Candidate Webinar Series

Judith Areen, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer

Judith Areen is the Executive Director of the Association of American Law Schools, an association of 179 member law schools. Its members include most of the nation’s law schools and produce the majority of the country’s lawyers and judges. Professor Areen is Professor Emerita at Georgetown University Law Center. Between 1989 and 2004, she served as Executive Vice President for Law Affairs of Georgetown University and Dean of the Law Center. Professor Areen’s areas of academic expertise include higher education law and family law. The second edition of her casebook on Higher Education and the Law was published by Foundation Press in 2014 (with Peter Lake). Her recent legal articles include Accreditation Reconsidered, 96 Iowa L. Rev. 1471 (2012); Government as Educator: A New Understanding of First Amendment Protection of Academic Freedom and Governance, 97 Geo. L. J. 945 (2009), and Governing Board Accountability: Competition, Regulation, and Accreditation, 36 J. Col. & Univ. Law 691 (2010). A graduate of Cornell University (1966) and the Yale Law School (1969), she has worked in the private sector and in government at the local and federal levels. Professor Areen, who is a member of the bar of the District of Columbia, is a member of the American Law Institute, and on the Board of Directors of the American Council of Education. She has served as President of the Association of American Law Schools (2006), on the Board of Trustees of Cornell University (1997-2001), and as a governor of the District of Columbia Bar (1979-1981).

Darby Dickerson, President and Dean at Southwestern Law School

Darby Dickerson is the President and Dean, and a Professor of Law, at Southwestern Law School. She formerly served as Dean at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law, The John Marshall Law School, Texas Tech University School of Law, and Stetson University College of Law.  

 A nationally known leader in legal education, Dickerson is the Immediate Past President of the AALS. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a Past President and current Board Member of Scribes—The American Society of Legal Writers, and a former Director of the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD). 

Jonathan Harris, Associate Professor, LMU Loyola Law School Los Angeles

Jonathan Harris writes and speaks on contracting in employment and equity in workforce development. His publications have appeared or are forthcoming in the Alabama Law Review, California Law Review Online, Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal, and New York City Law Review. He previously taught in the Lawyering Program at NYU School of Law and came to academia after practicing employment and labor law. He clerked for Judge James E. Graves, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit while teaching at Mississippi College School of Law. Professor Harris began his legal career as a Skadden Fellow, focusing on the intersections of employment and consumer law. Prior to that, he was a labor and community organizer.

Wendy-Adele Humphrey, Texas Tech University School of Law

Wendy-Adele Humphrey is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the Dean’s Distinguished Service Professor of Law at Texas Tech University School of Law. She is the immediate past chair of the AALS section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research, which received the 2020 Section of the Year award. She serves on the Legal Writing Institute (LWI) Board of Directors and the ABA Negotiation Competition committee. Dean Humphrey is a former member of the Texas Board of Disciplinary Appeals and currently serves on the State Bar of Texas Board of Directors. She has received numerous campus-wide awards including the Spencer A. Wells Award for Creativity in Teaching, the Chancellor’s Council Distinguished Teaching Award, the Faculty Distinguished Leadership Award, and the President’s Excellence in Diversity & Equity Award.

Danielle C. Jefferis, University of Nebraska College of Law

Danielle C. Jefferis is an incoming Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska College of Law where she will teach Civil Procedure, Civil Rights Litigation, and Race and the Law. Previously, she was an Associate Professor at California Western School of Law and a Clinical Teaching Fellow in the Civil Rights Clinic at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. Professor Jefferis’s research focuses on theories of punishment and the law and policies governing prison and detention. She takes both critical and comparative approaches to her work, looking at carceral systems, practices, and theories around the world.

Christina Koningisor, The University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law

Christina Koningisor is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Utah, S. J. Quinney College of Law. Her scholarship focuses on media law and the law of information access and government transparency.  Her articles have appeared or are forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, and the Minnesota Law Review. She has previously served as a lawyer for the New York Times and as a law clerk on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She is a graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University.

Amy Motomura, LMU Loyola Law School

Amy Motomura is an Associate Professor of Law at LMU Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, where she joined the faculty in 2020. Her scholarly interests focus on patent law’s role in innovation and on the design of patent law institutions. Previously, she was a fellow at Stanford Law School in the Center for Law & the Biosciences and the Stanford Program in Neuroscience & Society, and she practiced as a patent attorney at Morrison & Foerster LLP and Cooley LLP.

Sean Scott, Dean and President, California Western School of Law

Sean Scott joined the California Western School of Law as dean and president in 2020.  She was previously senior associate dean and associate dean for faculty at Loyola Marymount Law, where she expanded legal education through a variety of innovative programs including a Master of Science in Legal Studies, the Cybersecurity and Data Privacy Law program, and the Fashion Law Project.     

Her innovative approach extended to the classroom as well, resulting in numerous honors, including the Student Bar Association’s prestigious Excellence in Teaching Award and the Black Law Students Association’s Distinguished Faculty Award.     

Scott currently serves on the Board of Governors of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) and is a past member of the Board of Directors of the California Women’s Law Center.  Before joining academia, Scott was an associate in the Los Angeles office of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP. She earned her JD from New York University School of Law.    

Joshua Aaron Jones, Legal Writing Professor, California Western School of Law

Professor Jones earned a joint JD and Master of Education Law from the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law. After six years of practice at a Florida mass tort plaintiffs law firm, Jones returned to the academy as the Downey Brand Fellow for Public Service and Leadership at University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law. 

After completing a Master of Laws at McGeorge, Jones returned to private practice in Pensacola, Florida, where he opened a solo law office. He was called upon often as a key lawyer for LGBTQ+ issues in northwest Florida, and he collaborated on cases and projects with the ACLU of Florida and Equality Florida. His clients have included students, teachers, families, small businesses, filmmakers, and musicians. 

For 16 years, Jones served as an adjunct professor at Virginia College, Pensacola State College, and the University of West Florida. His classes have included family law, Constitutional law, evidence, trusts and estates, real estate law, legal writing for paralegals, and law office technology. He joined California Western School of Law in 2021 and teaches 1L and upper-level writing courses. Before joining CWSL, Jones was a Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law.

Karin Mika, Senior Legal Writing Professor, Cleveland-Marshall School of Law

Professor Mika has been associated with the Cleveland-Marshall Legal Writing Program since 1988. She has also worked as an Adjunct Professor of English at Cuyahoga Community College and is a research consultant for various firms and businesses in the Cleveland area. Professor Mika presents nationally on topics related to integrating technology and multimedia into classroom teaching, and has judged at numerous moot court competitions. She has lectured on essay-writing technique for several bar review courses and has written bar exam essay questions for both the California and Minnesota bar examiners. Prof. Mika’s areas of scholarly research are varied and she has published in the areas of Native American Law, Employment Law, Learning Theories, and Health Care. 

Professor Mika is also active in both the Legal Writing Institute (LWI) and Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD). She is currently the Archivist for the Legal Writing Institute, the co-chair of the website (content) committee of ALWD, and a member of the website (content) committee for LWI. She is also responsible for maintaining the history page of the Legal Writing Institute website. Recently, Professor Mika was named National Publicity Director for the William C. Burton Awards, a yearly event that honors excellence in Legal Writing. 

Tracy Norton, Associate Professor of Professional Practice, LSU Law

Professor Tracy Norton is a leader in the fields of legal writing and legal education, both nationally and internationally. She is best known for her research and presentations on cross-generational competence in legal education and the legal profession. Among her contributions to the field of legal writing are her Interactive Citation Workbook (formerly with co-authors Prof. Christine Hurt) and accompanying online Workstation, published originally in 1999. The ICW was the first digital teaching tool in widespread use in American law schools and is used in more than half of American law schools. A longtime member of the Legal Writing Institute, Professor Norton served two four-year terms on its Board of Directors. 

Her current scholarly interests are at the intersection of narrative factual theory and disaster law. In addition to her classroom teaching, she teaches Advanced Persuasion and Judicial Writing online. She has also developed a fully online pre-law legal analysis program for students interested in attending law school. Professor Norton is currently creating a digital textbook for 1L legal analysis and writing courses. During the 2020 pandemic, Professor Norton assisted faculty throughout the country in asynchronous and synchronous online course delivery. 

She began her teaching career in 1997 at Texas Tech University School of Law, where she taught from 1997-2001. In 2001, she joined the faculty at South Texas College of Law. She has been with the faculty of Touro Law Center since 2007. Prior to teaching, Professor Norton practiced criminal law in Texas.

Speakers

Almas Khan, Assistant Professor of Law, The University of Arkansas

As an intellectual historian holding a Ph.D. in English and a J.D., Almas Khan works at the intersection of law, literature, and citizenship studies. She researches how intellectual movements in law and letters have sparked the reimagination of U.S. citizenship since the Civil War, with a focus on African American, working-class, and women’s experiences. Dr. Khan’s teaching synergizes with her scholarship, applying insights from critical pedagogy and cultural legal studies to courses including U.S. constitutional law, judicial politics, and legal writing. Global disciplinary and geographic perspectives infuse Dr. Khan’s work, which draws on postcolonial theory and her experiences teaching international Master of Laws students. 

Dr. Khan’s scholarship often centralizes figures whose identity or disciplinary hybridity has resulted in their marginalization from conventional accounts of U.S. legal history and jurisprudence. Her book-in-progress, An Intellectual Reconstruction: American Legal Realism, Literary Realism, and the Formation of Citizenship, analyzes how major post-Civil War movements in American law and letters participated in the process of equitist national rebuilding through the seemingly insular process of disciplinary reformation. Dr. Khan’s research has been published in several edited collections and in journals including the Chicago Journal of International Law, the Washburn Law Journal, and the Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry. Her scholarship has been supported by organizations including the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Legal Writing Institute. She has also presented at conferences sponsored by the American Studies Association; the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities; and the African American Intellectual History Society. 

Dr. Khan’s pedagogy aims to empower students as nascent scholars and lawyers, seeing the classroom as a space where, in Paolo Freire’s terms, a “teacher-student” interacts with “student-teachers” on a joint journey of discovery. Interdisciplinarity and intellectual risk-taking are hallmarks of Dr. Khan’s teaching, including in previous positions at Georgetown Law and the University of Miami School of Law. To instigate student learning, she uses cultural legal studies materials like films as well as realistic exercises that tap into her prior work in areas including civil rights law and environmental law. She has also advised students who have published articles on subjects spanning from queer rights to international economic law. Dr. Khan’s scholarship on legal pedagogy is informed by these experiences and has appeared in journals including The Law Teacher and Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research & Writing. Her recent pedagogical research dovetails with her book project in emphasizing equitable, asset-based approaches to teaching as academia and the legal profession continue to diversify. 

When not immersed in law, literature, and history, Dr. Khan enjoys exploring alternative music, fashion, and interior design. Additionally, she is an avid runner and traveler, believing, with modernist poet T. S. Eliot, that “We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.” 

Patricia Winograd, Assistant Clinical Professor of Law, LMU Loyola Law School

Patricia Winograd is a Visiting Associate Professor of Law who currently teaches Legal Research and Writing. Winograd received her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, with distinction, and holds a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School. Following attainment of her law degree, Winograd enjoyed a near decades-long stint as a litigator in Los Angeles firms with local and global presence where she represented a range of clients, including Fortune 500 companies. Winograd’s litigation experience includes extensive work in complex litigation spanning primarily the commercial business, insurance, employment and products arenas. Prior to coming to Loyola Law School, Winograd received a Master’s Degree at University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education—allowing her to merge her passion for teaching and the law. Although now a member of the team of Writing faculty, Winograd has also taught Remedies at LLS as an Adjunct Professor. 

Emile Loza de Siles, Assistant Professor of Law, The University of Hawai’i at Mānoa

Professor Emile Loza de Siles is Assistant Professor of Law with the University of Hawai’i William S. Richardson School of Law.  In addition, she serves as Associate Professor (adjunct) the University of Maryland Global Campus and teaches cybersecurity graduate courses.  Professor Loza chairs the Section on Minority Groups of the Association of American Law Schools.

She founded Technology Law Group in 2003.  She has since represented Cisco, HP, Accenture, and numerous other tech innovators.  She also has served in the U.S. Department of Commerce, Office of General Counsel.

Professor Loza de Siles’ scholarship addresses artificial intelligence (AI) and law emphasizing AI governance and social justice.  She serves on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Artificial Intelligence Policy Committee and regularly engages in AI policy and legislative work.  In 2021, she was nominated to the White House Office of Science and Technology’s inaugural National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee.

Professor Loza de Siles clerked for the Honorable Sérgio Gutiérrez of the Idaho Court of Appeals and the Honorable Sheila Anthony of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C.

She holds a BS in technology, an MBA, a JD from The George Washington University School of Law, and a cybersecurity strategy graduate certificate from Georgetown University.  She also has completed data science graduate courses with Harvard University.

Valena Beety, Professor of Law and Deputy Director of the Academy for Justice, Arizona State University

Professor Valena Elizabeth Beety is professor of law at Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and the deputy director of the Academy for Justice, a criminal justice center connecting research with policy reform.  She researches and writes about wrongful convictions, forensic evidence, the opioid crisis, and incarceration. She is the co-editor of the Wrongful Convictions Reader and the Scientific Evidence Treatise. Professor Beety has successfully exonerated wrongfully convicted clients, obtained presidential grants of clemency for drug offenses, and served as an elected board member of the national Innocence Network, an invited board member of the Research Center on Violence, and an appointed commissioner on the West Virginia Governor’s Indigent Defense Commission.  

Professor Beety’s scholarship is published widely, most notably in the Northwestern Law Review, the North Carolina Law Review, the Ohio State Law Journal, the Washington Law Review and the Florida Law Review. Before serving as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Beety clerked for the Honorable Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and for the Honorable Chief Judge James G. Carr of the Northern District of Ohio.  Beety holds a B.A. and J.D. from the University of Chicago. 

Jack Harrison, Professor of Law and Director, Center for Excellence in Advocacy, Northern Kentucky University

Prior to beginning his academic career, Professor Jack B. Harrison spent almost 20 years as a practicing attorney, representing clients in litigation matters in the areas of product liability defense and employment discrimination defense. Professor Harrison was a partner at Frost Brown Todd, where he was the first openly gay person elected partner at a large Cincinnati law firm. 

Beyond the legal community, Professor Harrison has served on Boards of Directors for The Point Foundation, the Cincinnati Opera, Caracole, and the National Gay and Lesbian Law Association.  Professor Harrison currently serves as an officer for the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Issues Section of the Association of American Law Schools. 

Professor Harrison has also been involved in a number of pro bono matters throughout his career, including the representation of inmates alleging constitutional violations against state corrections facilities. Professor Harrison’s research and scholarship is focused on topics related to civil procedure / federal courts and sexuality, identity and the law. 

Emily Hammond, Glen Earl Weston Research Professor, George Washington University Law School

Professor Hammond is a nationally recognized expert in energy law, environmental law, and administrative law. Their scholarship focuses on the regulatory process, the responses of various legal institutions to scientific uncertainty, electricity markets, climate change, and the law of water quality. 

Committed to service leadership, Professor Hammond held a presidential appointment at the Department of Energy during the 2021-22 academic year, where they served as Deputy General Counsel for Litigation, Regulation, and Enforcement; and Deputy General Counsel for Environment and Litigation. Previously, Professor Hammond was awarded the GW Law Distinguished Dean Award by the graduating classes of 2020 and 2021, and the Distinguished Faculty Service Award by the graduating class of 2018. 

Prior to joining the GW law faculty, Professor Hammond served on the faculties at Wake Forest University and the University of Oklahoma College of Law, where they served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Associate Director of the Law Center. Before entering academia, Professor Hammond practiced law with Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore in Atlanta, Georgia, and clerked for Judge Richard W. Story of the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Michael Higdon, Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty Development, University of Tennessee

Professor Michael J. Higdon joined the UT faculty in August 2009 after spending five years as a faculty member at the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Higdon teaches and writes in the areas of Constitutional Law; Sexuality, Gender and the Law; Wills & Trusts; and Family Law. 

His scholarship in these areas has been published in several journals, including the Duke Law Journal, the George Washington Law Review, the Iowa Law Review, the Alabama Law Review, the Indiana Law Journal, and the Fordham Law Review. 

Higdon received the J.D. in 2001 from the University of Nevada, graduating first in his class and receiving the James E. Rogers Award for outstanding academic achievement. While in law school, he served as editor-in-chief of the Nevada Law Journal. After graduation, he clerked for Judge Procter Hug, Jr. of the U.S. Court of the Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  

Higdon has received the law school’s Harold C. Warner Outstanding Teacher Award, the Carden Award for Outstanding Service to the Institution, the W. Allen Separk Faculty Scholarship Award, the Marilyn V. Yarbrough Faculty Award for Writing Excellence, and the Carden Award for Outstanding Achievement in Scholarship.  

Brian Soucek, Professor of Law and Chancellor’s Fellow, U.C. Davis School of Law

Brian Soucek received his JD from Yale Law School, where he was Comments Editor for the Yale Law Journal, a Coker Fellow in Procedure, and won the Munson Prize for his work in the school’s immigration clinic. Prior to law school, Soucek taught for three years in the Humanities Collegiate Division and Philosophy Department at the University of Chicago, where he was Collegiate Assistant Professor and Co-Chair of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts. After law school, he clerked for the late Mark R. Kravitz, United States District Judge for the District of Connecticut, and the Hon. Guido Calabresi of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.    

Professor Soucek’s work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Sixth and Seventh Circuits, referenced and excerpted in leading casebooks in Immigration Law, Civil Procedure, and Sexual Orientation Law, discussed by the Wall Street Journal, and honored with the Dukeminier Award from UCLA’s Williams Institute for the year’s best article on sexual orientation and gender identity law. 

Lolita Buckner Inniss, Dean and Provost’s Professor of Law, University of Colorado Law School

Lolita Buckner Inniss is the dean of the University of Colorado Law School, and is also Provost’s Professor of Law. Before coming to CU Law she served at SMU Dedman School of Law as Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, a Professor of Law, a University Distinguished Professor, and a Robert G. Storey Distinguished Faculty Fellow. Dean Inniss previously held the Hamilton College Elihu Root Peace Fund Visiting Professorship in Women’s Studies, a distinguished visiting chair, and was also a fellow of the New York University-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Memory Project in Paris, France. 
 
A highly regarded scholar with a prominent national and international voice in her fields, Dean Inniss is an elected member of the American Law Institute, and is the United States Special Rapporteur to the International Academy of Comparative Law on the topic of contemporary slavery. She has taught across the law school curriculum, including property law, comparative racism and the law, real estate transactions, and immigration clinical practice. 
 
Dean Inniss earned her J.D. from UCLA where she was an editor of the National Black Law Journal and a Moot Court Honors Participant. She holds an LL.M. with Distinction and a Ph.D. in law from Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, in Canada, where she won the Mary Jane Mossman Award for Work in Feminist Legal Theory and the Harley D. Hallett Award, and was a Peter Hogg Scholar and a Graduate Associate of the Institute of Feminist Legal Studies.

Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Dean and Ryan Roth Gallo & Earnest J. Gallo Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law

Angela Onwuachi-Willig is dean and Ryan Roth Gallo & Ernest J. Gallo Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law. She is a renowned legal scholar and expert in critical race theory, employment discrimination, and family law.   

Dean Onwuachi-Willig is an elected member of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Law Institute (ALI), American Bar Foundation, as well as the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers. She is the recipient of numerous awards. Other honors include her selection as a finalist for the Supreme Court of Iowa in 2011; identification by the National Law Journal as one of the “Minority 40 under 40” in 2011 and by Lawyers of Color as one of the “50 Law Professors of Color Under 50” in its inaugural list in 2013; and election to the Iowa Bar Foundation. 

She also served as the the chair for AALS Committee on the Recruitment and Retention of Minority Law Teachers and Students for two years, leading the committee as it drafted and developed an official Statement of Good Practices on the Recruitment and Retention of Minority Law Teachers. She also is the founder of the Lutie A. Lytle Black Women Law Faculty Workshop, which has resulted in the production of many books and hundreds of articles and essays by its participants and has assisted dozens of women on the path to tenure. 

 Onwuachi-Willig received her JD from the University of Michigan, where she was a Clarence Darrow Scholar, a Michigan Law Review note editor, and an associate editor for the founding issue of the Michigan Journal of Race and Law. After law school, she clerked for US District Court Judge Solomon Oliver of the Northern District of Ohio and US Sixth Circuit Judge Karen Nelson Moore. 

Tamara F. Lawson, Dean and Professor of Law, St. Thomas University School of Law

Tamara F. Lawson is Dean and Professor of Law at St. Thomas University School of Law. Dean Lawson joined the St. Thomas Law faculty in 2004 and was awarded “Professor of the Year” in 2005 and 2006. In addition to her administrative duties, she teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Evidence, and a seminar on Race and the Law. She is the Chair of the Law Professors Division of the National Bar Association and a Board of Trustee member for the Law School Admission Council. 

Prior to joining the law faculty, Dean Lawson served as a Deputy District Attorney at the Clark County District Attorney’s Office in Las Vegas, Nevada, from 1996-2002. As a criminal prosecutor, she worked in the Special Victims Unit for Domestic Violence, argued multiple cases before the Nevada Supreme Court, including death penalty cases, as well as served in various departments in the prosecutor’s office. 

Dean Lawson’s research is published in prestigious law journals. Her premier article, “Can Fingerprints Lie?: Re-weighing Fingerprint Evident in Criminal Jury Trials,” has been referenced in numerous treatises, law review articles, and appellate court briefs. She has also participated as a co-author of two casebooks, among other scholarly publications.

Dean Lawson received her J.D. from University of San Francisco, and her LL.M. from Georgetown University.