Spring 2010 Workshop

Workshop Fellows

Katherine Brokaw

Dean of Students for Emory Law and the Director of Academic Assistance. She teaches in Emory’s first year professionalism program as well as a new “Re-Orientation” program taught in the second semester of the first year that focuses on finding fulfillment in a law career. She is the lead administrator for the law school’s Professional Conduct Code. She was the principal speechwriter for Governor Thomas Kean of New Jersey before attending law school. She clerked for United States District Judge Robert P. Patterson Jr. in the Southern District of New York and then practiced at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York and King & Spalding in Atlanta for several years, in the field of commercial litigation.

Barbara Glesner Fines

Ruby M. Hulen Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty at the University of Missouri Kansas City School of Law, where she teaches Professional Responsibility, Ethical Issues in the Representation of Families, and Entrepreneurial Lawyering: Solo & Small Firm Practice. Her publications include Ethical Issues in Family Representation (2010, Carolina Academic Press) and the forthcoming Professional Responsibility: A Collaborative Approach. She has written extensively on legal education and the formation of professional identity and over ten lessons in professional responsibility for the Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI). She is a member of numerous professional organizations involved in professional responsibility or legal education reform, including the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility, the Executive Committee of the AALS Section of Professional Responsibility, the CLEA Best Practices in Legal Education Implementation Committee and the AFCC Family Law Education Reform Project.

Rodney B. Hastings

Serves on the staff of the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board in various capacities. He has served as a staff attorney and a deputy disciplinary counsel, as publications editor, assisting with the coordination of the Disciplinary Board's public outreach programs, and has assisted with the coordination of CLE seminars presented by the Disciplinary Board. His duties as a Board staff attorney include participating in various ethics and professionalism presentations throughout the state and participating in annual training seminars for the Disciplinary Board's voluntary hearing committee members. He is a member of the National Organization of Bar Counsel, and the National Council of Lawyer Disciplinary Boards. He serves as a member of the LSBA's Technology and Legal Services for Persons with Disabilities committees. 

Maureen Howard

Assistant Professor at the University of Washington Law School in Seattle and Director of the UW Trial Advocacy Program. She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of the Hong Kong University Law Faculty and serves as Director of the National Institute of Trial Advocacy's Northwest Regional Trial Skills program. She is currently in the process of developing a survey of law firm programs that “loan” attorneys to public service entities to examine the expectations of law firms, public service offices and the pro bono attorneys themselves – and whether such expectations have been met. She is also writing about whether law schools are failing their students by not requiring professional behavior during law school that corresponds with expectations in practice. She has experience as a civil litigator, a criminal prosecutor, and a judge pro tempore, presiding over both civil and criminal trials, and has taught trial advocacy for over fifteen years at law schools, at National Institute of Trial Advocacy (NITA) programs, and for private law firms. In 2006, she traveled to Dublin, Ireland at the request of the Department of Public Prosecutions to train prosecutors for the country In addition to her formal teaching, she writes and speaks nationally on the trial advocacy and criminal prosecution and has appeared on several television programs as a legal commentator.

William N. King

Works with the Louisiana Practice Assistance and Improvement Program as Professional Programs Counsel. Previously, from 1993 - 2000, he was Deputy Disciplinary Counsel with the Office of Disciplinary Counsel, where his duties involved investigating and prosecuting violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct. His current duties include resolving complaints between attorneys and complaints referred by the Office of Disciplinary Counsel as well as administering the diversion program for attorneys referred to his office for minor misconduct. Components of the diversion program include, but are not limited to an Ethics School, Trust Accounting School, and Advertising School. Mr. King also works with the Louisiana State Bar Association (LSBA) Fee Dispute Resolution Program, the Client Assistance Fund, the Committee on the Profession, and many other Committees of the LSBA, and is actively involved in the professionalism programs at Louisiana’s four law schools. He is a periodic speaker at the LSBA Annual Solo and Small Firm Conference.

Leslie Levin

Professor of Law at the University of Connecticut School of Law. She has written extensively about lawyer discipline in the U.S. and abroad and about the professional development and ethical decision making of solo and small firm lawyers. After graduation from law school, she practiced for several years at Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler in New York City. She has previously served as Secretary to the Committee on Professional and Judicial Ethics of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and on the Connecticut Bar Association Task Force on the Future of the Legal Profession. She is currently conducting a study funded by the Law School Admissions Council that seeks to determine whether there is a relationship between adverse information disclosed during the bar admissions process and subsequent lawyer discipline. She is also co-editing a book with Lynn Mather entitled Lawyers in Practice: Ethical Decision Making in Context (forthcoming University of Chicago Press), which will look at the empirical research on lawyers' work and their actual ethical decision making in a variety of practice contexts.

Maureen E. McDonagh

Has, since 1998, been a Clinical Instructor at Harvard Law School's WilmerHale Legal Services Center in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. The Center is both a poverty law office and a teaching clinic of the Law School, where students receive intensive training and close supervision as they represent indigent clients on a variety of civil issues. She works in the Center's Housing/Litigation Unit and since her appointment as a Lecturer in Law in 2006 teaches the Post-Foreclosure Eviction Defense/Housing Workshop, which has developed an innovative program in which volunteer attorneys work with law students to respond to the foreclosure crisis. She has been a teaching team member of the Law School's annual Winter Trial Advocacy Workshop for ten years.

Toby J. Rothschild

General Counsel of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (LAFLA), after serving as the executive director of the Legal Aid Foundation of Long Beach for 28 years and Interim Executive Director of LAFLA for 9 months. In his role as General Counsel, he provides ethics and risk management advice for the 60 attorneys working for LAFLA, as well as the staff of several other local legal services programs. He is currently the chair of the Los Angeles County Bar Association Access to Justice Committee and has served as Vice Chair of the California Commission on Access to Justice. He is a member of the Professional Responsibility and Ethics Committee of the Los Angeles County Bar, a committee he chaired in 2007-2008, and as liaison on access to justice issues to the commission currently rewriting the California Rules of Professional Responsibility. He is a frequent trainer on ethics issues for local, statewide and national conferences of legal services and pro bono advocates. He also offers training for law firms on "The Ethics of Pro Bono" and has taught in a webinar series entitled “Introduction to Legal Services for Deferred Associates.”

Jill C. Rothstein

Risk Management Director for the South Carolina Bar. Prior to her employment at the Bar beginning January 2001, she prosecuted Child Abuse Cases for the Department of Social Services, and was a staff lawyer for the South Carolina Legislature's House Labor Commerce and Industry Committee. She serves as the Bar's Liaison to the Professional Responsibility Committee, the Ethics Advisory Committee, the Unauthorized Practice of Law Committee, and the Task Force on Professional Potential. She is also the South Carolina Delegate to the American Inns of Court, a member of the John Belton O'Neall Inn of Court, and a member of the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility.

Sylvia E. Stevens

General Counsel of the Oregon State Bar (OSB). Prior to joining the bar in 1992, she was a partner in a Portland, Oregon law firm where her practice included debtor/creditor, commercial and family law. She served on the OSB Board of Governors before joining the bar staff and was a founding board member and the 2004-2005 president of the Multnomah Bar Association, Oregon's largest voluntary bar organization,. She was a founding member of the Multnomah Bar Foundation, dedicated to promoting civic education about the rule of law and the legal system. She has served two terms on the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility and has also served on the ABA Standing Committee on Client Protection. She coordinated the development, adoption and implementation of the Oregon Rules of Professional Conduct in 2005 and spearheaded staff and member education programs; she also oversaw the revision of 175 existing formal ethics opinions. She administers the OSB Client Security Fund and supervises the OSB's fee arbitration, unlawful practice and complaint intake programs. While in private practice, Ms. Stevens coordinated her firm's associate training program and performance evaluation process.

Christopher Woodyard

Bar Passage Counselor and Course Instructor at the Charlotte School of Law, where he teaches in a newly created course for first year students named “Passport to Effective Practice” and an upper level course on “Carolina Distinctions” which focuses on specific features of North Carolina law. Before he joined Charlotte School of Law in early 2008 he practiced as a litigator and trial attorney for the largest plaintiff's personal injury law firm in North Carolina. His current research and scholarship follows two tracks. Track one centers around experiential learning and increasing practice skills exposure to third year law students. Of particular interest is the interplay between the medical and legal professions and how the simulated patient pedagogy of medical schools can be incorporated in legal education. Track two deals with professionalism and character fitness issues facing aspiring lawyers and current practitioners.

Workshop Speakers and Discussants

Charlotte Alexander

Deputy Director of the National Institute for Teaching Ethics and Professionalism (NIFTEP). After graduating from law school, she clerked for the Honorable Nancy Gertner on the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. She was then awarded a Skadden Fellowship to work at the Farmworker Division of the Georgia Legal Services Program and stayed on as a Senior Staff Attorney after her fellowship expired. In addition to her work at NIFTEP, she is a Harvard Law School Post-Graduate Research Fellow and is writing a law review article on the Fair Labor Standards Act. This spring, she is teaching “Labor/Employment Law: Immigrants in the Workplace” at Emory University School of Law and co-teaching, with Clark Cunningham, “Fundamentals of Law Practice,” at Georgia State University College of Law. She has published a law review article on public accommodations discrimination in the Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal and, with Cunningham, a forthcoming review of the Carnegie Foundation’s critique of American legal education, to appear in The Ethics Project in Legal Education (London: Routledge-Cavendish).

Doug Ashworth

Became Director of the State Bar of Georgia Transition Into Law Practice Program after several years of experience in both the public and private sectors. The Transition Into Law Practice Program (also known as the "Mentoring Program") provides professional guidance and counsel to assist beginning Georgia lawyers in acquiring the practical skills, judgment and professional values necessary to practice law. Prior to assuming his current position with the State Bar, he served on the legal staff of the Council of Superior Court Judges, assisting Judges and their staffs throughout Georgia with death penalty habeas corpus cases, indigent defense issues, continuing judicial education programs, and criminal and civil bench book preparation and revision. He previously maintained a general practice of law for several years, which included service as a City Attorney, County Attorney, School Board Attorney and his participation in 6 death penalty cases. He is a collaborator for the article Using Multiple Mentors In Bar And Law Firm Mentoring Programs, March 2009, Issues of Professionalism Series, Nelson Mullins Center on Professionalism, University of South Carolina School of Law.

Clark D. Cunningham

W. Lee Burge Professor of Law & Ethics at the Georgia State University College of Law, where he teaches Professional Responsibility: Heroes & Villains and Fundamentals of Law Practice. He is a widely cited expert on the lawyer-client relationship and currently directs the Effective Lawyer-Client Communication Project, an international collaboration of law teachers, lawyers and social scientists. In 2006 he was admitted to membership in The Society of Writers to Her Majesty's Signet in recognition of his work which is leading to fundamental changes in the ways client relationship skills are taught in Great Britain. At the time he was only the second American to become a member of The Society, the oldest professional association of lawyers in the world, which is charged with custody of the royal seal of the British monarchy. He is a member of the Georgia's Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism. In 2004 he served as Co-Reporter to Georgia's Commission on Indigent Defense. He has spoken and consulted around the world on reform of legal education and recently completed a two year term Convenor of the Global Alliance for Justice Education, an organization of over 700 law teachers, lawyers, and leaders of non-governmental organizations from more than 50 countries. He previously was a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis (1989-2002) and the University of Michigan (1987-89). He is the Director of the National Institute for Teaching Ethics and Professionalism.

Dick Donovan

Maintains a general trial practice, focusing on criminal defense and family law. As a member of the State Bar of Georgia, he serves on the Bar's Professionalism Committee (serving as Chairman in 2006-2007, 2007-2008 and 2008-2009, 2009-2010), and is a life member of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. In 1992 he received specialized training in Alterative Dispute Resolution, and was certified by the Georgia Supreme Court as a Mediator in civil and domestic cases, and cases involving domestic violence. In 2003, after further specialized training, he was certified by the Georgia Office of Dispute Resolution as an Arbitrator. In 2007, he received an invitation to become a Fellow of the Georgia Lawyers Foundation.

A. James Elliott

Practiced law in Atlanta with the firm of Alston & Bird for 28 years prior to coming to Emory University School of Law, where he is Associate Dean He is a past president of the State Bar of Georgia, its Younger Lawyer's Division and The Old War Horse Lawyers' Club. He has served on several Georgia Supreme Court commissions dealing with professionalism and lawyer discipline. He is a co-founder of Georgia's legal services program and its IOLTA program. He received the Arthur von Briesen Award which is given annually by the National Legal Aid and Defender Association to one lawyer in private practice for substantial volunteer contributions to the legal assistance movement for the poor. He co-designed Emory's 1L Orientation program which has won the ABA's Gambrell Award for innovation in professionalism programs. He is a fellow of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers, as well as the American and Georgia Bar Foundations. He teaches Legal Profession, Banking and Commercial Real Estate Finance.

Avarita L. Hanson

Was chosen in April of 2006 by the Supreme Court of Georgia as the Executive Director of the Chief Justice's Commission on Professionalism. At the time of her appointment she was an Associate Professor at Atlanta's John Marshall School of Law and served as its Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. Before joining John Marshall, she headed special legal projects and was the executive director of the Health and Consumer Services Section in the Examining Boards Division of the Georgia Secretary of State's Office. She has served as an Associate Judge Pro Hac Vice for the Fulton County Juvenile Court and as Clerk to the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. She has also served as the Pro Bono Project Director for the State Bar of Georgia and Georgia Legal Services Program. Prior to and between government positions, Ms. Hanson engaged in the private practice of law, starting as a civil litigator with the Houston office of the Fulbright & Jaworski law firm. She has received the Judge Barbara Harris Award for Community Service from the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys and John Marshall Law School-Atlanta named its chapter of the Black Law Students Association in her honor. She has also been inducted into the Gate City Bar Hall of Fame and received the Spirit of GABWA [Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys] Award, the top honor given by each of those bar associations.

Sheryl Harrison

Associate Dean of Students and an Assistant Professor at Atlanta's John Marshall Law School and is responsible for planning seminars and workshops that increase ethical and professional consciousness, for investigating alleged violations of the Code of Student Responsibility, and for planning John Marshall's bi-annual Diversity and Professionalism CLE. Before joining John Marshall Law School, Sheryl clerked for the Honorable James A. Beaty, Jr. in the Middle District of North Carolina and worked for several years at Troutman Sanders LLP in the Complex Litigation practice group.

William D. Henderson

Serves as Professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, where he teaches Corporations, Business Planning, and The Law Firm as a Business Organization, which focuses on the economics and sociology of lawyers working in private practice. In conjunction with other Indiana law faculty, he recently developed The Legal Profession, a 4-credit 1L course that explores traditional legal ethics and professionalism through the lens of specific practice settings. The course innovations include a rigorous competency model, team-based projects, peer feedback, and various assessment tools to help students identify and develop several non-analytical competencies critical for success as a lawyer. Professor Henderson's scholarship focuses on the empirical analysis of legal labor markets (spanning both law school and law firms) and, more narrowly, the development of human capital for legal service providers. In the law firm context, current and past projects examine a wide variety of market trends, including patterns of lawyer mobility, the relationship between profitability and associate satisfaction, the economic geography of large law firms, and attrition rates of female and minority attorneys. His recent legal-education work explores the relationship between labor markets and the annual U.S. News & World Report law school rankings. Professor Henderson serves as director of Center on the Global Legal Profession at Indiana University, director of the Law Firms Working Group, a joint initiative of the Indiana Law and the American Bar Foundation, and as a research associate for the Law School Survey of Student Engagement.

Charles C. (“Chuck”) Olson

Is the General Counsel of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, a state agency that provides support to the more than one thousand state and local prosecuting attorneys in the State of Georgia. As General Counsel, he serves as the Professional Responsibility Officer for the prosecuting attorneys in the State and coordinates the ethics and professionalism training that is part of every continuing legal education program offered by the Council. He directs the Transition Into Prosecution Program, which is the State Bar of Georgia approved version of the Transition Into Law Practice Program that is directed by Doug Ashworth, and teaches the prosecution ethics component of the Fundamentals of Prosecution Course. He has been employed by the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council since 1975 and is an advisor to the State Bar of Georgia Committee on Professionalism and Chair of the Government Attorneys Section. Mr. Olson is a member of the International Association of Prosecutors and advises Georgia prosecutors on international law issues. He was the coordinator of state prosecution support for the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta and the 2004 G8 Summit on St. Simon’s Island and has consulted with prosecutors in Sidney, Australia, Salt Lake City, Utah and Vancouver, British Columbia on Olympic security planning.

Jerry Organ

Joined the University of St. Thomas School of Law as a founding faculty member in 2001 and served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2005-2009. At St. Thomas, he has taught Property, Land Use Controls, Client Interviewing and Counseling, Environmental Law Seminar, Foundations of Justice and Mentor Externship. Prior to joining the St. Thomas faculty, he taught at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law, where he participated in the integrated first-year dispute resolution program, and practiced environmental law at Foley and Lardner in Milwaukee. His early scholarship focused primarily on environmental law and, in particular, on developing more efficient means of resolving environmental disputes. His scholarship also addresses environmental federalism – that, is the balance of authority in environmental matters as between the federal government and state governments. More recently, he has begun to write about the culture of law schools, with an emphasis on fostering a more integrated and holistic approach to legal education. This is reflected in the Property and Lawyering casebook that he coauthored. He presently is working on articles about the impact of student scholarship programs on law school culture, the extent to which law school missions provide a foundation for outcomes assessment in law schools and the professionalism issues associated with abuse of performance enhancing drugs in law schools.

Fred Rooney

Director of the Community Legal Resource Network (CLRN) at the City University of New York (CUNY) Law School. Initially funded by the Soros Foundation, CLRN’s mission is to develop programs that support solo and small-firm lawyers in order to make legal services more widely available to low and moderate income individuals and communities. Under Mr. Rooney’s leadership, CLRN has grown into a public/private partnership that offers a network of support and resources for CUNY Law School graduates in small community-based practices who are working to increase access to justice throughout New York City. Prior to becoming CLRN director, he practiced in a private, community based, bilingual law firm in Bethlehem, PA, which was recognized in 1994 by the Pennsylvania Bar Association for its pro bono work. He was recently awarded the 2010 Father Robert Drinan Award by the AALS Section on Pro Bono and Public Service Opportunities in recognition of his work at CLRN, and CLRN itself was awarded the 2010 Louis M. Brown Award for Legal Access by the ABA Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services.