HLS teaching series: Developing Professionalism in Students, March 21, at 12 noon EST

Developing Professionalism in Students

Register here: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_W60Re3yDQRSfSPWgw0EP8Q

Noon EST, March 21

What is professionalism for a lawyer? How can we as teachers help students develop professional identities in ways that honor their diversity and commitments? Norms of professionalism can be exclusionary, even when our students adapt consciously and strategically to them. But the ideal of serving clients with specialized legal knowledge has value and meaning. Our panelists will discuss their strategies for working with developing lawyers to find professional identities that honor both themselves and the legal profession.

Kendra Albert is a technology lawyer and scholar of computing, gender, and society. They are a clinical instructor at the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard Law School, where they teach students to practice technology law. Kendra also serves as a lecturer in the Program on Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. Kendra holds a JD cum laude from Harvard Law School and a BHA from Carnegie Mellon University. They serve as the Chair of the Board of Directors for the Tor Project, and as a member of the Board of Directors of the ACLU of Massachusetts.

Jack Lerner is Clinical Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law and Director of the UCI Intellectual Property, Arts, & Technology Clinic. Professor Lerner works to find solutions to problems at the intersection of law and technology, particularly how technology law and policy affect creative expression and innovation.  He has written and spoken widely on copyright, privacy and other areas of technology law. In 2021, Professor Lerner authored the landmark Rap on Trial Legal Guide, the first-ever treatise on the use of rap lyrics in criminal trials (with Kubrin et al.). He is also Executive Editor of the award-winning treatise Internet Law and Practice in California (CEB). In 2015, he authored The Duty of Confidentiality in the Surveillance Age, 17 J. Internet L. 1 (2014) (with Lee et al.). See more of Professor Lerner's publications at his UC Irvine profile.

Kim Thomas, HLS '99, is a Clinical Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she has taught since 2003.  She teaches in the area of criminal law, primarily in the Civil-Criminal Litigation Clinic and the Juvenile Justice Clinic, a clinic which she directs and co-founded. In 2021, Thomas was appointed as a member of the Governor's task force on juvenile justice reform, which issued its recommendations for structural reform of Michigan's youth justice system in 2022.  Thomas' research focuses on youth who commit serious offenses and those who are serving long and life sentences, as well as adult sentencing and post-conviction proceedings. Her scholarly work has been published in the California Law Review, the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, the U.C. Davis Law Review, among others.  In 2017, Thomas received a Fulbright award to teach juvenile justice at the University College Cork, in Cork, Ireland.