Clinical Law Program People
Clinic Faculty
Kim Ambrose
Acting Director and Supervising Attorney, Children and Youth Advocacy Clinic
Senior Lecturer
Kim Ambrose is a lecturer and supervising attorney for CAYAC. Before coming to the clinic, she helped create and direct the Immigrant Child Advocacy Project through Seattle University Law School's Access to Justice Institute. She spent several years as a public defender representing indigent adults and juveniles in both child welfare and criminal proceedings. After graduating from the University of Washington Law School in 1989, Ms. Ambrose clerked for U.S. District Judge David Ezra in the District of Hawaii. She has also worked as a resource attorney for the Washington Defender Association, providing training, technical assistance and resources to public defense attorneys around Washington State.
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Molly Cohan
Supervising Attorney, Tribal Court Public Defense Clinic
Lecturer
Molly M. Cohan is the Supervising Attorney for the Tribal Court Public Defense Clinic at the University of Washington School of Law. She has extensive experience in criminal law with particular interest in training, cultural competence, and tribal criminal defense. Ms. Cohan worked at The Defender Association in Seattle for 27 years in a variety of staff and supervisory positions. She has practiced in the areas of misdemeanors, felonies, juvenile, BECCA, and dependencies. Molly has also done pro bono work with Navajo Public Defender and in Chehalis and Suquamish Tribal Courts. Immediately prior to coming to the Law School, she was the Training Coordinator for the Washington Defender Association.
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Signe Dortch
Director, Immigration Law Clinic
Part-time Lecturer
An alumna of the UW Immigration Law Clinic, Signe Dortch has dedicated her legal career to defending immigrants and refugees. She worked as a staff attorney at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project from 1999 until 2002, representing immigrant survivors of domestic violence. From 2002 to 2007, she worked as an associate attorney at Gibbs Houston Pauw. There, Dortch represented clients in removal proceedings before the Immigration Court and in appeals to the Board of Immigration Appeals and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She also represented clients in filing affirmative applications with the Department of Homeland Security. Dortch has presented at many immigration conferences on, among other topics, immigration options for battered immigrants, asylum law, and relief for long-time lawful permanent residents facing removal from the U.S.
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Julia Ann Gold
Director, Mediation Clinic
Senior Lecturer in Law
Julia Ann Gold teaches the Mediation Clinic, the Mediation Skills CLE program, Negotiation and Street Law. She is active in offering mediation and conflict resolution training nationally. Prior to joining the UW faculty in 1995, she founded and directed the Mediation Clinic at the University of Oregon School of Law. Gold's mediation practice includes civil cases, employment, consumer and small business mediations, community and neighborhood mediation, small claims, landlord-tenant mediation, and family conflicts. She is a member of the ADR Roundtable and serves on the Board of the King County Dispute Resolution Center. She also co-chairs the annual Northwest Dispute Resolution Conference.
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Lisa Kelly
Director, Children and Youth Advocacy Clinic
Associate Dean,
Bobbe & Jonathan Bridge Professorship in Children and Family Advocacy
Professor of Law
Before she accepted her current position, Lisa Kelly was a professor at University of West Virginia Law School, where she had been a member of the faculty since 1992. Prior to entering teaching, she practiced civil rights and employment law in Arkansas, where she handled complex litigation. She has has taught courses in children and the law, education law, family law, race and the American legal process, torts and trial advocacy. She is the author of several articles, and in 1996, received the AALS scholarly paper award for junior faculty.
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Alan Kirtley
Mediation Clinic
Associate Professor of Law
Alan Kirtley is the founder of the Clinical Law Program. Before entering law teaching Kirtley was a partner in a Michigan law firm. His practice specialty was business law and commercial litigation. He teaches courses in alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and negotiations, and supervises student practice in the School's Mediation Clinic. He was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School in the fall of 1998, and Ohio State University College of Law the summer of 2000. Kirtley has a private mediation practice, and conducts trainings in both negotiation and mediation. He is a frequent presenter in ADR meetings and conferences. Kirtley has served as Chair (1992-93) of the ADR Section of the Washington State Bar Association. He has published several articles in the ADR field, including an article concerning mediation privilege statutes that won first prize in the 1995 CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution Awards for Excellence in Alternative Dispute Resolution.
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Deborah Maranville
Director, Clinical Law Program
Director, Unemployment Compensation Clinic
Professor of Law
Professor Maranville joined the UW law school faculty in 1989 to help develop the clinical law program. She is now the director of clinical programs at the law school, directing the Unemployment Compensation Clinic and teaching the Access to Justice Seminar and two Legal Analysis Research and Writing Public Service capstones for 1Ls. She has also taught Feminist Legal Theory and Civil Procedure. While practicing poverty law from 1975-81 with legal services organizations in Seattle, Professor Maranville developed a specialty in public benefits cases and handled numerous class action lawsuits and individual administrative hearings and appeals. She then taught Civil Procedure, Administrative Law, and Trial Advocacy at the University of Puget Sound Law School.
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Jackie McMurtrie
Director, Innocence Project Northwest
Associate Professor of Law
Jackie McMurtrie teaches criminal law and previously directed the school's Criminal Law Clinic. Before joining the law school faculty in 1989, she worked as a staff attorney and supervising attorney for the Seattle-King County Public Defender Association. McMurtrie has been a visiting professor at Seattle University School of Law. She has been recognized as a Superlawyer and received numerous award for her teaching and work with Innocence Project Northwest.
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Sean O'Connor
Director, Entrepreneurial Law Clinic
Associate Professor of Law
Sean O'Connor is Associate Director of the Center for Advanced Study and Research on Intellectual Property. He also serves as Associate Director of the Intellectual Property Law and Policy Program. He teaches courses in intellectual property, biotechnology, business and securities law. Prior to joining the UW Law School faculty, he was a faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Before entering academia, O'Connor was in private practice with Hale and Dorr in Boston and Weil, Gotshal & Manges in New York.
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Michael Robinson-Dorn
Director, Berman Environmental Law Clinic
Associate Professor of Law
In addition to teaching in the School of Law's Environmental Law Program, Professor
Robinson-Dorn also teaches Administrative Law. An honor's graduate of Cornell Law School,
Prof. Robinson-Dorn has extensive experience in both the private and public sectors.
Prior to entering academia, he directed the City of Seattle's Environmental Protection
Section, was a principal with Riddell Williams, served as a trial attorney with the U.S.
Department of Justice, Environment and Natural Resources Division, and worked at Jones
Day in Washington, D.C. In addition, Prof. Robinson-Dorn served as a law clerk to U.S.
District Court Judge Morton A. Brody.
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Scott Schumacher
Director, Federal Tax Clinic
Associate Professor of Law
In addition to the clinic, Scott Schumacher teaches courses in the Graduate Tax Program. He was previously an attorney with Chicoine & Hallett, P.S., in Seattle, Washington, where his practice focused on tax controversy and litigation. He also served as a trial attorney with the United States Department of Justice Tax Division, and was an attorney-advisor to the Honorable Arthur L. Nims III, Chief Judge of the United States Tax Court.
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Ron Whitener
Director, Tribal Court Public Defense Clinic
Assistant Professor
of Law
Prior to the creation of the Tribal Court Public Defense Clinic, Ron Whitener taught the Indian Law Clinic at the University of Washington School of Law from 1999-2002. He has worked as a staff attorney at the Northwest Justice Project's Native American Unit, representing low-income Native American clients with civil and criminal law issues. Ron is also a member of the Squaxin Island Tribe, where he served six years as tribal attorney.
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Brenda Williams
Clinic Supervisor, Tribal Court Public Defense Clinic
Law Lecturer
Brenda Williams is a Clinic Supervisor for the Tribal Court Public Defense Clinic, representing Native Americans charged in the Tulalip Tribal Court. She also provides organizational supervision and coordinates fundraising efforts for the Native American Law Center. She worked for ten years at the Defender Association representing persons in misdemeanor, felony, juvenile, dependency and special offender commitment cases. Ms. Williams presently serves on the Washington State Bar Association Board of Governors and was recently awarded the University of Washington's Law Women's Caucus Woman of the Year award. As a law student, Ms. Williams co-founded the National Latina/o Law Student Conference, which continues to bring together hundreds of future Latina/o lawyers on an annual basis.
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Clinic Attorneys
Kelly Canary
Kelly Canary, staff attorney for the IPNW Clinic, comes to us from Yakima, where she served as a fellow with the Federal Public Defender. She graduated UW with a degree in Philosophy and is an alum of the Law School. An IPNW Clinic student, Kelly also served as president of the IPNW student group. Her long term interest in those who are incarcerated unjustly prompted her to enter law school to pursue this specialty. She feels fortunate to be able to practice in this area of interest and finds it satisfying that the work of the Clinic provides students direct experience with the criminal justice system and gives clients hope since they would have nowhere else to turn.
John Clynch
John Clynch earned all three of his degrees from the U.W. -- an undergraduate degree in Geography, the J.D. and an LLM in Taxation. His many years of legal experience include criminal defense as a public defender and serving as in house corporate counsel. Having worked in the FTC while earning his LLM, John has a strong appreciation of the need for representation among the public in resolving their tax disputes and the benefits of reducing the effects on families and individuals when such representation results in successful outcomes. He has sung classical music in Seattle and Los Angeles and served on the board of the Seattle Downtown YMCA.
Clinic Staff
- Harold Daniels, Program Support Supervisor
- Carrie Gaasland, Senior Secretary
- Robin Gianattasio, Senior Secretary