Experiential Education Newsletter | |
Greetings from Associate Dean Jaime Alison Lee | |
Greetings from UBalt Law! We look forward to hosting you, our wonderful clinical community, next spring at CLEA’s New Clinicians’ Conference, and at our reception for the AALS Conference on Clinical Legal Education.
We are grateful to our new dean, LaVonda Reed, for supporting these gatherings. They feel like small yet meaningful ways of implementing Sherrilyn Ifill’s recent advice: to “reach out [to those] who you know stand on the side of decency, democracy and equality. Hold onto those bonds … [and] resolve that we will not acquiesce in our commitment to protecting our dignity, our dreams, our families, and our future. We will need to fight … there’s no turning back.”
Hope to see you soon in Baltimore. We are glad to have all of you as colleagues!
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Clinical Faculty and Staff News | |
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We are pleased to have Prof. Kathy Diener back with us in The Bob Parsons Veterans Advocacy Clinic, while her former co-teacher, clinic director Prof. Hugh McClean, is on sabbatical.
Prof. Michele Gilman, director of the Saul Ewing Civil Advocacy Clinic, has returned to her role as UBalt Law’s Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development after visiting last year at Georgetown Law Center.
Prof. Valeria Gomez, pictured, director of the UBalt Law Immigrant Justice Clinic and the Immigrant Rights Clinic, joined the CLEA Board of Directors and was also reappointed as a member of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration.
Prof. Margaret Johnson, director of the Bronfein Family Law Clinic, was honored with the 2024 Women’s Law Center of Maryland’s Rosalyn B. Bell Award for outstanding achievement impacting the field of family law in Maryland.
Prof. Jonathan Kerr, teaching fellow in the Criminal Defense and Advocacy Clinic, will join the faculty at Widener School of Law next year. Next semester, Kerr will coach UBalt Law’s team in the D.C. Justice Lab's Legislative Advocacy Competition.
Prof. Katie Kronick, director of the Criminal Defense and Advocacy Clinic, serves on the Clinical Law Review selection committee, co-chairs the Scholarship Sub-Committee for the AALS Clinical Committee, serves on the Planning Committee for the CLEA New Clinicians’ Conference, and was selected as a fellow for the Scholars Strategy Network.
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Prof. Neha Lall, pictured, director of externships at UBalt Law, was elected co-vice president of the CLEA Executive Committee.
Prof. Jaime Lee, director of the Community Development Clinic and associate dean for experiential education, co-founded the local chapter of the Scholars Strategy Network, which connects journalists, policymakers and civic leaders with researchers to improve policy and strengthen democracy. She served last year on UBalt Law’s Dean’s Search Committee. Lee also received the 2024 University of Baltimore Faculty Award for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Jaquetta Oram, administrative assistant in the clinic suite, won the Staff Recognition Award for Outstanding Service to the UBalt community.
UBalt Law faculty had the privilege of presenting at many conferences this year, such as the Legal Defense Fund Civil Rights Training Institute, the AALS Clinical Conference, the AALS Workshop for New Law Teachers, the National Immigration Law Teachers and Scholars Workshop, the Transactional Clinical Conference, the AALS New Clinical Law Teachers Conference, the Sentencing Project Virtual Workshop, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Clinical Conference, and others.
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Recent Clinic Faculty Scholarship | |
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Prof. Michele Gilman, pictured, director of the Saul Ewing Civil Advocacy Clinic and co-director of the Center on Applied Feminism, wrote Ten Empowering Strategies for Non-Directive Clinical Supervision, forthcoming in 31 Clinical L. Rev. (2025).
She was a panelist on "International Perspectives: The Digital Dystopia of Femtech in the United States" at the Workshop on Rethinking the Regulation of Digital Contraception at the University of Edinburgh Law School in May 2024.
Prof. Valeria Gomez, director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic and the Immigrant Rights Clinic, wrote The New Abortion Borders for Immigrant Women, forthcoming in Minn. J. L. & Inequality (2025).
Prof. Daniel Hatcher, of the Saul Ewing Civil Advocacy Clinic, wrote The Commodification of the Poor, and the Theory of Stategraft, in 2024 Wisc. Law Rev. 559 (2024).
Prof. Margaret E. Johnson, director of the Bronfein Family Law Clinic, wrote Menstrual Justice After Dobbs, forthcoming in Wis. L. Rev. (2025). She co-authored a chapter, "Menstruation and Abortion," in the forthcoming book, SAGE Encyclopedia of Menstruation and Society.
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Prof. Jonathan Kerr, pictured, clinical fellow in the Criminal Defense and Advocacy Clinic, wrote Riding on Horseback to the Moon: Consent Searches in the Age of Smartphones and Digital Tracking, in 82:2 Wash. and Lee L. Rev. (forthcoming 2025).
Prof. Katie Kronick, director of the Criminal Defense and Advocacy Clinic, wrote Intellectual Disability, Mitigation and Punishment, in 65 B.C. L. Rev. 1561 (2024).
She wrote We Would Vote for People with Felonies—Well, Not All of Them (with Amanda K. Rogers), in Newsweek (June 10, 2024).
Prof. Neha Lall, director of externships, wrote "Biden's administration has abandoned his promise to pay interns fairly," in The Hill, May 30, 2024.
She wrote "It’s Past Time to Allow Paid Field Placements," in Inside Higher Ed, Sept. 20, 2024.
Prof. Hugh McClean, director of The Bob Parsons Veterans Advocacy Clinic, co-authored Review of Veterans Law Decisions of the Federal Circuit, 2022-2023 Edition, in 73 Am. U. L. Rev. 1091 (2024).
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Experiential Education Updates | |
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Student-attorneys in the Criminal Defense and Advocacy Clinic (CDAC), directed by Prof. Katie Kronick, pictured, and fellow Prof. Jonathan Kerr, successfully won an acquittal for a client at trial, on all three charges, in Baltimore City District Court.
Through a collaboration with Roca, a violence intervention program, the CDAC clinic also successfully represented three young men on post-conviction motions to remove firearm-related convictions from their records.
Student-attorneys in the Community Development Clinic, directed by Associate Dean Jaime Lee, recently presented to their clients’ general membership and others about their work. Clients include:
- a group renovating a building to become a local entrepreneurs’ hub and youth center;
- a hybrid nonprofit/for-profit that reclaims land, especially on which trauma was inflicted on the Black community, for educational, wellness, and agricultural purposes;
- a neighborhood investment trust creating cooperative housing and a shared community space; and
- a worker co-op incubator sponsoring Maryland’s first worker co-op law.
The Immigrant Justice Clinic (IJC), directed by Prof. Valeria Gomez and fellow Prof. Emily Johanson, is a three-hour, live-client clinic tailored for evening student schedules. IJC partnered with the Esperanza Center, a Baltimore-based nonprofit, to serve immigrant survivors of crime.
The Immigrant Rights Clinic, also led by Gomez and Johanson, partnered with the National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON), the National TPS Alliance, and the Comité TPS of Baltimore to support Maryland residents with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and teach students about grassroots and national advocacy efforts.
The Clinical Program is excited to hire our first social worker to serve clinic clients and support our faculty in teaching students about holistic service.
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Student-attorneys in the Innocence Project Clinic, a joint effort between UBalt Law and the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, and led by Prof. Erica Suter, pictured, received a university-wide Turner Research Grant to attend the Innocence Project Conference in 2025 and learn from innocence experts and exonerees from around the country.
Six students from the the Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic (LITC), directed by Prof. Janice Shih, traveled to the U.S. territory of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands. They held clinics with the Department of Tax and Revenue, assisted over 90 taxpayers with settling outstanding tax liabilities, and met with the local judiciary.
The LITC is publishing “Tax Tips for Immigrants and Refugees” in 13 languages, including Ukrainian, Nepali, Pashto, Swahili, Chinese, Spanish and French.
At the 15th Annual Veterans Legal Assistance Conference & Training in April 2024, students in The Bob Parsons Veterans Advocacy Clinic presented to lawyers, veterans, policymakers, and others about their work representing veterans in Treatment Court, advocating for veteran-specific housing for incarcerated people, and conducting outreach to those discharged under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
The Clinical Program will soon be hiring fellows in our criminal defense and advocacy, veterans, mediation and family law clinics! Some 29 former fellows are now in long-term teaching positions, including recent fellows Prof. Sarah Gottlieb, now at William & Mary, and Prof. Peter Norman, now at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.
We began the third year of our paid externship program, with 90 percent of Fall 2024 externs receiving pay, providing financial support and equity. This includes our Housing Justice Fellowship Program, funded by the Maryland Legal Services Corporation, and The NextGen Leaders for Public Service Program, funding 61 UBalt Law students in Maryland nonprofit, government and judicial externship placements.
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Meet Our New Clinical Teaching Fellow | |
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Our clinical law program offers a rigorous three-year clinical teacher-training program. Fellows supervise student attorneys, teach clinical seminars and engage in scholarship. Our former fellows have gone on to full-time teaching positions at other law schools.
Joining this year is Prof. Danielle Burs, in the Community Development Clinic.
Before coming to UBalt Law this year, Burs held a variety of positions at the intersection of law, public policy, and community advocacy. She has focused on transactional, legislative, and regulatory work in her career, while also representing clients in administrative and civil cases.
Her professional experience includes positions at nonprofit organizations, government offices, and private practice. Burs also maintains roles on volunteer boards focused on community development.
Burs received a Bachelor of Arts in Government Relations and English from Clark University in Worcester, Mass., and a Juris Doctor from The American University Washington College of Law.
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University of Baltimore School of Law
1420 N. Charles St., Baltimore MD 21201
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