Experiential Education Newsletter | | Greetings from Jaime Alison Lee, Associate
Dean For Experiential Education | |
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
As the year draws to a close, we are full of appreciation for our hardworking students, for our clients' resiliency and power, for the privileges of teaching and writing, and for the spirit of our clinical community. As we continue laying the long road to justice, we wish each of you strength, hope, clarity of purpose, and the knowledge that every act makes a difference.
| | |
IN THIS ISSUE
- Faculty Appointments
- Recent Clinic Faculty Scholarship
- Faculty & Staff Awards & Achievements
- News
- Program Accolades
- Student Success Stories
| | | |
Rachel Bennett has joined the faculty as Professor of the Practice and Director of the Innocence Project Clinic, a joint effort of UBalt Law and the Maryland Office of the Public Defender. She brings 11 years of experience with MOPD, including significant work with the Post-Conviction Defenders.
Chrysanthemum Desir has joined the faculty as a Clinical Teaching Fellow with the Criminal Defense and Advocacy Clinic, bringing valuable experience as an Assistant Public Defender and Justice Catalyst Fellow in the Maryland OPD Juvenile Defender unit. (Pictured)
Gabrielle Fortunato has joined the faculty as a Clinical Teaching Fellow in the Maryland Office of the Public Defender Innocence Project Clinic at UBalt Law. As a public defender in Maryland and Colorado, she defended hundreds of indigent clients in misdemeanor and felony criminal proceedings at bail review hearings, motions hearings, and trials.
Jonathan Kerr, a former Clinical Teaching Fellow with the Criminal Defense and Advocacy Clinic, has joined the tenure-track faculty at Delaware Law School (Widener University). Professor Kerr is teaching criminal law, criminal procedure, and evidence.
| | |
Jay Knight, a former Clinical Teaching Fellow with the Mediation Clinic for Families, has joined the tenure-track faculty at Washburn University School of Law where he is teaching Secured Transactions, Transactional Drafting, and ADR.(Pictured)
Beile Lindner has joined the faculty as a Clinical Teaching Fellow in the Family Law Clinic. Professor Lindner previously worked with Brooklyn Defense Services, Homebase, and at Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology. She earned her J.D. from Brooklyn Law School, where she received numerous public interest and public service awards.
Ben Wilson is a clinical teaching Fellow in the Mediation Clinic for Families. He previously served as staff attorney and Catalyst Fellow at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. He earned his J.D. and Master's in Dispute Resolution from Pepperdine University School of Law in 2017. He is pursuing a doctorate at George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution.
| | Recent Clinic Faculty Scholarship | | |
Katie Kronick, Universal Redesign of the Criminal Legal System, 77 ALA. L. REV__(forthcoming 2025-26).
Katie Kronick, Why is it So Hard for Courts to Adjust to Advancements in Knowledge of Human Behavior?: A Death Penalty Case Study, SENTENCING MATTERS SUBSTACK (Dec. 16, 2024), link to article.
| Daniel L. Hatcher, The Commodification of the Poor, and the Theory of Stategraft, 2024 WISC. LAW REV. 559, and Response to U.S. Dept. of Human Services and Social Security Administration, Docket No. SSA-2024-0038 - Request for Information: Use and Conservation of Social Security Benefits and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Payments that Representative Payees Receive for Beneficiaries Residing in Foster Care, REGULATIONS.GOV (Nov. 30, 2024), link to article. | 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). | Spread the Word: Fellows' Positions Are Open! | |  | Michele Estrin Gilman, Ten Empowering Strategies for Non-Directive Clinical Supervision, 31 CLINICAL L. REV. 211 (2024) and The Impact of Proptech and the Datafication of Real Estate on the Human Right to Housing, 9 GEO. L. TECH. REV. 444 (2025). | Neha Lall, Paying Dividends: An Empirical Examination of How Student Compensation Enhances Externships, 59 LOY. L.A. L. REV. ___ (forthcoming 2026). | The seventh edition of ETHICAL PROBLEMS IN THE PRACTICE OF LAW—one of the most widely-used professional responsibility casebooks in the nation—has just been released and is co-authored by UBalt Law’s Robert Rubinson, the Gilbert A. Holmes Professor of Clinical Theory and Practice and Director of the Mediation Clinic for Families. | Margaret Johnson, Director of the Bronfein Family Law Clinic, co-authored the chapter Menstruation and Abortion in the forthcoming book, SAGE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MENSTRUATION AND SOCIETY (Bee Hughes & Kay Standing, eds., forthcoming 2026). | | | Faculty & Staff Awards & Achievements | | Many members of clinical faculty presented on the legal impacts of the new Presidential administration at UBalt Law’s teach-in in January and for a follow-up panel this fall, organized by former clinical faculty and current Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Professor Elizabeth Keyes. | | |
Rachel Bennett (pictured), Director of the Innocence Project Clinic, a joint effort between UBalt Law and the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, and four students received a university-wide Turner Research Grant to attend the Innocence Project Conference in 2026. Also attending will be exoneree and former client Douglass Haynie and UBalt Law's clinical program social worker Eliza Steele.
Katie Kronick, Assistant Professor and Director of the Criminal Defense and Advocacy Clinic, was selected to serve as the Reporter for the Maryland State Bar Association’s Maryland Pattern Jury Instructions (Criminal) committee.
Neha Lall, Professor of the Practice and Director of Externships, was selected as a recipient of the AALS Externship Committee’s Emerging Leader Award and as co-President of CLEA for the 2025-26 term.
Jaime Lee, Associate Dean for Experiential Education and Director of the Community Development Clinic, received the University of Baltimore’s Faculty Award for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
| |
Hugh McClean, Director of The Bob Parsons Veterans Advocacy Clinic, received the Brigadier General Philip Sherman Award from the Maryland State Bar Association Section on Veterans Affairs and Military Law. Professor McClean is also now a member of the board of directors at the Maryland Center for Veteran Education and Training.
Jaquetta Oram, Administrative Assistant, won the University of Baltimore School of Law’s 2025 Rose McMunn Distinguished Staff Award as well as the Staff Recognition Award for Outstanding Service. (Pictured)
Jaquetta Oram, Stephanie Pinkney Lee, and Terry Valdivia, Administrative Assistants, serve on the UBalt Law Admin Collaborative, which recently hosted Wellness Week in conjunction with the Office of DEIB.
Terry Valdivia, Administrative Assistant and Receptionist, was chosen to represent the University of Baltimore in the statewide Building Bridges Across Maryland professional development program.
| | Immigrant Rights Clinic Director Valeria Gomez and Fellow Emily Johanson offered a live-client opportunity for students to serve immigrant survivors of crime and to collaborate closely with a local nonprofit. The two are also helping to launch a court observation program, where clinic and non-clinic volunteers will monitor how and when people are arrested after defending their rights in court or testifying as a witness, and have partnered with the National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON), the National TPS Alliance, and the Comité TPS of Baltimore to support residents with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and teach students about grassroots and national advocacy efforts. | | The Bob Parsons Veterans Advocacy Clinic, directed by Professor Hugh McClean, recently established an MOU with the Maryland Department of Veterans and Military Families to represent LGBTQ+ service members discharged under discriminatory DoD policies. Veterans clinic students also educated veterans, lawyers, policymakers, and others about their experiences representing clients in the newly established Central Maryland Regional Veterans Treatment Court, at UBalt Law’s 16th Annual Veterans Legal Assistance Conference & Training. | This Fall, Civil Advocacy Clinic student attorneys staffed the Johns Hopkins Expungement Clinic, co-hosted by the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau, at the Johns Hopkins Medical Center. Student attorneys assisted numerous clients in filing petitions to expunge eligible criminal records to expand their housing and employment opportunities. | Student Attorneys Raya Henderson and Mabel Carter at the Expungement Clinic. | Student Attorneys with Expungement Clinic organizers and volunteers. | | |
University of Baltimore School of Law has been recognized by The National Jurist’s PreLaw Magazine as one of the nation’s Top Law Schools for Tax Law in its 2025 rankings!
UBalt Law joins an impressive list of institutions earning an A grade for excellence in tax law education, standing out for its innovative curriculum, hands-on clinical experiences, and strong record of preparing graduates for impactful careers in tax and business law. Clinical students have been working with Justice-Involved Individuals (JIIs) across the state to receive their stimulus checks, which have been delayed due to identity verification issues and identity theft.
| 90% of our Fall 2024 externs received pay, providing financial support and equity to students, including through our Housing Justice Fellowship Program, funded by the Maryland Legal Services Corporation, and The NextGen Leaders for Public Service Program, which funded 61 externship students. | | Low Income Tax Clinic (LITC) students saved one English as a second language (ESL) client over $32,000 in IRS liability, and wiped out another ESL client's liability entirely, in separate cases before the IRS Independent Office of Appeals and the U.S. Tax Court, respectively. | Over numerous semesters, multiple student attorneys worked tirelessly with their client to obtain an Offer in Compromise to settle the client’s outstanding tax liabilities with the IRS and the Comptroller of Maryland. That work paid off when the IRS agreed to settle the client’s roughly $37,000 IRS liability for $1.00 and the Comptroller agreed to settle her roughly $33,000 Maryland liability for $0.00. The student attorneys obtained these results through a collaborative effort to prove their client experienced economic hardship. | |
Swearing In Ceremony Fall 2025
Justice Shirley Watts, Maryland Supreme Court Justice, joined Dean LaVonda N. Reed and Associate Dean for Experiential Education Jamie Lee, and VAC Professors Hugh McLean and Alex Maisel at the “swearing in” ceremony for our student attorneys this Fall.
| | |
Community Development Clinic (CDC) student attorneys helped their clients achieve major milestones.
- A Black farming training organization set up its first cohort of graduates on a plot of its own land.
- A social enterprise is spinning out an independent, for-profit small business that employs people who gained manufacturing skills while incarcerated.
- Student attorneys advised client on a complex entity structuring to convert an LLC into a cooperative under a new state law that prior CDC student attorneys helped draft and pass, which focused on legal issues related to placing transgender people in temporary housing.
| Jaime Lee and Danielle Burs continued to expand the “first chair/second chair” pedagogical strategy originated by former CDC Fellow Peter Norman (now at Fayetteville) and also introduced a multi-part power-mapping exercise to help students contextualize their discrete client work within broader movements and community development history. | The Veterans Advocacy Clinic (VAC), which helped launch the Veterans Treatment Court in 2015 in partnership with Judge Halee Weinstein, continues to play an active role as the court expands. In 2025, the program grew significantly into several additional counties as part of the new Central Maryland Regional Veterans Treatment Court. VAC student attorneys appear before the court twice a month, representing veterans whose misdemeanor sentences may be suspended while they receive counseling, treatment, and other supportive services. | | |
We hope to celebrate you all in Baltimore again soon!
UBalt Law was thrilled to host the Spring 2025 CLEA
New Clinicians’ Conference and an evening reception for the
2025 AALS Conference on Clinical Legal Education.
| | |
University of Baltimore School of Law
1420 N. Charles St., Baltimore MD 21201
| | | | |
