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Tel: 215.898.8427
Fax: 215.573.6783
Email: alerner@law.upenn.edu
Expertise
- Child Welfare Law
- Civil Rights Law
- Employment Law
- Litigation
- Professional Responsibility
Bio
Alan Lerner has been teaching the Interdisciplinary Child Advocacy Clinic since 2002, teaming law students, upper level medical students, and graduate social work students to study society’s responses to child maltreatment, and represent children for whom dependency petitions have been filed in court.
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Alan Lerner has been teaching the Interdisciplinary Child Advocacy Clinic since 2002, teaming law students, upper level medical students, and graduate social work students to study society’s responses to child maltreatment, and represent children for whom dependency petitions have been filed in court. He co-teaches with a pediatrician and child maltreatment expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and a certified social work supervisor active in child welfare matters. In connection with the Child Advocacy Clinic, Lerner represents Penn Law, and serves as a faculty co-director, at the Field Center for Children’s Policy, Practice, and Research (Field Center), which also includes the Schools of Social Work and Medicine, and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In 2007, Lerner was named a Bellow Scholar by the Committee on Lawyering in the Public Interest of the Association of American Law Schools for his research project, “Identifying the Red Flags of Child Neglect to Facilitate Evidence-Based Focused Responses.” The Bellow Scholars Program is designed to honor innovative anti-poverty or access to justice projects that encourage collaboration and empirical analysis. At the Fourth World Congress of The Global Alliance for Justice Education, in Cordoba, Argentina, in 2006, Lerner led a workshop on “Collaborating Towards Justice: Educating Lawyers Through Multi-Disciplinary Experiential Education. As a result of this, and other work, he has been invited to lead a workshop on clinical teaching theory and methods at Viet Nam University in July, 2007. During the summer of 2007, he will also be participating in Temple University’s Beasley School of Law’s week long Beijing Roundtable on Clinical Legal Education. In 2003 he joined the Advocates Roundtable, a group convened by the Commissioner of Human Resources, consisting of representatives of all of the constituencies involved in the child welfare system in Philadelphia. In addition to his teaching duties, Lerner serves as an expert witness in child welfare matters, and as an impartial arbitrator in employment disputes. Lerner has frequently taught trial advocacy for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy, and lectured on various aspects of employment law and litigation for a number of public and private entities. He is an active member of the American Bar Association’s Committee on the Unmet Legal Needs of Children, and of the Association of American Law School’s Section on Clinical Education, Committee on Multi-disciplinary Teaching.
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Representative Professional Positions
Penn Law - Practice Professor (1993 -)
Faculty Co-Director - Center for children’s Policy Practice and Research, University of Pennsylvania (2003 -)
Partner - Cohen, Shapiro, Polisher, Shiekman and Cohen (1968-93)
Law Clerk - Honorable A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., U.S. District Court (1966-68)
Representative Publications
Teaching Law And Educating Lawyers: Closing The Gap Through Multidisciplinary Experiential Learning, INT’L J. CLINICAL LEGAL EDUC. (forthcoming) (with Erin Talati).
Law & Lawyering In The Workplace: Building Better Lawyers By Teaching Students to Exercise Critical Judgment as Creative Problem Solvers, 32 AKRON L. REV. 107 (1999).
Using Our Brains: Reaching Our Students’ Hearts and Minds Through Their Limbic System, Presentation at the Global Alliance for Justice Education, Third International Conference, Krakow, Poland, July 2004.
LEGAL INTERVIEWING and LEGAL INTERVIEWING: A VIDEO WORKSHOP (Teaching Video and 110 page manual, with Dr. Angie Hermann), National Institute for Trial Advocacy, Notre Dame, Ind., 1999.
Using Our Brains: What Cognitive Science Teaches About Teaching Our Students to be Ethical, Professional Lawyers, 23 QUINNIPIAC. L. REV. 643 (2004).
[View Document]
Panel Member, Building Better Lawyers: Innovative Approaches to Teaching Judgment and Problem Solving. American Bar Association, Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA., August 1999.
Moderator, Education for Children In Foster Care, Fifty Years After Brown v. Board of Education, Field Center Public Forum, April 2004.
Small Group Leader, New Clinicians Conference, Clinical Legal Education Association, Lake Tahoe, CA., May 1999.
Moderator, Emerging Legal Issues in Child Welfare, Field Center Public Forum, December 2003.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: The Journey of a Dreamer and Activist, Presentation, Medford Leas Retirement Community, January 2004.
Round Table Participant, Developing Problem-Solving Skills For Lawyers: Rethinking the Role of Law School Education. United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., April 1999.
Recent Developments in the Law Affecting Evidence Issues in Employment Discrimination Litigation, First Annual Employment Law Institute, Pennsylvania Bar Institute (1995).
Clinicians In The Courtroom: What Every Clinician Needs to Know About Testifying In Court (with Dr. Cindy Christian and Mimi Rose) Organized and chaired a workshop, sponsored by The Field Center for Children’s Policy, Practice, and Research, February 2005.
For additional publications, please consult
Current & Recent Research
Representative Professional Activities
Prepared a report for the Dependency Court, Court Improvement Project to submit to the newly appointed Administrative Judge of the Court regarding the efficacy of pre-hearing conferences in dependency proceedings, May 2006.
Why the Silk Road to Globalized Legal Education Runs Through the Limbic System, presented to the International Consortium on Legal Education, Second Annual Conference, Istanbul, Turkey, July 2005.
Kids In Care: Where We Are and Where We Need to Go. (with Anne Marie Ambrose, Dr. Gillian Blair, Angel Flores, Esquire, and Marcia Levick, Esquire) Organized and moderated panel discussion for The Field Center for Children’s Policy, Practice, and Res
Organized a committee of lawyers representing all of the constituencies in the Philadelphia Child, Welfare System to work together to analyze and comment upon proposed state-wide rules of procedure for Dependency Court, fall 2005.
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Education
- LL.B. - University of Pennsylvania - '65
- B.S. - University of Pennsylvania - '62
Courses Taught
- Interdisciplinary Child Advocacy Clinic
- Civil Practice Clinic
- Advanced Civil Practice Clinic
- Law & Lawyering in the Workplace
- Employment Discrimination Law
Research Areas
- Lawyering and Clinical Supervision (including Professional Responsibility)
- Child Advocacy
- Child Welfare Law
- Employment Discrimination Law
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