TAMPA BAY, Fla. – The American Bar Association’s Pipeline Council has awarded Cooley Law School Professor Joseline Jean-Louis Hardrick and her nonprofit, Journey to Esquire® Scholarship & Leadership Program, with the 2026 Alexander Rising Star Award.
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Professor Emeritus Kimberly O'Leary is spending her retirement traveling around the world with her husband, Paul. While traveling, Professor O'Leary has launched an oral history project called The Gen Jones Chronicles.
Kimberly E. O'Leary is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Cooley Law School, and co-author with Mable Martin-Scott of the book Multicultural Lawyering: Navigating the Culture of the Law, the Lawyer, and the Client. She is now retired from full-time law teaching, but continues to blog about multicultural lawyering and her travels with her husband, Paul, in the blog Rocinantes on the Road. Below is an excerpt from her blog story called With buoyant spirit, Fiji models reconciliation & a welcoming culture.
Kimberly E. O'Leary is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Cooley Law School, and co-author with Mable Martin-Scott of the book Multicultural Lawyering: Navigating the Culture of the Law, the Lawyer, and the Client. She is now retired from full-time law teaching, but continues to blog about multicultural lawyering and her travels with her husband, Paul, in the blog Rocinantes on the Road. Below is an excerpt from her blog story called New Zealand - respect, heart, & willingness to tackle the hard questions raised by multiculturalism.
Below is a conversation surrounding Standard 303. Curriculum with Demetria Frank, Associate Dean for Diversity & Inclusion, University of Memphis Law In February, 2022, the ABA adopted a new Standard for Legal Education. The new Standard, 303(c), provides:
Barrister William Lye OAM QC, former adjunct professor at WMU-Cooley Law School, leads an Australian Legal Team who are investigating the situation in Ukraine.
Have you ever said something and discovered that your listener felt attacked, when that was not your intent? Have you ever had someone say something to you where you felt misunderstood, stereotyped, or disrespected? When those kinds of mis-communications occur, how do you respond? When the other person is from a different culture from you, have you ever felt like the mis-communication is even more fraught?
I retired in December, 2021, and I had the honor of being asked to present a lecture on what I learned from my career. In that lecture, I discussed five "lessons" I have learned that made my career more productive and more enjoyable. You can watch the 30-minute lecture in the video, or if you want the “Cliff Notes” version, here are the 5 lessons below - Cooley Professor Emeritus Kimberly E. O'Leary
Cooley Law School 2005 graduate Janelle Benjamin is the founder and CEO of the company All Things Equitable. Benjamin, located in Toronto, Ontario, works with organizations and companies all over the world. Her consulting work focuses on diversity and inclusion in the workplace. She helps employees from historically marginalized groups feel safer at work, and she helps employers figure out how to create diverse and safe workplaces that are fair and equitable. She does her work by speaking, interviewing, conducting focus groups, surveys, and training sessions. Benjamin started the company in 2020, pulling together more than 15 years of skills acquired through her work on the staff of high level policy makers in Human Rights and Fairness government commissions. She earned her J.D. with a focus on International Law, ADR, and Litigation. She believes she is the only firm in Toronto that focuses on all historically marginalized groups – there are consultants on racial equity, or accessibility equity, or LGBTQI equity, for example. She helps companies create fairness for all its employees by examining such issues as implicit bias and micro-aggressions, but also explicit bias and dismantling sexist, racist, ableist and other practices that are a barrier to fairness. She credits some of her own experiences of discrimination and micro-aggressions in the workplace with helping her recognize and validate the experiences shared by marginalized employees. She credits her policy experience with helping her problem-solve with employers. After the events of the summer of 2020, including the shooting of George Floyd, Ms. Benjamin realized she wanted to do more. She also realized her own race and gender posed challenges to being promoted within corporate culture. With the support of many people with whom she had worked, who advised her that she had the perfect skill set to take action to improve employment settings, she launched her own business and has been busy ever since.
If you are an American lawyer in the 21st century, you need to understand how to work with clients, judges, and other professionals from diverse backgrounds. The ABA has focused on guiding lawyers to learn these tools.
