Journal of Legal Education (Association of American Law Schools)

Dinerstein, Robert

Paul, Jeremy R.

Rolland, Sonia E.

Rosser, Ezra

1
Journal of Legal Education, Volume 71, Number 1 (Fall 2021)
 From the Editors
The bulk of this issue is devoted to a symposium on the experiences of 
disabled people in law schools and the legal profession, as well as related 
topics in disability law, practice, and identity. We are excited to publish it 
and extraordinarily grateful to Karen Tani and Lilith Logan Siegel, who 
came to the Journal with the original idea. They have worked closely with 
us to identify authors and flesh out the content. The result, we believe, is a 
unique compilation that sheds important light on how people with disabilities 
navigate their way through law school and the profession. This group is 
increasingly finding its voice within legal academia, and we are pleased to 
bring this important perspective to our readers. 
This symposium is not our Journal’s first on disability issues.  In 1991, shortly 
after passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the Journal 
published several disability articles that grew out of an AALS annual meeting 
program.  The current issue reflects the significant developments since that 
time, including the growing diversity of law students with disabilities and their 
frank acknowledgment of the obstacles they have had to overcome. Karen 
Tani and Lilith Logan Siegel’s introduction sets out the inspiration for the 
symposium and outlines its structure. They stress the importance of hearing 
from disabled people themselves, thereby giving voice to the disability rights 
movement’s mantra, “Nothing About Us Without Us.” 
Matthew Cortland’s essay launches the series of first-person essays. He notes 
the skepticism with which administrators, faculty, and fellow students responded 
to his need for reasonable accommodations. James Fetter’s essay describes 
the challenges he encountered in securing post-graduate employment. In their 
essay, Shain Neumaier discusses the difficulties neurodivergent people face in 
law school.  In particular, the process of searching for jobs was problematic. 
They experienced a lack of sensitivity toward and knowledge of their condition 
and of the strengths and weaknesses they possessed. Neumaier ends their essay 
with a helpful list of concrete suggestions for interacting with neurodivergent 
students and lawyers. Professor Catherine Pérez, who identifies as a person 
with a psychiatric disability, recounts her journey from law student to Ph.D. 
student to law professor, noting the difficulties she experienced in several law 
school classes. Lili Siegel focuses on her experience as a disabled law student 
and notes the acceptance she experienced from students, faculty, and clients in 
her special education and juvenile clinic. Like Ms. Siegel, Professor Brittany 
Wilson stresses the importance of incorporating disability into the law school 
curriculum, observing that she learned about disability law through practice 
rather than in law school.
2 Journal of Legal Education
The issue continues with a series of thoughtful articles on disability rights/
identity topics that provide important context for understanding the role of 
disability in education and society more generally. Professor Ruth Colker 
discusses universal design in the context of educating law students with 
disabilities. Professor Katie Eyer describes with sensitivity her experience 
of claiming a disability identity. Unlike some kinds of identities, including 
some disabled ones, people who have non-evident disabilities face the choice 
of whether to disclose their disabilities, and when and to whom to do so. 
Professor Jasmine Harris’s article pursues this theme in depth, identifying 
the nuances of arguments for and against disclosure of non-evident disabilities. 
Finally, Professor Jamelia Morgan picks up the challenge that Lili Siegel and 
Brittany Wilson presented and discusses how to incorporate disability studies 
into criminal law and criminal procedure classes.
The issue presents one article outside of the disability symposium. Professor 
Melissa Schultz does a deep dive into the NextGen bar examination, which 
will take effect in 2026.  This revised exam will make significant changes in 
the subjects and methodology, focusing more on lawyering skills and less 
on memorization of information. The article is important reading for legal 
educators and law students alike. 
As always, we conclude with our Book Reviews. Victoria Rodríguez-
Roldán, whose essay is part of the disability symposium, reviews disability 
rights activist Alice Wong’s Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories From the Twenty-
First Century. Professor Laura Little reviews Pierre Schlag’s and Amy Griffin’s 
How to do Things with Legal Doctrine, noting the ways in which law professors, 
students, and practitioners would benefit from reading this book. Finally, we 
include two separate reviews of Nicole Dyszlewski et al.’s Integrating Doctrine and 
Diversity: Inclusion and Equity in the Law School Classroom. In their Review, Professors 
Ryan Nelson and Michael Ashley Stein focus on the importance of including 
ability diversity in our teaching about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and 
report on some of Professor Nelson’s efforts to do so. Professor Stevie Leahy’s 
review provides a systematic summary of the entire book, and will be a helpful 
resource for legal educators looking to be more intentional in their teaching 
about diversity, equity and inclusion.
We are confident that this issue will challenge some of your assumptions 
about legal education, its practitioners, and its consumers. As always, we 
welcome your feedback. 
Robert Dinerstein
Ezra Rosser
Jeremy Paul
Sonia E. Rolland


English

From the Editors

Toya, Roshanna K.

A Rite of Passage: Perpetuating the Invisibility of American Indian Lawyers

Dutton, Yvonne M.

Ryznar, Margaret

Law School Pedagogy Post-Pandemic: Harnessing the Benefits of Online Teaching

Garth, Bryant G.

525
Reflections on LSSSE’s Fifteen-Year 
Trajectory and Beyond
Bryant G. Garth
I have chaired the LSSSE Advisory Group since its inception. I am generally 
in favor of regular turnover of members of such groups, but I am also happy 
that I am still a member and chair. LSSSE has had a remarkable history so far. 
It began with no assurances that law schools would be interested in the kind 
of data NSSE produced for undergraduate institutions. Law schools, after all, 
had a history of teaching that simply reproduced how the teachers had been 
taught themselves. There were notable exceptions, of course, but there was 
not the same focus on teaching that characterized undergraduate institutions. 
Today LSSSE is well-established and beginning to realize its huge potential.
When I was asked to join the LSSSE Advisory Board, I had just stepped 
down as director of the American Bar Foundation, and I jumped at the chance 
to be part of what I saw as a nice new research tool for scholars of law schools 
and the legal profession. I was impressed with George Kuh, coming from 
NSSE, who was the founding director of LSSSE, and Patrick O’Day, who 
handled the daily operations. Lauren Robel and Richard Matasar, also on 
the board, had the benefit also of being from the schools for the pilot study 
of LSSSE. The other members of a notable group were Alison Anderson, 
Professor of Law Emerita, UCLA; Thomas Ehrlich, Senior Scholar, The 
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; Carl Monk, Executive 
Vice President and Executive Director, Association of American Law Schools; 
Harry G. Prince, Professor of Law, University of California, Hastings College 
of the Law; and Todd Rakoff, Vice Dean for Academic Programming, Harvard 
Law School. LSSSE has continued to attract influential and talented people to 
the advisory board and, more importantly, to the leading positions. The work 
of the directors Carole Silver (2010), Aaron Taylor (2014), and now Meera Deo 
(2018) has been exemplary, as has the work of Chad Christensen as project 
manager.
LSSSE, it turned out, arrived at a propitious time. The Carnegie study 
Educating Lawyers was soon to be published in 2007, which challenged the 
hegemony of teaching by the case method and emphasized the lack of 
Bryant G. Garth Distinguished Professor of Law, Emeritus, University of California-Irvine
526 Journal of Legal Education
attention to professional identity.1 Roy Stuckey and his colleagues also 
produced a volume the same year on Best Practices for Legal Education.2 Law school 
competition had heated up considerably, and with that competition came a 
much greater emphasis on marketing and consumer satisfaction. Competition 
also put curricular issues in play as part of that marketing and competition. 
The ascendency of rankings also suggested the importance of finding other 
ways to evaluate the quality of a particular law school. And outcome measures 
were soon to be added to the the ABA Standards for accreditation.3 The last 
was especially important, in my opinion, in institutionalizing LSSSE.
The process of building the credibility of LSSSE in the legal education 
world seems to have been pretty easy in retrospect. But a lot of work went into 
it. One sees the strategy in the membership of the board, which shifted in favor 
of representing organizations of legal education, including the American Bar 
Association’s Section on Legal Education and the the Law School Admission 
Council, and Carl Monk, representing the Association of American Law 
Schools. These individuals enhanced awareness of LSSSE and also drew 
LSSSE into the circle of key institutions concerned with legal education. 
Remarkably, LSSSE started off with a bang. Forty-two law schools participated 
in LSSSE 2004, and 13,000 law students responded to the questionnaires. The 
participation grew substantially after that, as other essays in this volume note. 
LSSSE is now a fixture in legal education in the United States and Canada, 
and has also been used with fascinating results in Australia.
My introduction to the first report in 2004 made a few points. It is interesting 
to see what I thought then and how those ideas have turned out.
First was the idea that LSSSE might unsettle traditional legal education: 
“We know the case method is ‘engaging,’ and the general sentiment is that 
students who are exposed to a good number of professors who practice this 
particular art well will have an optimal educational experience. For many 
reasons, that assumption can no longer be accepted without much more 
inquiry . . . . Law schools have a core that rarely seems to change, but there 
is also a great deal of experimentation around that core. LSSSE provides a 
unique opportunity to explore systematically what is achieved—and what 
can be improved—in traditional and nontraditional areas of the curriculum.” 
A second reason I mentioned was “the perceived importance of law school 
ratings, which relates to a more general and perhaps healthier development of 
1. William m. Sullivan et al., educating laWyerS: PreParation for the ProfeSSion of 
laW (2007).
2. roy Stuckey et al., BeSt PracticeS for legal education: a viSion and a road maP 
(2007).
3. catherine l. carPenter et al., rePort of the outcome meaSureS committee, 
aBa Section of legal education and admiSSionS to the Bar 1 (2008), https://www.
americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/legal_education_and_admissions_to_
the_bar/reports/2008_outcome_measures_committee_final_report.authcheckdam.pdf. 
Reflections on LSSSE’s Fifteen Fifteen-Year Trajectory and Beyond 527
a consumer perspective on law school.” A third one worth mentioning is bar 
passage, which I noted cannot be taken for granted at many law schools. 
From today’s perspective, I believe LSSSE is still underutilized for all three 
of these areas. I could be wrong, but I have not seen very much systematic 
review of curricular reforms using the survey, even though curricular reform is 
now much more important in law school competition. I hoped that LSSSE’s 
results on faculty availability and faculty feedback might somehow be brought 
into the law school rankings, but the law school establishment has opposed 
anything that adds any legitimacy to the U.S. News & World Report rankings in 
particular. Some schools have shown LSSSE scores as a recruiting device, but 
this potential dimension in rankings so far seems far off at best. Law schools are 
so far only reactive with respect to the rankings. As for helping bar examination 
performance, individual law schools have again not used LSSSE as much 
as they should, but LSSSE combined with Access Lex is now undertaking 
systematic research with some fascinating results already available.4 
The underuse of LSSSE data by schools relates to the fact that law schools 
still do not know enough about how to use the data and why it makes sense 
to enrich the analyses by signing up for the survey every year. That lack of 
knowledge is not a result of LSSSE’s lack of trying. It may be slowly changing. 
I certainly hope so.
Two big successes of LSSSE relate to matters I did not discuss in my 
introduction to the first report. One is that outcome measures have taken hold, 
and one measure of outcome is student satisfaction as measured by LSSSE. It 
is very difficult for a school looking to accreditation or reaccreditation to avoid 
using LSSSE in the self-study report. LSSSE is therefore built into law school 
practice for at least this reason, and that is indeed a major accomplishment. 
The second big success, which is growing, is the use of the large datasets 
of LSSSE to understand law students and legal education better. The study 
of bar passage is one example. There are also important studies of, for 
example, student debt; race, ethnicity, and gender; student stress and access to 
counseling; and engagement with foreign graduate students. The LSSSE data 
are now indispensable to research on law school, and researchers including 
the LSSSE directors are playing an important role in producing scholarship 
based on LSSSE data. These studies are summarized on the LSSSE blog, 
which helps to diffuse results. As I noted, this potential was what initially 
attracted me to LSSSE, and it is nice to see a recent blog by Ajay K. Mehrotra, 
the current director of the American Bar Foundation, and Shih-Chun Chien, a 
research social scientist there, detailing the value of LSSSE data and how ABF 
researchers are utilizing the data in several projects.5
4. Aaron N. Taylor, Guest Post: Connecting Bar Exam Performance to the Law Student Experience, Law 
School Survey of Student Engagement (Oct. 31, 2019), https://lssse.indiana.edu/blog/
guest-post-connecting-bar-exam-performance-to-the-law-student-experience/.
5. Ajay K. Mehrotra & Shih-Chun Chien, Guest Post: Empirical Sociolegal Research and the Use of LSSSE 
528 Journal of Legal Education
But I do want to return to the potential for individual schools. Shortly after 
I joined the LSSSE board, I took up the position of Dean at Southwestern 
Law School. The prior dean, in fact, had signed up for LSSSE knowing that 
I would be interested in the data. We used the data in the seven years of my 
deanship in several ways. In contrast to what I think is the case at most schools, 
everyone at Southwestern knew about LSSSE and trends in LSSSE results.
In particular, we examined how the law school was doing from the 
perspective of the students. The annual LSSSE scores on questions such 
as the overall law school experience and the quality of relationships with 
administrative staff allowed us to see improvement over time and variations 
in how particular offices, such as financial aid, were perceived. Each year we 
had three presentations of the LSSSE data in the fall: to the students, the 
faculty, and the staff. We emphasized different findings in different years. 
One emphasis was the experience of minorities and the extent of interaction 
between persons of different races and ethnicities. Another was our students’ 
belief that the school emphasized memorization more than other law schools. 
We decided ultimately that memorization was not a problem given closed-
book exams and other indicators of more engaged learning. 
The finding that our students spent a considerable time commuting to 
the law school helped precipitate our decision to build student housing on 
the campus. Student housing has been a succes at Southwestern in building 
community and engagement. With the help of the LSSSE staff, we also tested 
issues of engagement in relation to bar passage, seeing results similar to those 
now being reported from more systematic study. We also innovated with a 
first-year module on the legal profession and professionalism, and we tested 
its impact (imperfectly but usefully) through the answers on the questions 
related to professionalism on the survey. Whether from the course or other 
changes in our message, the students did report more sensitivity to issues of 
professionalism. We also joined with similar schools to add a module that 
particularly addressed the issues of independent and related law schools. 
LSSSE was therefore a fundamental part of law school administration, and 
we found it to be very helpful on many issues. One reason was that we had 
a dean of student services, Robert Mena, who had just completed his Ed.D. 
and enjoyed working with the data and presenting the results. Another was 
that we encouraged the students to fill out the surveys during class time (if 
professors were willing). The very high response rates we received maximized 
the usefulness of the data. In the early days, Robert Mena and I were part of 
the group of LSSSE missionaries suggesting how schools could use the data 
in helpful ways. 
As I said, I believe law schools have a way to go in maximizing the use of 
LSSSE data. The schools that are most active, as we were at Southwestern, 
are typically exceptions to the norm of underutilization of LSSSE data. The 
Data, Law School Survey of Student Engagement (May 8, 2020), https://lssse.indiana.edu/
blog/guest-post-empirical-sociolegal-research-and-the-use-of-lssse-data/. These insights are 
developed also in their contribution in this volume.
Reflections on LSSSE’s Fifteen Fifteen-Year Trajectory and Beyond 529
exceptions are explained by one of two people who take a special interest 
and gain the support of the administration. There is reason to think that the 
situation may change in favor of more utilization of the data..
Certainly law schools now are far more attuned to the importance of 
empirical research than in the past. The advent of Access Lex as a catalyst for 
research on law schools is also a very helpful development, and it is notable 
that Aaron Taylor, the executive director, came from LSSSE to Access Lex. 
Perhaps more importantly, the twin crises of the present period around the 
coronavirus and the murder of George Floyd will also focus more attention on 
what LSSSE data can show. Each crisis in different ways challenges law schools’ 
traditional ways of doing business. Now online teaching has suddenly become 
a tool that law professors were forced to learn and now know how to do—after 
a long period of resistance by traditional law professors. The demonstrations 
and awakening around the systematic racism and inequality that are built into 
our legal system from top to bottom make these destructive characteristics of 
our legal system more likely to be addressed than in the past. That means law 
schools and the legal profession are more likely to confront these issues with 
serious changes than in the past. LSSSE data and analyses are already central 
to these issues, and LSSSE is very well positioned to address these issues in the 
aggregate and with respect to the problems of individual law schools.


Reflections on LSSSE’s Fifteen-Year Trajectory and Beyond

Abdus-Saboor, Kinda L.

Lessons From Pandemic Pedagogy: Humanizing Law School Teaching to Create Equity and Evenness

Gonzales-Zamora, Verónica C.

Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Breath: A Call for Economic Justice

Abrams, Jamie R.

Book Review of the Legal Scholar’s Guidebook

Culver, Leslie Patrice

31
No Matter How Loud I Shout:  
Legal Writing as Gender Sidelining
Leslie Patrice Culver
“Hello. My name is Leslie . . . and I love teaching legal writing.” A lump in my throat wells 
up as I awkwardly wait for the ailing and supportive community to reply in unison, “Hi Leslie.” 
I take my seat. This is what it feels like every time I mention to someone outside 
the legal writing community that I actually chose to teach legal writing. I am 
frequently met with empathy (or smugness) as though I have been afflicted 
by some genetic disposition that rendered me helpless to make a different 
choice. I suspect many of my colleagues in the discipline can relate. There is 
an internal conflict and frustrating tension between passionately loving the 
subject matter we teach and, paradoxically, feeling the need to defend our 
reputation against a traditionally doctrinal outsider who may presume we are 
simply unqualified to teach across the broader curriculum. This tension can 
create layers of exhaustion. 
To start, there exists a false need to parade our accolades of law review, moot 
court, clerkships, legal practice, and so forth, to demonstrate our credibility 
within the academy. Moreover, legal writing faculty often wade through the 
drudge of defending our scholarship as real scholarship,1 and strategically 
navigating the narrative that our work (particularly if it falls outside the legal 
writing discipline) is an attempt to breach the intellectual barrier that divides the 
haves and the have-nots. This academic unsteadiness for legal writing faculty is 
the socially constructed byproduct of legal writing training falling outside the 
masculine vision of traditional case method study for law schools,2 combined 
1. See Kristen K. Tiscione, The Next Great Challenge: Making Legal Writing Scholarship Count As Legal 
Scholarship, 22 J. LegaL Writing inst. 50, 51 (2018).
2. Teri A. McMurtry-Chubb, Still Writing at the Master’s Table: Decolonizing Rhetoric in Legal Writing 
for a ‘Woke’ Legal Academy?, 21 schoLar 255, 270-1 (2019) (exposing popularity of Christopher 
Journal of Legal Education, Volume 69, Number 1 (Autumn 2019)
Leslie Patrice Culver is Professor (Clinical) of Law at the University of Utah-S.J. Quinney College 
of Law. Thank you to Melissa Weresh (Drake) and Kristen Tiscione (Georgetown) for organizing 
and moderating our 2019 AALS Discussion Group: Building Bridges Across Curricular and Status Lines: 
Gender Inequity throughout the Legal Academy, and for the engaging remarks of the other panelists: Sahar 
Aziz (Rutgers), Alicia Plerhoples (Georgetown), Ann McGinley (UNLV), Mary Bowman (Seattle/
Arizona State), Dean Darby Dickerson (John Marshall), Dean Susan Duncan (Mississippi), Mary 
Lynch (Albany), Deborah Jones Merritt (Ohio State), and Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig (Boston 
University). I am grateful to Teri McMurtry-Chubb (John Marshall) and Shakira Pleasant (John 
Marshall) for thoughtful contributions to earlier concepts of this work. Finally, I am grateful for the 
helpful comments on later drafts by my husband Carl, and by my Research Assistant, Liza Ahmed.
32 Journal of Legal Education
with the overrepresentation of women as legal writing faculty. In this way, legal 
writing is gender sidelined.3
In this essay, I argue that viewing legal writing as a mode of gender sidelining 
uncovers the urgency for law schools to provide unitary tenure for legal writing 
programs across all law schools. I recognize that many legal writing faculty 
are employed under ABA Standard 405(c),4 a seemingly second-best option 
to traditional tenure tracks. As Professor Kathy Stanchi comments, however, 
while Standard 405(c) offers some respite from “job insecurity, intellectual 
disparagement, and pay inequity,”5 it ultimately serves as an “institutionalized 
bar to professional advancement divorced from any reasonable measure of 
merit.”6 This essay takes Stanchi’s framing of 405(c) as an irrational categorical 
exclusion of tenure despite meritorious performance, and extends her reasoning 
as further evidence of gender sidelining. 
Well-established research, from both the ABA and legal scholars, demonstrates 
the longstanding marginalization and inequitable status of legal writing 
faculty within the academy. As evidence of this inequity, there has been a rise 
in conversion of legal writing programs to tenure-track positions.7 And this rise 
toward parity is the only systemic gesture that can combat the gendered barrier 
of white males who dominate the legal academy.
It is no secret that women are overrepresented as legal writing faculty, with 
many still being untenured after years of experience. Still unique is the position 
Langdell’s traditional case method study as a strategic and sanitary response to an “Industrial 
America” that needed “legal protections [in order for capitalism] to survive,” noting, “The 
most heavily weighted courses in Langdell’s Gilded Age curriculum remain a fixture of the 
1L legal curriculum to this day: Property, Equity (Equitable Remedies), Contracts, and Torts. 
These courses endure as a reflection of and tool to maintain the imperialist, capitalist, White 
supremacist patriarchy.”).
3. The phrase was popularized in legal scholarship by Professor Jessica Fink (California Western 
School of Law), in Jessica Fink, Gender Sidelining and the Problem of Unactionable Discrimination, 29 
stan. L. & PoL’y 57, 60 (2018), and was the subject of the 2018 Gender Sidelining Symposium 
hosted by California Western School of Law.
4. “Full time clinical faculty members must be afforded a form of security of position reasonably 
similar to tenure, and non-compensatory prerequisites reasonably similar to other full-time 
faculty members.” While this provision applies to clinicians, “many law schools have chosen 
to place legal writing faculty on 405(c) status and have benefited from doing so.” Melissa 
H. Weresh, Best Practices for Protecting Security of Position for 405(c) Faculty, 66 J. LegaL educ. 538, 
538, 541 (2017) (discussing best practices in interpreting “reasonably similar to tenure” under 
405(c) for purposes of aiding security of position for clinical and legal writing faculty).
5. Kathryn Stanchi, The Problem with ABA Standard 405(c), 66 J. LegaL educ. 558, 558 (2017).
6. Id.
7. Since 2018, the following schools converted to tenure-track positions for legal writing 
professors: University of New Mexico School of Law, Southern University Law Center, 
Georgetown Law, and Suffolk University Law School. They join the now 46 tenure legal 
writing programs (including unitary, programmatic or special) in the country. See The 
Professional Status Committee and Status-Related Advocacy, Schools with Tenure Eligibility 
for LRW, Legal Writing Inst., https://www.lwionline.org/resources/status-related-advocacy 
(last visited April 27, 2020) (February 2020 List contains 46 schools) (on file with author)).
33
of women and men of color who chose to teach legal writing, as they are twice 
marginalized due to race and status. In short, if white males dominate the legal 
academy in the same way they dominate the legal profession,8 then waving my 
accolades in front of my doctrinal colleagues as an act of visibility and credibility 
is futile, no matter how loud I shout.
 The legal profession has been singing the tune of diversity and inclusion for 
decades. While there has been some movement for traditionally marginalized 
groups,9 these have only been small victories in a sizable and very long war. 
Rarely (if ever) has a marginalized group in American history gained upward 
movement without some influence by the privileged dominant group.10 To this 
point, Angela Onwuachi-Willig’s recent essay highlights the frustration of 
women of color in the current #MeToo movement, which regained resurgence 
only after a white woman tweeted the now popular hashtag originally coined 
by a black woman a decade earlier.11
What a gender sidelining framework highlights is the unique challenge 
facing marginalized groups—being subject to subtle yet pernicious forms 
of unequal treatment12—that beckon systemic and institutional influence to 
8. See A Current Glance at Women in the Law 2 (Apr. 2019) (noting that men make up sixty-two percent 
of the legal profession), https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/
women/current_glance_2019.pdf; and American Bar Association, ABA National Lawyer Population 
Survey 10-Year Trend in Lawyer Demographics (2019), https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/
aba/administrative/market_research/national-lawyer-population-demographics-2009-2019.
pdf (noting that men make up sixty-four percent, and Caucasians eighty-five percent, of the 
legal profession) (last visited April 9, 2020).
9. The ABA provides a resource that offers recent statistics on its members with a special focus 
on persons with disabilities, minorities, and women. Legal Profession Statistics, https://www.
americanbar.org/about_the_aba/profession_statistics/ (last visited April 27, 2019).
10. Both the LGBTQ and women’s rights movements owe their advance, in part, to white gay 
men and white women, respectively. See e.g., Neo Khuu, Obergefell v. Hodges: Kinship Formation, 
Interest Convergence, and the Future of Lgbtq Rights, 64 ucLa L. rev. 184, 198 (2017) (“pluralist 
advocates expose how the flip from minority to majority support of marriage equality was 
a product of upper-class gay white men using their dominant position and money to mold 
the priorities of the LGBTQ movement.”); Gemma Donofrio, Exploring the Role of Lawyers in 
Supporting the Reproductive Justice Movement, 42 N.y.u. rev. L. & soc. change 221, 221 (2018) (“At 
the same time, the reproductive rights movement largely prioritized the needs of middle- and 
upper-class white women, often excluding historically marginalized groups.”).
11. See Angela Onwuachi-Willig, What About #UsToo?: The Invisibility of Race in the #MeToo Movement, 128 
yaLe L. J. Forum 105, 106 (2018) (“On October 15, 2017, the #MeToo movement exploded 
onto the popular media stage after actress Alyssa Milano asked Twitter users to “write ‘me 
too’ as a reply to [her] tweet” if they had “been sexually harassed or assaulted. . . . Along with 
millions of affirming responses to Milano’s tweet, there were also critiques of her request, 
namely from women of color who were upset that—yet again—a white woman was receiving 
credit for an idea originated by a woman of color. In their responses to Milano’s call for “me 
too” tweets, these women highlighted not only that the phrase “me too” was originally coined 
by a black woman, Tarana Burke, more than ten years prior, but also that Burke had never 
received anywhere near the same level of support that white feminists like Milano received 
from the general public.”).
12. I attribute this notion of describing discrimination as subtle and pernicious to Jessica Fink. 
No Matter How Loud I Shout: Legal Writing as Gender Sidelining
34 Journal of Legal Education
compel change. For example, due largely to Standard 405(c), many legal writing 
faculty (again, largely female) have meager voting rights, static course loads, 
little influence on institutional governance, and pay disparity.13 Thus, not only 
are these faculty members without traditional discrimination recourses, but 
their unequal treatment may hinder their ability to advance and flourish in an 
academy dominated by white men. Needless to say, if white men were largely 
teaching legal writing, issues of status inequality would be tenuous.
I recognize that the inequality facing legal writing faculty is not novel. 
However, as this essay suggests, a gender sidelining framework demonstrates 
the need for a creative resolve that is bigger than any single community. To 
start, the legal writing community can take steps toward elevating our discipline 
by providing fundamental training for practitioners and adjuncts seeking to 
become full-time legal writing faculty.14 For example, prospective faculty need 
training on how to effectively deliver job talks that both elevate the discipline 
of legal writing and inform the traditional podium faculty as to the pedagogy 
and the interdisciplinary and integral foundations of legal writing across other 
first-year courses. Further, junior faculty would benefit from education on 
the need for and the value of professional development by way of conference 
participation, scholarship, and organizational participation in the legal writing 
community and more.
Ultimately, however, the voice of the larger institution is paramount toward 
change for legal writing faculty. It is the law school members who must believe 
in the value of a strong legal writing program if the legal academy intends to 
prepare law students with practical skills for the legal profession. This necessitates 
doing away with inferior status of legal writing faculty and providing full parity 
with other professors of law. Anything less is insincere and demoralizing. It is 
the law school that must afford legal writing faculty with the same professional 
development and mentorship as entry-level doctrinal faculty. This fosters a 
value-driven collaboration that signals supportive vision toward professional 
growth. Finally, it is the law school that must resist using legal writing courses as 
a steppingstone into podium faculty positions. These positions traditionally 
Jessica Fink, Gender Sidelining and the Problem of Unactionable Discrimination, 29 stan. L. & PoL’y rev. 
57, 80 (2018) (“One subtle yet pernicious obstacle encountered by female workers is a lack of 
access and opportunity that they receive in comparison to that provided to their male peers.”).
13. It is important to note that even if schools adhere to Standard 405(c) for its legal writing or 
clinical faculty, legal writing faculty may fail to achieves parity with casebook faculty in other 
areas, such as faculty governance and course selection.
14. I have previously presented this idea as an adaption of the Culp Colloquium. A tentative 
title is Elevare Colloquium (Latin: Elevate), for those practitioners and adjuncts seeking 
to transition into the legal academy as legal writing professors and also for junior faculty 
currently in the profession who could benefit from a vision for their career.  Their vision for 
professional growth, for scholarship, serves the entire community by elevating our status and 
raising the caliber of our discipline in the academy.   The vision for this colloquium is to share 
best practices to elevate the discipline individually and collectively—through effective job talks/
presentations, pedagogy development, conference attendance, collaborations, scholarship, 
etc.
35
employ white males and thus perpetuate the very patriarchy the discipline of 
legal writing is fighting against.
My name is Leslie . . . and I love teaching legal writing.” And no matter how loud I shout, 
as a member of the marginalized group, my voice is only as significant as the 
institution’s viewpoint on legal writing.
No Matter How Loud I Shout: Legal Writing as Gender Sidelining


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