As Mary Lynch announced in her July 13, 2020 farewell post, we are taking over as the editors of the Best Practices in Legal Education Blog. Mary’s post tells us about the Blog’s birth and growth out of CLEA’s Best Practices Committee’s work on the Best Practices in Legal Education book and the collaboration that led to the publication of Building on Best Practices.
Now that we have spent a little time looking back, we are excited to share a little about who we are and where we are headed.
Who we are:
- Davida Finger is a Clinic Professor and Associate Dean of Students and Experiential Learning at Loyola New Orleans College of Law. She founded the Community Justice section of the Law Clinic where she and her clinic students have represented on housing, special education, and other civil rights matters with a focus on movement lawyering. Davida received the Bellow Scholars award from the AALS Clinical Association for her empirical research on New Orleans eviction geography that documented the discriminatory impact of evictions. She is the founding director of the College of Law’s Incubator Program for solo practitioners working for social justice. Davida recently completed a 2-year term as the president of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) and is currently teaching the externship course.
- Melanie Daily DeRousse is a Clinical Associate Professor and Director of the Legal Aid Clinic at the University of Kansas School of Law. Melanie began work at KU in 2015 after she responded to a job posting that invited essays on how candidates would reinvent the then-47-year-old clinic by applying the principles in Best Practices in Legal Education. In her second term as a CLEA board member, she co-chairs the Best Practices in Pedagogy committee and serves on the Elections committee. She presents on legal education pedagogy with other Best Practices committee members at regional and national conferences, and also recently worked on the planning committee for CLEA’s 2020 New Clinicians’ Virtual Conference. Her clinical work focuses on juvenile justice, criminal defense, and child welfare; outside the clinic, she teaches and writes about family law and engages in university work on promotion, tenure, and pay equity, among other things. Before joining KU Law, Melanie represented survivors of intimate partner violence in family law matters through Legal Services of Eastern Missouri. She was a racial justice fellow in the inaugural class of advocates through the Shriver Center’s Racial Justice Institute.
Where we are headed:
It is humbling, to put it mildly, to be at the helm of such an insightful and collaborative group of contributing authors. As Mary mentioned, this Blog continues to evolve and spark “collaboration on steroids” as new ideas are generated, implemented, assessed, and modified. It is a powerful home for vetting ideas about teaching. We hope to continue to nurture the imaginative, inquisitive, and aspirational tone the Blog has cultivated over the years. As we focus our work as editors, we note the emergence of three main content areas worth highlighting:
- Teaching justice by doing justice work: we will highlight efforts around inclusion, diversity, and radical change to upend structural racism in legal education and academic institutions;
- Pedagogical (r)evolution: we will continue the Blog’s intense discussion of legal education reform and seek to emphasize emerging ideas about how we teach in ever-evolving classrooms with a priority on justice ideals; and
- Large scale policy changes affecting teaching: we will share advocacy around big-picture issues in legal education – changes in ABA standards, forthcoming CSALE studies, structural changes in higher education that impact legal education.
In addition, we hope to use the tools of social media to encourage greater engagement in these discussions and feature prominently the voices of colleagues teaching diverse topics across the legal education curriculum. We welcome new authors, voices, and comments as we seek to broaden the conversation. CLEA is self-reflective and self-critical in understanding that, as an organization, it must do more to amplify and expand all manner of justice including through this Blog.
And, finally, a thank-you and a goodbye:
Finally, thank you to Mary Lynch, founder and 13-year editor of the Blog. We knew from reading the Blog that she was a very busy and involved editor; but during this transition, we had the first opportunity to see just how much she does behind the scenes to keep the conversation interesting, interactive, inclusive, and meaningful. She has been as thoughtful and supportive in this transition as could be possible. We are grateful that she will stay on as “Editor Emeritus” as the Blog continues to grow. Mary, thank you for all that you have done to create a space to engage all legal educators in a thoughtful and productive discussion about why, how, and what we teach, and why it matters.
Filed under: Best Practices, Uncategorized | Tagged: AALS, CLEA, KU Law, KULaw, kulawschool, Law Blogs, law school blogs, legal education, loy, loyno, Loyola, loyola law clinic, Society of American Law Teachers, University of Kansas School of Law |
Best Practices for Legal Education 