Love Your Inner Writer: An Interactive Workshop to Reconnect

Date: Friday, April 4 from 2 – 3 pm ET/1 – 2 pm CT/12 – 1 pm MT/11 am – 12 pm PT

Section on Balance & Well-Being in Legal Education

This interactive program co-sponsored by the Section on Balance and Well-Being in Legal Education and the Legal Writing Institute’s Well-Being Committee will help scholars reconnect with why they write scholarship and help deepen the purpose of their writing.

Participants should have a blank notebook and some pens/pencils (in different colors) handy during the workshop.

Watch the Recording Here

Speaker

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Heidi K. Brown, Associate Dean for Upper-Level Writing, Professor of Legal Writing, New York Law School Professor Heidi K. Brown is Associate Dean for Upper-Level Writing at New York Law School. A prolific scholar and author on the art and science of legal writing, she has published four books on predictive and persuasive legal writing and federal litigation, as well as numerous scholarly articles for law journals. She has written three books about well-being and thriving in the legal profession: The Introverted Lawyer: A Seven-Step Journey Toward Authentically Empowered Advocacy, Untangling Fear in Lawyering: A Four-Step Journey Toward Powerful Advocacy, and The Flourishing Lawyer: A Multi-Dimensional Approach to Performance and Well-Being. Inspired by her own experience untangling fear of public speaking during her litigation career, she is passionate about helping law students and lawyers find their authentic lawyer voices and overcome anxiety about Socratic legal discourse and performance-based lawyering tasks. Professor Brown is a frequent public speaker on the national and international stage on topics of well-being and healthy performance. Prior to joining New York Law School, Professor Brown served as Director of Legal Writing and Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School from 2016–2023. From 2011–2014, she taught in New York Law School’s Legal Practice program as Associate Professor of Law. She started her teaching career in 2008 at the Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law in Orange, California, where she served as Associate Professor of Legal Research and Writing. Professor Brown has more than two decades of experience in law practice. She worked as Of Counsel with Moore & Lee, LLP, a boutique litigation firm with offices in the Washington, D.C. area and New York City, where she handled all aspects of litigation and arbitration of complex construction contract and building development disputes. She specialized in brief writing for state and federal cases throughout the United States and mentored junior associates in civil procedure, litigation strategy, and legal writing. Before that, she was an associate at the Manhattan firm of Thacher, Proffitt & Wood and at the Washington, D.C. area firm of Watt, Tieder, Hoffar & Fitzgerald, LLP. Professor Brown studies Italian and has taught legal writing at the University of Trento in Trento, Italy and at Tuscia University in Viterbo, Italy. She received her bachelor’s degree in foreign affairs and French language/literature from the University of Virginia and her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. In 2021, she received a Master in Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

Moderator

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Laurel A. Rigertas, Professor of Law, Northern Illinois University College of Law Professor Laurel Rigertas joined the NIU law faculty in 2006. She teaches professional responsibility, torts, advanced torts, products liability, and a mindfulness course for law students. Professor Rigertas’ research and scholarship focuses on the legal profession, particularly in the areas of ethics, professionalism, the unauthorized practice of law, and access to the legal system. She served as the College of Law’s Interim Dean during the 2019-2020 academic year. In 2023 she was the inaugural recipient of the Lenny and Stacey Mandell Faculty Excellence Award. Prior to joining the NIU law faculty in 2006, Professor Rigertas practiced complex commercial litigation as a partner with Michael Best & Friedrich LLP in Chicago, which she joined in 1999 as an associate. She has litigated cases at the trial and appellate levels in both federal and state courts, as well as in arbitrations and mediations. Professor Rigertas began her law career in 1997 at Jenner & Block in Chicago, where she also focused on complex commercial litigation. Professor Rigertas graduated magna cum laude from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1997. There she was a member of the honorary scholastic society, Order of the Coif, and served as articles editor of Law & Inequality: A Journal of Theory and Practice.