Preparing Tomorrow’s Rural Lawyers: Student Success and Community Impact

Dean Christiana Ochoa
Dean and Herman B Wells Endowed Professor, Indiana University Maurer School of Law

Christiana Ochoa’s research seeks to understand how economic activity impacts human and ecological well-being. Her theoretical and empirical research relies on international and comparative law, particularly in the fields of Business & Human Rights, Law & Development, International Finance, and Foreign Direct Investment. She brings her field work — as well as her practice experience at the global law firm Clifford Chance and with a number of human rights and humanitarian non-governmental organizations in Latin America — to her research questions and classroom teaching. She teaches Contracts as well as International Law, International Business Transactions, Human Rights, and Law & Development.

Her scholarship in these areas has been published and is forthcoming in the Yale Journal of International Law, Harvard International Law Journal, Virginia Journal of International Law, Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law, Duke Journal of International & Comparative Law, and Human Rights Quarterly, among others. Her work has also been published internationally, including in Germany, Colombia, and Korea. Her first documentary film, Otra Cosa No Hay (There is Nothing Else), was completed in 2014, received film festival acclaim, and has been viewed by audiences around the world.

Professor Ochoa has been recognized for her research, teaching, and service, and has held numerous administrative positions at the law school, campus, and university level. In 2018, she was named an Indiana University Class of 1950 Herman B Wells Endowed Professor. Individually, and as part of research teams, she has won competitive funding from numerous sources, including from the Mellon Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education. In 2015, she was a co-PI for a prestigious Sawyer Seminar on Documentary Media and Historical Transformations . Within the law school, she has served as executive associate dean, associate dean for research and faculty affairs, and as Latin America program director for the Stewart Center on the Global Legal Profession. She has held campus-wide leadership positions, including as associate vice provost for faculty and academic affairs and as a founding associate director of the Center for Documentary Research and Practice. At the university level, she is the founding academic director of the IU Mexico Gateway, IU’s only office in Latin America. She has also served on various committees for AALS and ASIL.

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Dean Elizabeth Kronk Warner
Jefferson B. & Rita E. Fordham Presidential Dean and Professor of Law, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law

Elizabeth Kronk Warner is the Jefferson B. & Rita E. Fordham Presidential Dean and Professor of Law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah. Dean Kronk Warner is a nationally recognized expert in the intersection of Environmental and Indian law. She has taught courses in Property, Indian, Environmental and Natural Resources Law, and supervised the Tribal Judicial Support Clinic at the University of Kansas School of Law. She also teaches and coaches several moot court competition teams. She has received several teaching excellence awards, co-authored several books on environmental issues and Native Americans, and has over 40 articles and book chapters to her credit. Dean Kronk Warner, a citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, served as an appellate judge for the Tribe and as a district judge for the Prairie Band Potawatomi Tribe.

Dean Kronk Warner actively engages in activities related to legal education and the profession nationally. She currently serves as chair of the AALS Deans Steering Committee, chair of the AALS Membership Review Committee, and will co-chair the 2023 ABA New Deans Workshop. She serves as a trustee on the LSAC Board of Trustees. As dean, she also has the privilege of serving as an ex officio member of the Utah Bar Commission. She previously was an active member of the Federal Bar Association, serving on its national Board of Directors. In 2014, she received the Federal Bar Association President's Award for leadership and extraordinary service, commitment, and guidance to the Federal Bar Association and its members. She holds a JD from the University of Michigan, a B.S. from Cornell University, and also studied at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

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Dean Patricia Roberts
Dean and Charles E. Cantú Distinguished Professor of Law, St. Mary's University School of Law

Patricia Roberts, JD, became the tenth dean of St. Mary’s School of Law on June 1, 2020. A legal educator for more than two decades, the majority of her career has been spent in clinical teaching, supervising law students in providing assistance to underserved members of the community. She is in her sixth year as dean and is a Marianist Educational Associate. She received the St. Mary’s Marianist Heritage Award in 2025.

Under Roberts’ leadership, the School of Law faculty and staff created the first entirely online JD program accredited by the American Bar Association, increased applications and financial aid awarded to entering classes, improved LSAT and GPA medians, earned a No. 1 in the nation advocacy team ranking, boosted graduate employment, and, in partnership with law students, established the Lawtina Network Summit to increase the presence of, and support for, Latinas in the legal profession.

Fundraising records supported initiatives such as a First Generation Bootcamp for entering students, a high school pipeline and college prelaw program, a joint undergraduate degree with the Greehey School of Business, an intensive clerkship preparation program, and Mentor Circles, a partnership with the San Antonio Bar Association that creates small groups of law students with members of the bench and bar. A recent bequest established the Bock Center for Business and Transactional Law, and enrollment across the MLS and LLM programs has risen considerably.

Roberts earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia, with a double major in biology and psychology. She practiced law for eight years as a solo practitioner and later as a managing partner of a civil practice law firm after earning her law degree from William & Mary.

She returned to William & Mary in 2000 and held numerous administrative roles until her appointment to the clinical faculty in 2008 as director of clinical programs. In 2017, after holding numerous administrative and academic positions, she was named Vice Dean, a position she left to become the Dean at St. Mary’s Law.

As Vice Dean, Roberts was William & Mary Law’s chief academic officer, responsible for academic programs and policies that are essential to an excellent legal education. She simultaneously served as the director of clinical programs, overseeing a center and nine legal clinics that provided pro bono representation to underserved clients in Virginia’s Hampton Roads area. The school’s first in-house clinics, including those specializing in veterans’ benefits, elder law, special education, appellate and Supreme Court litigation, and a center for coastal policy, were created during her tenure as director. She also helped create the Institute for Special Education Advocacy, an intensive one-week program to train attorneys and advocates to maximize their effectiveness. A similar program is now held annually at St. Mary’s, the Special Education Advocacy Summit.

Roberts was a nationwide leader in legal efforts to aid veterans. She was the inaugural president of the Board of Directors of the National Law School Veterans Clinic Consortium and creator of Military Mondays, a program that began at William & Mary Law School and served as a model for providing advice and counsel to veterans in numerous Starbucks locations across the country. She was a regular speaker on issues related to veterans’ law and access to justice nationwide.

Roberts is the host of the Aspen Leading Edge , and was the founding host of EdUp Legal , both podcasts about legal education and its future.

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Dean Rebecca Zietlow
Dean, Distinguished University Professor, and Charles W. Fornoff Professor of Law and Values, University of Toledo College of Law

Rebecca Zietlow is dean, distinguished university professor, and the Charles W. Fornoff Professor of Law and Values at The University of Toledo College of Law, where she teaches constitutional law, federal courts, and constitutional litigation.

In 2020, Zietlow was elected a fellow of the American Bar Foundation. She received the university's Creative and Scholarly Activity Award in 2018 and the UToledo Outstanding Faculty Research and Scholarship Award in 2012. She formerly served as chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Constitutional Law and its Section on Women and Legal Education.

Dean Zietlow's scholarly interest is in the study of the Reconstruction Era, including the meaning and history of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. Professor Zietlow is also an expert on constitutional theory, examining constitutional interpretation outside of the courts. Her most recent book, The Forgotten Emancipator: James Mitchell Ashley and the Ideological Origins of Reconstruction was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. Her first book, Enforcing Equality: Congress, the Constitution, and the Protection of Individual Rights (NYU Press 2006), studies the history of congressional protection of rights, and the implications of that history for constitutional theory. Her work has been published in the Columbia Law Review, Boston University Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, Florida Law Review, the Wake Forest Law Journal, and the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, amongst other publications.

Dean Zietlow received her BA from Barnard College and her JD from Yale Law School.

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Dean Leigh I. Saufley
President and Dean, University of Maine School of Law

On April 15, 2020, Leigh I. Saufley became dean of the University of Maine School of Law after an extensive national search . She is the eighth dean of Maine Law since its founding in 1962. She is the first dean to report directly to the chancellor as part of the transition of the law school to a stand-alone institution within the University of Maine System, and she was recently appointed president and dean, in recognition of her multiple responsibilities in leading Maine Law.

Saufley has had a distinguished career of public service. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Maine in 1976, and from the University of Maine School of Law in 1980, she practiced in a small law firm in Ellsworth, Maine, worked briefly in the U.S. Veterans Administration Counsel’s Office, and later held leadership positions in the Office of the Attorney General of Maine.

Dean Saufley was appointed to the Maine District Court in 1990, to the Maine Superior Court in 1993, and the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in 1997. She served as Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court from December of 2001 through April 14, 2020. As Chief Justice, she was responsible for overseeing the operation of Maine’s Judicial Branch, which included just over 500 people and 35 courthouses throughout Maine’s 16 counties. Among her accomplishments as Chief Justice, Saufley obtained legislative and gubernatorial support for substantially improved security for the Maine’s courthouses, making them safer for the public and court personnel, and she obtained funding for and oversaw the complete replacement of the courthouses in Kennebec, Penobscot, and Waldo Counties, along with the substantial renovations of several other courthouses.

Throughout her tenure as Chief Justice, Dean Saufley was an active member of the Conference of Chief Justices. She was a member of the Conference’s Committee on Courts, Children and Families, as well as the Government Affairs Committee, which covers a broad range of topics including appropriations, federalism, international trade agreements, the Hague Convention, forensic science advances, and national issues surrounding privacy law. She served as the Chair of the CCJ’s New England Regional Chief Justices Committee. In 2010, she was appointed by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to serve on the 14-member Federal-State Jurisdiction Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. More recently, she had joined a State Justice Institute Advisory Committee on a grant-funded federalism project.

Dean Saufley is the winner of numerous honors and awards, including International Women’s Forum, Woman Who Makes a Difference; University of Maine Mary Hartman Award, Maine Women of Achievement; L. Kinvin Wroth Alumna of the Year Award from the Law School; and the Maine State Bar Association’s Caroline Duby Glassman Award. She holds an honorary degree from the University of Maine at Presque Isle.

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