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Sean Kiley

Sean Kiley

Lecturer in Law

A lecturer at the Law School, Sean Kiley works to develop innovative, interdisciplinary classes focused on legal communication.

Currently, he teaches two Legal Communication Workshops. One focuses on presentation design and delivery. The other focuses on information design. Both have a foundation in communication science. And both include seminar or lecture sessions to introduce students to interdisciplinary approaches to communication, as well as collaborative workshop sessions where students put theory into practice.

Sean has a consulting practice that helps lawyers solve complex communication problems through collaborative creativity, visual thinking, and old-fashioned critical thinking. He works with lawyers, designers and communication scientists to originate, test, and develop communication strategies.

Sean is a former federal law clerk, and a big law associate turned trial lawyer for the public good.

He learned to think and write the law while working at Dechert and Coblentz Patch Duffy & Bass, an elite San Francisco firm known for producing federal judges. He learned to talk about the law while trying cases as a white-collar prosecutor in San Francisco, as a key member of a small team that won a 3-month jury trial in a landmark environmental tort case, and as a member of several trial teams involving complex, individual tort lawsuits.

His work as an advocate has garnered awards including the California Lawyer Attorney of the Year Award for Environmental Litigation, the Public Justice Trial Lawyer of the Year Award – Finalist, and the inaugural CDAA Elkins-Reiter Award for Appellate Advocacy.

He considers himself a lifelong student of communication, legal advocacy, and the American system of dispute resolution.