SALT Announces Nominees to Board of Governors Copy

The three years since I joined SALT’s Board of Governors have flown by. I share SALT’s values and its goals and would be privileged to continue for another term. Since joining the Board I’ve served on the dinner and nominations committees, but my work has focused chiefly on the Legal Education committee, dogging the regulators, following state bar developments and hoping to stimulate the conversation about the future of our profession and its service to the community.

Legal education stands at a crossroads and SALT is more essential than ever to the task of insuring that it takes a direction that will insure that social justice and client and community service be its goals. Like others in legal education, SALT now has to do more with less.  Its members and leadership will have to work harder and be more vigilant to serve our purposes, and I would be honored to continue to do my part through SALT.

I am Clinical Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, where I teach lawyering and litigation and directs the Civil Rights Clinic, the Racial Justice Clinic, and the New York Civil Liberties Clinic. Over more than twenty years at the law school my students and I have litigated more than one hundred civil rights cases in the New York federal courts.  I’m also a past president of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and now serve as its general counsel as well as on the board and the executive committee of the ACLU.

It has been a pleasure to serve as a member of SALT’s Board these past years.  SALT’s interests and mine converge on so many fundamental human rights issues, particularly in RACIAL justice, police violence, access to law school and the profession, and international law.

I seek re-nomination for one more term to help complete a project that many SALT members and prior A2J co-chairs have contributed.  SALT’s Curriculum Reform Committee recognizes most people are denied access to legal representation in civil and criminal proceedings, and that most lawyers fails to meet their pro bono responsibility to serve economically disadvantaged people.

SALT’s Curriculum Reform Committee sees faculty assuming a critical role within the classroom of reinforcing lawyers’ pro bono obligation to economically-disadvantaged communities by highlighting and integrating systemic social justice deficiencies in the course we teach.  It views the Preamble of the ABA Rules as requiring the academy to embrace primary responsibility for embracing lawyers’ special responsibility as public citizens and enhancing the administration of justice to people unable to afford counsel.

As a co-chair with the late Pamela Bridgewater, I want to be part of the current effort led by SALT’s current leadership and A2J Committee co-chairs to renew members’ energy and interest in showing how curriculum justice reform can be done.

I chose to pursue a career in law in order to address the systemic inequity I witnessed as a tenant advocate in Washington, DC. As a law teacher at Loyola University Chicago School of Law’s Health Justice Project, a medical-legal partnership clinic, I train students to develop a comprehensive approach to eliminating disparity, provide quality legal representation to low-income individuals and families, and advise organizational clients in the development of public policy to create health equity and social justice. I also teach doctrinal courses, such as Housing Law & Policy in the US and Access to Health, that challenge students to understand systems that reproduce societal inequality, and what they can about it as attorneys.

I only recently became a SALT member. However, immediately thereafter, I joined the SALT 2016 Teaching Conference committee, and have helped with preparations for the fall conference. During this time, I’ve been continually impressed by the passion of my colleagues and their dedication to promoting justice and supporting the advancement of legal education. In addition, SALT’s recent statement against racial violence in the wake of events in Baton Rouge, St. Paul, and Dallas resonated strongly with me; I believe that we should use our platform as educators and attorneys to speak out against injustice. For these reasons, I would like to become more involved in SALT as a member of the board. If selected, I will work diligently to advance SALT’s mission of promoting racial justice as well as expanding the power of law to underserved communities.

I am currently Associate Professor of Law at Savannah Law School, where I will soon begin my third year as a tenure-track faculty member.  I would be honored and excited to join the Board of Governors of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT).  Through its mission and its activities, SALT embodies all of the reasons that I became a law professor: to pursue my three passions of teaching, scholarship, and social justice.  I am grateful for the community that SALT has provided for me – by bringing together progressive, social justice-oriented law teachers from diverse backgrounds.  I have already enjoyed and benefited from my interactions with SALT members, and my service on the Board would only enhance this experience.

My major involvement in SALT thus far has occurred through the Affirmative Action Committee, where I have advised SALT on its U.S. Supreme Court amicus briefs in support of race-conscious university admissions.  This is one of my areas of expertise and I plan to continue working for SALT to defend diversity and affirmative action.  In the future, I would also like to contribute to SALT’s voice on issues and challenges in legal education, its support and mentorship of social justice-oriented teachers, and its advocacy for important civil rights causes such as #BlackLivesMatter.  SALT is the ideal organization for me to make a significant contribution and to benefit professionally and personally from my involvement.  Thank you for your consideration.

Please accept my enthusiastic application to serve another term as a member of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) Board of Governors. I joined the Board in 2013, and have cherished the opportunity that SALT has provided for me to support and advocate for the social justice issues that matter most to us as progressive law teachers.

During my first term, I actively engaged in SALT Board activities, from Board meetings themselves to our teaching conference, annual dinner, and advocacy, communication, and recruitment efforts.

Moreover, in the last year, I endeavored to assume leadership responsibilities within SALT.

Last spring I began a term as co-chair of the Access to Justice Committee, and this summer I joined the Board’s Executive Committee.

I respectfully request the opportunity to continue to support SALT’s important mission by serving another term on the Board of Governors. Thank you for your consideration.

I joined The John Marshall Law School after two years at the Shepard Broad Law Center at Nova Southeastern University. Before entering academia, I was an assistant federal public defender for eight years working first in Tennessee and then in the Southern District of New York.

After clerking for a federal judge in Pennsylvania, I joined the Tennessee Justice Center in Nashville, focusing on litigation to expand services for children under Tennessee’s managed Medicaid program. Currently, I teach Criminal Law, Evidence, and Lawyering Skills. I am also active in the Pro Bono Clinic, where I work with students representing indigent clients in Illinois post-conviction and federal civil rights litigation.

I am interested in joining the SALT Board of Directors as I deeply believe in the organization’s mission to prioritize social justice teaching in legal education, improve the legal profession, and broaden access to justice for marginalized communities.  Since leaving practice, SALT has provided a primary means for me to stay connected with public interest projects and initiatives. Through SALT, I have also forged meaningful relationships with other like-minded academics and activists from law schools across the country.

Currently, I am the co-chairperson for the upcoming SALT Teaching Conference in September 2016. In addition, I contributed to SALT’s consumer guide for prospective law students, blogged for the SALT website, and participated in committee meetings at the SALT Teaching Conference in Las Vegas. I would be honored to expand my relationship with and contribution to SALT as a Board member.

I am thrilled to have been nominated to serve on the SALT Board of Governors and am excited about the possibility of joining the Board, because the mission of SALT reflects my own values and interests.

The dramatic changes in the legal profession generally, and in legal education specifically, present a direct threat to diversity and an indirect threat to social justice.  Organizations such as SALT must be a bulwark against the pressures and threats to diversity and access to the legal profession; our law schools and SALT must be a vocal advocates of inclusion and innovation. I want to be involved in this advocacy.

My commitment to the values espoused by SALT is reflected in my personal and professional life. As a chair of BLSA, professor of Race, Gender and the Law, chair of Faculty Appointments, and as an administrator I have advocated consistently for inclusion and diversity.  Additionally, I have spent the last several years leading the curricular innovations at Loyola Law School, including the initiation of a low-bono legal incubator. Recently, I assisted the law school in structuring a pipeline program with a prominent Los Angeles law firm for undergraduate students. I recently have authored a few op-ed pieces on the impact of student debt on students of color, and the need to reform legal education.

Now, as I step down as Senior Associate Dean I am more available than I have been in the last 10 years.  Becoming an engaged member of the SALT Board and the organization is an opportunity I relish.