Faculty Focus is a series of webinars featuring expert advice from law school leaders and shared experiences from law faculty. The current series is designed to support experienced tenure-track faculty, but anyone in the legal academy is welcome to join.

Join these free, conversational webinars on Thursdays at 4pm Eastern/1pm Pacific. The hour-long sessions are structured to encourage conversation and connection with carefully-selected panelists who demonstrate a range of diverse perspectives, and to include opportunities for participants to engage with speakers and crowdsource ideas across a range of law schools.

Upcoming Session

How to Make Productive Use of a Sabbatical or a Leave of Absence

October 6 | 4pm Eastern/1pm Pacific

Join us for an engaging discussion about strategies for optimizing one’s sabbatical for personal and professional growth. Panelists will discuss various approaches to making the most of one’s sabbatical including book projects, Fulbright awards, and government service. Panelists will also give advice about how to set realistic goals and achieve them.

Speakers

Daniel Kiel

Daniel Kiel is the FedEx Professor of Law at the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law and an associate director at the Benjamin Hooks Institute for Social Change. His teaching and scholarship focuses on constitutional law, education, and structural disparities. In addition to his written scholarship, Prof. Kiel directed a documentary film on the first students to desegregate schools in Memphis, and in 2015, he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to expand on his work through an appointment at the University of the Free State in South Africa.

Ann Southworth

Ann Southworth is Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine, and co-director of UCI Law’s Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession. She teaches courses on the legal profession and professional responsibility. Her scholarship focuses primarily on lawyers’ norms, professional identities, practices, organizations, and networks. She has published numerous articles in law reviews and peer-reviewed journals and authored and co-authored several books: Lawyers of the Right: Professionalizing the Conservative Coalition (University of Chicago Press, 2008); The Legal Profession: Ethics in Contemporary Practice (2d ed. 2019) (with Catherine Fisk); What Lawyers Do: Understanding the Many American Legal Practices (2020) (with Catherine Fisk); and $peech: The Campaign to Unleash Big Money in American Politics (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2023).

Future Sessions

So, You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling: Tips for How Experienced Faculty Can Renew Their Passion for Teaching, Scholarship, and Service

October 13 | 4pm Eastern/1pm Pacific

Beyond the Entry-level Market: Tips for the Lateral Market and Obtaining a Visiting Professorship

November 3 | 4pm Eastern/1pm Pacific

Series Host & Moderators

Alena Allen | Moderator

Alena Allen is Interim Dean and Professor of Law at University of Arkansas School of Law, and AALS Deputy Director. Her scholarship has focused on the intersection of health policy and feminist theory. Previously, Allen served on the faculty at the Cecil C. Humphreys University of Memphis School of Law where she won Professor of Year in 2013, the Farris Bobango Faculty Scholarship Award in 2019, and the MLK 50 Faculty Service Award in 2021.

Erwin Chemerinsky is Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law at of Berkeley Law, and AALS President. He is one of the foremost legal academics in the United States. He is the author of eleven books, including leading casebooks and treatises about constitutional law, criminal procedure, and federal jurisdiction, and more than 200 law review articles. He frequently argues appellate cases, including in the United States Supreme Court. In 2016, he was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2017, National Jurist magazine again named Dean Chemerinsky as the most influential person in legal education in the United States.

Mark Alexander | Host

Mark Alexander is the Arthur J. Kania Dean and Professor of Law at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. He serves on the Executive Committee of AALS. Prior to Villanova, he served as Associate Dean for Academics at Seton Hall University School of Law. Alexander’s areas of expertise include constitutional law, criminal procedure, election law, criminal law, and the First Amendment. Alexander served as an adviser and issues director for several political campaigns. He clerked for Chief Judge Thelton Henderson of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and was a litigator with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Alexander earned a B.A. and J.D. from Yale University.

Past Sessions

Missed a past Faculty Focus? Watch all past sessions here.