2018 Symposium
Lawyering in the Era of #MeToo
Richmond Public Interest Law Review
Friday, October 19, 2018
8:30 AM – 1:00 PM
View the Symposium Recording Here
Location
The Honorable Robert R. Merhige Jr. Moot Courtroom
University of Richmond School of Law
Symposium Schedule
8:30 AM – 9:00 AM: Registration/ Coffee
9:00 AM – 9:10 AM: PILR EIC Intro
9:10 AM - 9:40 AM: Keynote Speaker: Sharyn Tejani speaks about legal improvements that should be made to civil rights employment law, probably focusing on the severe or pervasive standard.
9:40 AM – 9:50 AM: Questions for Keynote Speaker
9:50 AM – 10:20 AM: Lesley Wexler Lecture: #MeToo and Procedural Justice. It will focus on what a colloquial understanding of Due Process demands of various actors involved in #MeToo.
10:20 AM – 10:30 AM: Questions
10:30 AM – 11:00 AM: Megan Zwisohn Talk: Working with victims in the era of #MeToo. May include some parts about vicarious trauma.
11:00 AM – 11:10 AM: Questions
11:10 AM – 11:20 AM: Coffee Break
11:20 AM – 11:50 AM: Jennifer Robbennolt Talk: Will talk about the range of remedies and responses that targets of harassment may desire.
11:50 AM – 12:00 AM: Questions
11:55 AM – 1:00 PM: Panel Discussion: Sexual harassment in the work place: The panel, led by Professor Kevin Woodson, will consist of Patty Gill, Rebecca Royals, Kati Dean, and Janice Craft.
3.5 CLE Credits
Speaker Biographies
Keynote:
Sharyn Tejani
Sharyn Tejani is the Director of the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund. Immediately prior to starting this role in April 2018, she served as a Deputy Chief at the Employment Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. In that role she supervised the investigation and litigation of cases on behalf of workers facing sex harassment, pregnancy discrimination, and employment barriers that unjustly screen out women and people of color. Ms. Tejani has spent her legal career working on issues of civil rights and women’s rights. Prior to joining the U.S. Department of Justice in 2010, Ms. Tejani was the Director of the Workplace Fairness Program at the National Partnership for Women and Families and the Legal Director of the Feminist Majority Foundation. She also worked at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as an Attorney Advisor to Commissioner Stuart J. Ishimaru. Ms. Tejani began her legal career as an honors attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. She attended Yale University and Georgetown University Law Center.
Lecturers:
Lesley Wexler
Professor Lesley Wexler is a professor of law at Illinois Law School. She teaches torts, laws of war and international environmental law. Before coming to Illinois, Professor Wexler taught at the Florida State University College of Law. Prior to teaching at Florida State, she spent two years at the University of Chicago Law School as a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer on Law. Professor Wexler has broad research interests in international humanitarian law, human rights law, and sex discrimination. Professor Wexler specializes in those legal areas that reflect the movement of anti-discrimination and humanitarian norms through domestic law, international law, social movements, and corporations. She has written on the legitimacy of targeting decisions, the blood diamond trade, and the regulation of depleted uranium and landmines, along with a series of articles on human rights impact statements. Her work has drawn on case studies using DeBeers, Wal-Mart, and Chick-fil-A. Professor Wexler earned her BA with honors from the University of Michigan and her JD with honors from the University of Chicago Law School. While in law school, she served on the board of both the Chicago International Law Journal and the Chicago Legal Forum. Professor Wexler has clerked for Judge Thomas Reaveley of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She has also clerked for Judge William Wayne Justice on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. She worked for two law firms: Sidley, Austin, Brown & Wood (Chicago, Washington D.C.) as well as Wilmer Cutler & Pickering (Washington D.C.). Professor Wexler is also the co- author of #MeToo, Time's Up, and Restorative Justice, University of Illinois College of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 18-14
Megan Zwisohn
Megan Zwisohn is a Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney in Glouster County, VA. Ms. Zwisohn graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice from Old Dominion University in 1991. She received her Juris Doctor from Albany Law School in 1995, having spent her third year studying with the T.C. Williams School of Law at the University of Richmond. Megan taught as a full-time instructor in Old Dominion's Criminal Justice Department from 1995-1997. She taught substantive criminal law for Old Dominion as an adjunct professor from 1997 until 2015 and has been an adjunct at William & Mary Law School since 2013. Megan began her career as a prosecutor in 1997 in the Virginia Beach Commonwealth's Attorney's Office. She worked in the Norfolk Commonwealth's Attorney's Office from 2003 until 2012 where she was a Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney until joining this office in 2012 as the Deputy. Megan has served as faculty for the Commonwealth's Attorney Services Council's Trial Advocacy Course since 2004. She has also been called on to lecture and train prosecutors and law enforcement officers on a variety of topics. Megan is currently a co-chair on the Executive Advisory Council for Teens with a Purpose, an organization dedicated to supporting teens in need through the arts and encouraging community leadership. She also serves on the board of REACH (Reading Enriches All Children), and has volunteered as a shelter reader.
Jennifer Robbennolt
Jennifer Robennolt a professor of law and psychology at the University of Illinois. Professor Jennifer Robbennolt is an expert in the areas of psychology and law, torts, and dispute resolution. Her research integrates psychology into the study of law and legal institutions, focusing primarily on legal decision-making and the use of empirical research methodology in law. Professor Robbennolt is co-author of several books, including The Psychology of Tort Law; Psychology for Lawyers: Understanding the Human Factors in Negotiation, Litigation, and Decision Making; a textbook on Empirical Methods in Law (with Illinois colleagues Robert M. Lawless and Thomas S. Ulen); and the influential casebook, Dispute Resolution and Lawyers. She has served as secretary of the American Psychology-Law Society and as the chair of the AALS section on law and the social sciences and is on the editorial boards of Psychology, Public Policy, and Law; Law and Human Behavior; and Law and Social Inquiry. Professor Robbennolt has twice been awarded the Wayne R. LaFave Award for Excellence in Faculty Scholarship and the Shook, Hardy, & Bacon Excellence in Research Award, and has received the Professional Article Prize awarded by the CPR International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution. She has been awarded the John E. Cribbet Excellence in Teaching Award, the Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award for outstanding teaching, and the Gold Chalk Award for dedication and service to the advancement of graduate student education. A graduate with highest honors of the University of Nebraska College of Law, she also earned master’s and doctoral degrees in social psychology from the University of Nebraska. In 2016 she was presented with the inaugural Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Nebraska Law-Psychology Program. Before joining the faculty at the University of Illinois, Professor Robbennolt was associate dean for faculty research and development, associate professor, and senior fellow in the Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law. She has also served as a research associate and lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and at Princeton University’s Department of Psychology and as a law clerk to the Honorable John M. Gerrard of the Nebraska Supreme Court.
Panelist Moderator:
Kevin Woodson
Professor Kevin Woodson is a professor of law at the University of Richmond School of Law. Before coming to Richmond Law, Kevin Woodson was an associate professor at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law at Drexel University in Philadelphia, where his scholarship focused on employment discrimination, racial diversity in higher education and the professions, and education reform. His works have appeared in Fordham Law Review, Cardozo Law Review, and Georgia Law Review, amongst other venues, and he is currently working on a book entitled Beyond Bias? The Significance of Race for the New Black Elite. Woodson was an associate at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Halle & Dorr in Washington, D.C He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology & Social Policy from Princeton University, his J.D. from Yale Law School, and his B.A. from Columbia University.
Panelists:
Rebecca Royals
Ms. Royals is a founding member of Butler Royals in Richmond, VA. She focuses her practice on employment law, civil rights, and complex civil litigation. Although she primarily represents employees, she has also represented employers ranging from local small business owners to national corporations. Her practice includes the representation of clients in non- competition/restrictive covenant matters, defamation cases, and issues affecting LGBT employees in the workplace. Ms. Royals has been listed as a Virginia Super Lawyers "Rising Star" from 2009 through 2013, and was selected by her peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America® in 2013 in the practice area of Litigation - Labor and Employment. She is the author of “The Flip Side for Employees: Virginia Computer Crimes Act,” The Journal of the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association, Summer 2005, and is a contributing author of the article “Electronic Discovery in Employment Cases,” The Journal of the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association, Summer 2005.
Kati Dean
Kati Dean is an Associate Attorney at the firm of Locke and Quinn, which includes the Personal Injury and Employment Law Center, the Women’s Injury Law Center, and the Adoption and Surrogacy Law Center. Since joining Locke & Quinn in 2015, Ms. Dean has worked extensively on family formation, personal injury and employment matters. These diverse practice areas have allowed Ms. Dean to gain experience throughout the Commonwealth in both state and federal courts, and she has worked on several cases in the Eastern District of Virginia involving claims under Title VII and the Equal Pay Act. Additionally, as part of the firm’s adoption and surrogacy practice, Ms. Dean has had the opportunity to help form families by representing adopting parents, foster parents, birth parents, adoptees, intended parents, surrogates, gestational carriers, and gamete donors, as well as agencies and clinics. She is a member of the Richmond Bar, the Virginia State Bar, the American Bar Association, the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association, the Equality Bar, and the Metro Richmond Women’s Bar Association, where she currently chairs the Judicial Candidate Endorsement Committee. Ms. Dean graduated with a B.A. in English and a minor in Philosophy from James Madison University in 2007. She also holds an M.A. in American Literature from the University of South Carolina. Ms. Dean graduated cum laude from the University of Richmond School of Law in 2013 where she was a John Marshall Scholar, a member of the McNeill Law Society, and was awarded the Orrell-Brown Award for Clinical Excellence in the Children’s Law Center. Ms. Dean devotes and has devoted time and energy to various civic activities such as AmeriCorps, the Richmond Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) program, United Way, and Comfort Zone Camp.
Patty Gill
Patty Gill is an attorney at Patty Gill, PLC in Glen Allen, VA. Ms. Gill and her firm provide labor & employment law services for employers of all sizes, locations, and industries. Patty has exclusively represented employers and management for more than 19 years, combining solid legal advice with practical business solutions to meet each client’s needs. Prior to starting her own firm, Patty was an employment attorney at the nationally renowned law firm of Hunton & Williams LLP for 9 years. Patty started PATTY GILL PLC in 2012 to focus on the counseling and compliance side of her practice, while charging only a fraction of large-firm rates.
Janice Craft
Janice Craft is an attorney with the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance. The Action Alliance is a direct services, advocacy, and membership organization. The mission of the Action Alliance is to use diverse and collective voices to create a Virginia free from sexual and domestic violence, and to inspire others to join and support values of equality, respect, and shared power. Prior to her work with the Action Alliance, Janice served as the policy director for NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia and clerked for the Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals of Virginia. Janice is a graduate of William and Mary Law School, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Women and the Law. Prior to attending law school, Janice worked as a victim advocate for the State Attorney’s Office in Volusia County, Florida.