School Notes: Yale Law School
July/August 2022

Professor honored by Connecticut Bar

Professor J. L. Pottenger Jr. ’75JD received the Tapping Reeve Legal Educator Award on April 20 at an awards ceremony hosted by the Connecticut Bar Association (CBA). Pottenger is the Nathan Baker Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where his subjects include housing and community development, mortgage foreclosure litigation, legislative advocacy, prison legal services, trial practice, landlord/tenant law, and professional responsibility. Established in 2012, the Tapping Reeve Legal Educator Award is presented to a member of the CBA who has made significant contributions and a commitment to the cause of legal education and is considered a legal educator of the highest quality as a teacher, scholarly writer, or both.

Conference highlights professor’s work

The work and jurisprudence of Professor Paul Kahn ’77PhD, ’80JD, was discussed in a two-day workshop in April, “Law and Political Imagination,” co-organized by the Edinburgh Law School Centre for Legal Theory. The event included panel discussions by international legal scholars and Kahn. Kahn is the Robert W. Winner Professor of Law and the Humanities and director of the Schell Center for International Human Rights. 

Marking two milestones

On April 7, faculty, students, and alumni gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of clinical education and the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization (LSO) at Yale Law School. The event coincided with the 25th annual Liman Public Interest Colloquium, which reflected on the past and future of public-interest lawyering and celebrated the achievements of these interconnected programs. Panels examined the role of clinical education in shaping generations of public-interest lawyers. Today, LSO operates nine of the Law School’s more than 30 clinics, with a particular focus on New Haven and communities in Connecticut, while also working regionally and nationally. The Liman Colloquium, titled “An Intergenerational Community Committed to Public Service Education and Lawyering,” featured Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor ’79JD and reflected on the challenges of the current moment.