Professor Robert Dinerstein to Speak at Faculty Forum

Professor Robert D. Dinerstein is speaking at a faculty forum on Thursday, February 23.  The forum takes place from noon to 1:00 p.m. in the Strong Commons Room in Bergin Hall.  Professor Dinerstein will be speaking on "The Promises and Challenges of Collaboration in Clinical Legal Education."

Professor Dinerstein has an A.B. in History from Cornell University and a J.D. from Yale Law School and is a professor of law at American University, Washington College of Law (AWCL), where he has taught since 1983.  Prior to coming to WCL, he was an attorney for five years at the Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Special Litigation Section, where he litigated cases concerning conditions in state mental retardation, mental illness, nursing home, and juvenile institutions.  At WCL, Prof. Dinerstein has taught in and directed the criminal justice clinic; interviewing, counseling and negotiation; supervised externship seminar on government and public interest lawyering; rights of civilly institutionalized persons; and legal ethics.  He currently teaches a disability law seminar (focused, among other things, on the Americans with Disabilities Act) and is director of the law school’s new Disability Rights Law Clinic, which began operation in August 2005. 

From 1988-1996, Professor Dinerstein was the director of WCL’s nationally-recognized clinical program, and from 1997-2004 he was the law school’s associate dean for academic affairs.  He is the author of a number of scholarly publications and reports, and has made numerous presentations in the fields of clinical legal education (with a particular focus on client-centered counseling), lawyering, the Americans with Disabilities Act, guardianship and consent issues for people with disabilities, disability law generally (domestic and international), criminal justice, and legal education.  With Stephen Ellmann, Isabelle Gunning, Kate Kruse and Ann Shalleck, he is working on a textbook on interviewing and counseling for Thomson West.

Professor Dinerstein has been involved extensively at the national level in clinical and legal education activities.  He has served as Chair of the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education (as well as on the executive committee) and the AALS Committee on Clinical Legal Education, as well as of the Law and Community Section, and is currently chair of the AALS Committee on Sections and the Annual Meeting.  He has served on numerous ABA-AALS Site Inspection teams, as well as on a number of AALS Clinical Conference and Workshop planning committees, and is chair of the 2006 Clinical Teachers’ Conference Planning Committee.  Professor Dinerstein helped found the Clinical Law Review and was on its first board of editors. He has been a member of the AALS Membership Review Committee and the Standards Review Committee of the ABA Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.  He currently serves on the boards of directors of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT), the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, Inc., Mental Disability Rights International, the Quality Trust for Individuals with Disabilities, and the Equal Rights Center.   He is a past elected member of the District of Columbia Bar Board of Governors and was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the President’s Committee on Mental Retardation from 1994-200.