Date: Friday, October 22, 2021, 2:00 – 3:00 PM EST
Webinar Description:
Teaching Anti-Racism: The Clinical Section of the Teaching Methodologies Committee is hosting two webinars to assist in-house and field placement clinicians with teaching anti- racism. Each webinar will have three presenters discuss discrete tools and ideas on incorporating a variety of anti-racist teaching. Through a variety of lenses, presenters will address ways to evaluate and improve feedback to students, provide ideas for teaching about racism, and examine ways to empower students while in law school, as well as prepare them to be effective life-long advocates for change.
Learning Objectives:
Click Here to Watch Webinar Replay
Samir R. Hanna, J.D., Clinical Instructor, Harvard Law School
Prior to joining the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, Hanna taught at the University of Michigan Law School Unemployment Insurance Clinic. At Michigan Law, Hanna designed and taught clinic seminar classes for first, second, and third year students. Hanna supervised students in complex administrative litigation, appellate brief writing, and oral argument. Prior to the faculty at Michigan Law, Hanna served as an administrative law judge for the State of Michigan, presiding over and issuing more than 1,500 decisions in administrative appeals. In his capacity as an administrative law judge, Hanna developed unique insight into the administrative adjudication process and the inter-workings of state administrative agencies. Before joining the bench, Hanna worked in legal aid and maintained his own private practice, which focused on indigent clients charged with unemployment fraud. He has worked for the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Sugar Law Center for Economic & Social Justice.
Kendall Lynn Kerew, J.D., Associate Clinical Professor and Externship Program Director, Georgia State University College of Law
Kendall Kerew, is an Associate Clinical Professor and Director of the Externship Program at Georgia State University College of Law. She is the recipient of the College of Law’s 2019 Steven J. Kaminshine Award for Excellence in Service, the 2017 David J. Maleski Award for Teaching Excellence, and the Black Law Student Association’s 2016 Bernadette Hartsfield Faculty Award.
She spent her first five years at Georgia State Law teaching in the first-year legal writing program. Prior to joining the faculty in 2005, Kerew worked as an associate at King & Spalding and as an assistant attorney general for the Georgia Attorney General’s Office.
Kerew is the author of Chapter 6, “Building Your Professional Identity” and Chapter 14, “Cross-Cultural Lawyering”, in Nathalie Martin, Lawyering from the Inside Out: Learning Professional Development through Mindfulness and Emotional Intelligence (Cambridge University Press 2018) and Chapter 17, “Writing for Practice” in Learning From Practice: A Text for Experiential Legal Education (Wortham, Scherr, Maurer, & Brooks eds., 3d ed. 2016). In addition, she is the co-author (with Timothy W. Floyd) of Marking the Path from Law Student to Lawyer: Using Field Placement Courses to Facilitate the Deliberate Exploration of Professional Identity and Purpose, 68 MERCER L. REV. 767 (2017).
She is Immediate Past President of the Clinical Legal Education Association (cleaweb.org) and a member of its Board of Directors. From 2015 to 2017, Kerew served as co-chair of the Association of American Law Schools Clinical Legal Education Section’s Externship Committee. In this role, Kerew facilitated the re-launch of LexternWeb, (lexternweb.org) which seeks to promote information sharing and collaboration among externship faculty nationwide and internationally. In addition, to her work with the AALS Externship Committee, Kerew is an active member of the AALS Clinical Legal Education Section’s Teaching Methodologies Committee, and the Georgia Association of Legal Externships. GALE is a consortium of externship directors from five Georgia law schools.
Nira Geevargis, J.D., Associate Clinical Professor & Director, Externship Programs, UC Hastings Law San Francisco
Associate Professor Nira Geevargis serves as the Director of Externship Programs, where she oversees UC Hastings Law’s program for developing students’ practical legal capabilities through placements in qualifying judicial, government, or corporate counsel offices. Students work under the supervision of experienced lawyers and judges, where they have the opportunity to apply classroom teachings to the real-world practice of law. As Director of Externship Programs, Professor Geevargis provides guidance to students, teaches the course’s classroom component, and provides oversight of placements and supervising attorneys. Professor Geevargis also leads the law school’s Corporate Counsel Externship Program, an innovative program in which students work at in-house positions at for-profit and non-profit companies.
Professor Geevargis is an active member of the Bay Area Consortium on Externships, a network of local externship professors collaborating on placement oversight and student development. She regularly conducts trainings on best supervision and feedback practices for attorneys and provides support to new externship faculty. She is also the founder of CalEx, a conference of California law schools that serves as a foundation for exchange of ideas and pedagogy development. She is the current co-chair of the Association of American Law Schools Clinical Legal Education Section’s Externship Committee.
Before joining UC Hastings, Professor Geevargis was an Assistant Professor and Director of Externships Programs at the University of San Francisco School of Law for eight years. Earlier in her career, she was a civil rights attorney and advocate at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. She litigated immigration cases and managed the General Legal Services Clinic, which provided pro bono legal representation to low-income clients through partnerships with law firms, solo practitioners, and nonprofit organizations. In 2005, Professor Geevargis was awarded the Graduate Law Fellowship at the Golden Gate University Women’s Employment Rights Clinic where she supervised law students providing representation to low-wage workers. She served on the board of the Eviction Defense Collaborative for five years. Professor Geevargis speaks Assyrian, Spanish, and Farsi.
Professor Geevargis is a first-generation college and law-school graduate. She received her B.A. from UC Berkeley and J.D. from UCLA School of Law, where she was a member of the Epstein Program in Public Interest Law & Policy. She also attended the Universidad de Granada in Spain as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, and the Universidad Autonóma de Mexico. Professor Geevargis lives in San Francisco with her husband and three daughters. Her passions include baking, travel, languages, and externships.
Anne Gordon, J.D., Clinical Professor of Law and Director of Externships, Duke University School of LawAnne Gordon is a Clinical Professor of Law and Director of Duke Law’s Externship programs. Externships enable students to earn academic credit while experiencing the real world of legal practice in a government or nonprofit setting. Duke currently offers individual externships, faculty-mentored externships, and integrated externships, including Duke in D.C. and the Federal Public Defender’s Office externship.
Before joining Duke Law, Gordon taught at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where she helped lead the Appellate Advocacy Program and served as a senior research fellow at the California Constitution Center. Her research focuses on the constitutional right to education. She spent the 2015-2016 academic year as a distinguished visiting professor at Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey in Puebla, Mexico, teaching professional skills and comparative constitutional law.
Before teaching, Gordon was a staff attorney with the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, and practiced criminal appellate law and capital habeas with the Habeas Corpus Resource Center and the Fifth and Sixth District Appellate Projects. She has also worked with refugees in Ethiopia, sex workers in Chicago, and farmers in Cambodia.
Gordon received her A.B. from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and graduated cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School. After law school, she clerked for Judge Boyce F. Martin, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Laura Matthews-Jolly, J.D., Clinical Teaching Fellow, Loyola University Chicago School of Law
