sky’s the limit! There are so many many many many opportunities in America to support the ideal of the presumption of innocence and protect those facing charges when “fairness is most in jeopardy,” according to Senator Collins. All I know is, I want in! I mean, I’ve been waiting my whole career for someone to listen to the voices crying out in the wilderness for true justice for those facing criminal accusations. Oh me of little faith.