Updated Programming at the AALS Annual Meeting

 
The AALS Annual Meeting has undergone several recent programming changes, including multiple new session types and program features. Some of the latest program options include:
 

• AALS President’s Program on Diversity. The AALS President and President-Elect have joined together to launch a two-year focus on diversity, starting with this President’s Program. Submit a proposal.

• What is AALS and Why Does It Matter for My Career? And How Do I Get the Most Out of the Annual Meeting? This session is intended for new law professors and administrators, especially for those who have never attended an AALS Annual Meeting. After a quick introduction to the organization, a panel of past attendees including AALS leadership and newer attendees will discuss their experiences with AALS. There will also be a candid discussion of why people attend the Annual Meeting and how to get the most out of it. New members will have the opportunity to sign up for AALS Sections and connect with other first-time attendees.

• AALS Opening Reception. Enjoy refreshments while connecting with colleagues from law schools across the country.

• AALS Plenary Program with keynote speaker Brad Smith, President and Chief Legal Officer of Microsoft. In place of the traditional luncheon, the Annual Meeting now features an opening plenary program. Smith will join AALS President Kellye Testy, Lucy Lee Helm, Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary, Starbucks Coffee Company and Daniel B. Rodriguez, Dean, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, for an interactive conversation on Preparing a Diverse Profession to Serve a Diverse World.

• AALS President’s Program on Great Expectations: The Competencies, Skills, and Attributes that Employers See in our Graduates. A diverse panel of lawyers will offer reactions from their practice perspectives to recently-gathered data from the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System.

• A session organized by the AALS Committee on Recruitment and Retention of Minority Law Teachers and Students: Making Room for More: Theorizing Educational Diversity and Identifying Best Practices in the Age of Fisher.

• AALS Symposium on Why the Decline of Law and Legal Education Matters (and What We Might Do About It)

• Arc of Career programs, which have been specifically designed to help legal education professionals (including faculty and administrators) with professional development over the course of their careers.
  • Branching Out in Your Post-Tenure Career
  • Building Academic Communities and Blogging for Law Professors: Forming Online Communities
  • Chartering New Waters: Clinicians’ Post-Tenure Reflections
  • The Legal Writing Lateral
  • So…You Want to be a Dean?  Why Considering a Deanship Matters
  • Transitions: Preparing for Life Beyond the Legal Academy

• Discussion Groups, which facilitate scholarly discussion and engagement with a small group of faculty.
  • The Central American Refugee Crisis: A Discussion of the Current Response and Evaluation of U.S. Legal Obligations under Domestic and International Law
  • Clinics and Practice-Readiness: Perfect Partners or Strange Bedfellows?
  • Community Development Law and Economic Justice: Why Law Matters
  • The Future of Tax Administration and Enforcement
  • Introducing Leadership Development into the Law School Curriculum
  • Salman v. United States and the Future of Insider Trading Law
  • Student Assessment: Tips and Tricks from the Trenches
  • Why [Transactional] Law Matters

• Academy Programs, which are designed by law faculty outside of section programming.
  • #BlackLivesMatter: Balancing Security with Dignity in American Policing
  • Does Anyone’s Law Matter at the Border? Shootings, Searches, Walls, and the U.S. Constitution
  • New Directions in Access to Justice Research – Measuring Outcomes
  • Still Victims: Continuing the Trauma of Victims of Military Sexual Assault

 
Learn more about Annual Meeting programs, including descriptions and sessions organized by Sections, at www.aals.org/am2017/program/.
 

Arc of Career Program at the 2016 Annual Meeting.