University of California, Irvine School of Law Professor of Lawyering Skills Alison Mikkor has been elected to the Board of Directors for the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD). Prof. Mikkor will serve a three-year term on the board beginning August 1, 2024. ALWD is one of the preeminent organizations dedicated to the advancement of lawyering skills teaching and scholarship.
“I am thrilled and honored to be joining ALWD’s leadership team,” said Prof. Mikkor. “ALWD and the vibrant intellectual community it has created has enriched my own teaching and research immensely, and I am looking forward to furthering its work as a member of the Board.”
ALWD is a nonprofit professional association with over 400 members representing more than 130 law schools in the United States and Canada. It publishes Legal Communication and Rhetoric: JALWD, one of the most well-regarded peer-reviewed journals of legal writing, analysis, and rhetoric. It is also the American Bar Association’s legal writing affiliate entity and works alongside the Legal Writing Institute (LWI) on issues of professional status as well as the advancement of the discipline.
Prof. Mikkor teaches both first-year and advanced lawyering skills courses. She is particularly excited by and interested in the role of experiential learning in legal pedagogy. She seeks to integrate the realities of practice into the law school curriculum in ways that advance student learning in the present and equip students for life-long learning as professionals in the future. Prof. Mikkor’s most recent work has focused on teaching interventions that create a more equitable and inclusive legal classroom, including developing approaches for countering the effects of trauma and stereotype threat on student achievement.
Prof. Mikkor’s areas of expertise and experience include Legal Analysis and Communication, Civil Litigation Practice, Appellate Practice, Experiential Learning, the Lawyer-Client Relationship, Client Interviewing and Counseling Skills, Professional Responsibility, and Inclusive Excellence in Legal Education. She has presented frequently on these topics at conferences and workshops hosted by ALWD, LWI, the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), and individual law schools. Prof. Mikkor’s work has also been published in journals, such as the peer-reviewed publication Legal Writing.
Prof. Mikkor is an active member in regional and national professional organizations promoting and supporting the work of lawyering skills as a discipline. She has served on ALWD’s Teaching Workshop Committee; AALS’ Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research, Outreach Committee; and LWI’s New Members Committee. She also served on UC Irvine’s Academic Integrity Review Board from 2021 to 2024.
Before joining UC Irvine School of Law, Prof. Mikkor was a faculty member in NYU School of Law’s Lawyering Program. Prior to that, she was a litigator with the firm Debevoise & Plimpton LLP for nearly a decade.
Prof. Mikkor earned a B.A. in History and Political Science with First Class Honors from McGill University in Montreal and a J.D. from NYU School of Law.
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