Life in the legal academy: what's different and important about being a law professor?

Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA

The LILI 2005 keynote speaker was Professor Carrie Menkel-Meadow. Carrie is Professor of Law and Director, Georgetown-Hewlett Program in Conflict Resolution and Legal Problem Solving, Georgetown University, Washington DC.

Carrie spoke about what is unique about being a professor or teacher of law, rather than teaching in some other discipline. She focused on the connections of legal and other theory to practice and the opportunity law teachers have to affect law reform and institutional change, as well as on doctrinal and pedagogical innovations and the different relationships that law teachers have or should have with students than in other parts of the academy.

Drawing on her own career as a pioneer of several major American legal education innovations – clinical education, feminism, socio-legal studies, legal ethics, law and literature and alternative dispute resolution – Carrie focused on the strengths (and problems) of ‘law and…’ approaches to legal study and on the importance of active and experiential learning, as well as interdisciplinary study of the law and legal institutions. She provided both some comparative institutional perspectives (from having taught law in five continents, although mostly in North America) and personal history and reflections.

Carrie is Professor of Law at Georgetown (since 1996) and Director of the Georgetown-Hewlett Program in Conflict Resolution and Problem Solving. She was a professor of law at UCLA School of Law for 20 years.

Carrie has written extensively on many subjects, including legal ethics, the sociology of the legal profession, legal education, feminist jurisprudence and women in the legal profession. She has taught ADR, legal ethics, procedure and litigation related courses at the law schools of Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Toronto, Osgoode Hall Law School, Georgetown and UCLA.

Last Modified: 12 July 2010