CLAE to Present at International Leadership Association Conference

7/1/2010 11:42 am

On Friday, October 29, CLAE Executive Director Ellen Hemley and Board Members Bonnie Allen, MS Center for Justice & Justin Hansford, 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, will present a workshop, "Transforming the Legal Profession through Leadership Development", at the upcoming International Leadership Association Conference scheduled this year in Boston. 

The workshop will highlight CLAE's cutting-edge Leadership Institute which has already trained 120 public interest lawyers in New England and Florida through a series of retreats over 18-month periods that combine skills and reflective practices related to seven leadership competencies. With younger lawyers as trainees working closely with older lawyers as mentors, the Institute is building a regional and national learning community for social justice lawyers grounded in the core values of their work and the principles and practices of visionary leadership.

The workshop will also highlight a 2009 report: "Leadership Education in the Legal Academy," co-authored by Judy Brown and Bonnie Allen, that describes a collaborative process of inquiry undertaken by the Burns Academy of Leadership and University of Maryland School of Law into the purpose of legal education in the legal academy.

Since both of these leadership models are relatively new, the workshop will provide a forum for rich discussion about introducing leadership education into a field, and how to create a learning community that, over time, has the potential to produce structural change in the ways a field or profession uses its expertise and power in society. The discussion will invite ideas from participants on what kinds of teaching methodologies have been transformative in other fields, how these methodologies might be introduced into the legal academy and profession, and how legal academics and practitioners can benefit from interdisciplinary leadership dialogue, scholarship and practice. In addition, the workshop will invite commentary on how best to utilize technology in the leadership education of lawyers, and how American lawyers can be in dialogue and practice with emerging lawyer-leaders in other countries.

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