Assistant Professor Lisa Martin says being elected co-vice president of the Clinical Legal Education Association is her chance to give back to an organization that has enhanced her legal teaching experience. She was elected as the incoming 2018 co-vice president by CLEA members, after being chosen as a candidate by the association’s executive board.

CLEA exists to advocate for clinical legal education as fundamental to the education of lawyers. It works to improve teaching and scholarship opportunities, as well as equip law schools with the tools to integrate clinical education into their curriculums. Martin has been a CLEA member for 10 years and has spent the last two as a part of the executive board.

As co-vice president, Martin will serve on several committees within CLEA, as well as assist the president and executive committee with the day-to-day leadership and management of the association. It is a three-year appointment, serving the first year as vice president, the second year as president and the third year as immediate past president.

Prioring to joining the University of South Carolina School of Law in the summer of 2017, Martin was a member of the faculty at The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law, where she was the Co-Director of the Families and the Law Clinic, the Director of the Experiential Curriculum, and taught Gender, Law, and Policy.  She specializes in legal issues relating to gender-based violence, the rights of adolescents, and the regulation of the family.

Since joining the South Carolina Law faculty, she has started the Domestic Violence Clinic, serving as the director. She says she has two main goals for the new clinic: to train law students to assume the role and responsibility of attorney and provide excellent representation to clients, and to serve the community by helping people obtain emergency legal relief from abuse, educating the community about available legal remedies, and researching policy questions.

She credits much of her success as a professor to the generosity and mentorship of the other clinical law professors she has met through CLEA. She will serve as co-vice president with Prof. Danny Schaffzin of the University of Memphis Cecil Humphreys School of Law, in collaboration with current President Prof. Jeffrey Baker of Pepperdine University School of Law.