Meet the Speakers: 2025 New England Legal Writing Conference

Beth McCormack has been dean of Vermont Law School since January of 2021, becoming the first woman to hold that position in the school’s history. From January 2021 – June 2022, she also served as the interim president.

While interim president and dean, McCormack led the school through the COVID-19 pandemic and the adoption of its strategic plan. As part of that strategic plan, McCormack led the development and implementation of the school’s part-time Online Hybrid JD program.

McCormack joined the Vermont Law School faculty in 2011. She received her AB from the University of Chicago and her JD, cum laude, from Boston University School of Law. 

Linda S. Anderson is a professor of law and faculty director of the Flex JD program at Stetson University College of Law, where she has taught legal research and writing for 19 of her 25 years in legal education. A former undergraduate academic dean, she brings a lifelong commitment to effective teaching across K–12, college, and graduate settings. As a legal writing professor and curriculum strategist, she helps law schools and faculty align their courses with the NextGen Bar Exam and evolving professional demands—without overhauling everything. She creates AI-enhanced feedback tools, plug-and-play assignments, and course kits that support faculty voice and student readiness. She is the author of a book on writing Florida bar essays and shares practical teaching strategies through her blog, NextLevelLawTeaching.com, which serves as a resource hub for faculty navigating legal education reform and AI integration.

Nicole Belbin is an associate professor of law and associate dean for Library and Information Resources at Western New England University School of Law, where she teaches Lawyering Skills, Advanced Legal Research in the Age of AI, and Legal Research Theory & Practice.

Nicole received her BS in Criminal Justice from Western New England University and her MSLIS from Drexel University in 2011. She graduated magna cum laude from Western New England University School of Law in 2020. Before college, Nicole served in the United States Marine Corps, where she met her husband. They have three adult children.

Since being admitted to practice in Massachusetts, Nicole has dedicated her spare time to public interest lawyering, mainly assisting veterans with their VA claims. She is passionate about veterans’ law, access to justice, and the role libraries play in student success.

Professor Beth Cohen teaches at WNE School of Law in Springfield, Massachusetts. She is the director of the Legal Research and Writing Program and currently teaches Lawyering Skills and Mindfulness in Law Practice. She has also taught the Externship Seminar and Professional Responsibility. Professor Cohen served on the Supreme Judicial Court Standing Advisory Committee on Professionalism, the Supreme Judicial Court Alternative Paths Subcommittee on Bar Admissions, the board of directors of Community Legal Aid, and the board of directors of Scribes, The American Society of Legal Writers. She currently serves as co-chair of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Committee on Lawyer Well-Being’s Legal Education Sub-Committee and is on the board of directors of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers Massachusetts. Professor Cohen co-founded the popular civic education Mini-Law School Program and co-directs the program with Professor Nicole Belbin. She served as associate dean for Academic Affairs from 2009-2020 and interim dean of the School of Law in 2022–2023.

Jessica Mahon Scoles is an associate professor of law and the director the Tindler Center for Inclusive Advocacy at Western New England University Law School. She teaches Lawyering Skills and Appellate Advocacy, and is the coach of the National Moot Court team.

Before joining the WNE faculty in 2022, Professor Mahon Scoles taught legal research and writing as a visiting assistant professor at Boston College Law School and as an adjunct professor at New England Law. Her teaching draws on more than a decade of experience representing clients in high stakes business litigation in California and Massachusetts.

Professor Mahon Scoles’s recent scholarship includes Can I Bring Myself to Court?: Teaching Presentation Style in the Trial Advocacy Classroom, 49 Vermont L. Rev. 1 (2024), and collaborating on the textbook Legal Argumentation, which CALI published in May of this year.

Heather Ward is an assistant professor of Legal Skills at UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law where she teaches a variety of 1L and upper-level writing and skills-based courses. Prior to joining UNH, she practiced civil and criminal litigation before trial and appellate courts. She started her career as a judicial law clerk.

Julia Pothen is a graduate of Harvard Law School, Pace University, Dartmouth College, and Oxford University Keble College, and has taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Harvard College (where she earned the Leveson Memorial Teaching Prize for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching) and for Teach for America, where she taught 7th Grade Literacy in the Bronx. Professor Pothen comes to us from legal practice where she served as a Special Education Attorney working with schools and families, following a period as both a Claims Investigator for the Maine Department of Education and a public Defender in New Hampshire.

Kelsey Klementowicz focuses on civil rights and policy, particularly election law and voting rights issues. She previously spent many years as a New Hampshire public defender after graduating from Harvard Law School, where she won the pro bono award for public service.

Kerry Fulham teaches legal writing at Brooklyn Law School. Her research explores how stigma, moral panic, and narrative shape the criminal law, with recent work examining HIV criminalization, sex offender registration, and the scapegoat archetype in legal storytelling. Her future work will explore the intersections of creative writing, rhetoric, and public speaking, with a focus on how storytelling techniques can enhance legal communication and advocacy.

Before joining the Brooklyn Law School faculty, Professor Fulham taught legal writing as an adjunct at Fordham University School of Law and practiced in both the private and public sectors. She began her career as a litigation associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, later served as an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan handling criminal appeals, and clerked for the Honorable Janet DiFiore, former Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals.

Elizabeth Berenguer is a professor of law at Stetson University College of Law. She entered legal academia in 2008. Her expertise includes critical and comparative rhetoric and curricular design and assessment. In addition to teaching legal research and writing, she has taught criminal law and criminal procedure. 

Professor Berenguer has published two books, The Legal Scholar’s Guidebook and Critical and Comparative Rhetoric: Unmasking Privilege and Power in Law and Legal Advocacy to Achieve Truth, Justice, and Equity, which she co-authored with Lucy Jewel and Teri McMurtry-Chubb. 

As the daughter of a Cuban immigrant raised in rural Georgia, Professor Berenguer has had a lifelong fascination with what it means to belong, and, in particular, the ways in which language, class, and color govern belonging. 

Professor Lucy Jewel has been teaching law related courses for over twenty years. She is the director of Legal Writing at the University of Tennessee, Winston College of Law, where she also teaches Property, Entertainment Law, and Appellate Litigation. Her scholarship focuses on the interdisciplinary connections between law, language, and culture.

Teri A. McMurtry-Chubb is the director of the Critical Race and Gender Studies JD Concentration & professor of Law at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law. She researches, teaches, and writes in the areas of critical rhetoric, discourse and genre analysis, critical race feminism, and legal history.

McMurtry-Chubb is a leader in designing curricula to facilitate diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. She is the author of numerous publications, including the books Race Unequals: Overseer Contracts, White Masculinities, and the Formation of Managerial Identity in the Plantation Economy (Rowman & Littlefield, May 2021); Strategies and Techniques for Integrating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion into the Core Law Curriculum (Wolters Kluwer, August 2021); and Critical and Comparative Rhetoric: Unmasking Privilege and Power in Law and Legal Advocacy to Achieve Truth, Justice, and Equity (Bristol University Press, July 2023 (co-authored)). She is also a contributor to Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court (Cambridge University Press 2016).

Sarah Cansler is an assistant professor of Legal Research and Writing at Campbell University’s Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law in Raleigh, North Carolina. Professor Cansler teaches Advanced Legal Writing and Introduction to Data Privacy. Her research areas include AI pedagogy, AI ethics, and children’s data privacy.

In addition to teaching, professor Cansler serves as in-house counsel for Blackbaud, Inc., a software company.

Anna F. Connolly joined the faculty of Vermont Law School in July 2021. Prior to that she was an attorney at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, LLP, where her practice focused on international and domestic commercial litigation as well as pro bono matters. She has significant experience in cross-border disputes, securities litigation, antitrust, and representing sovereign governments.

She has won numerous awards for her pro bono work, including civil rights and immigration matters, as well as work on behalf of survivors of domestic violence and sex trafficking. She was named a “Rising Star – The Top Women” by Super Lawyers in 2018. Professor Connolly served as a law clerk to the Honorable Raymond J. Lohier, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and to the Honorable Cathy Seibel of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

She received a JD degree from Columbia University School of Law, where she was a James Kent Scholar and an editor of the Columbia Law Review. She received an undergraduate degree, magna cum laude, from Dartmouth College.

Professor Stefanie (Stevie) Leahy is an associate professor in the Legal Practice Skills program at Suffolk University Law School and an active member of the national legal writing community. Professor Leahy has presented and published on a diverse array of issues, including fostering equity and inclusion in the classroom and student wellbeing, in addition to juvenile sentencing and related Supreme Court decisions. Her national service includes chairing the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) Committee on Leadership and Development, which earned her an Outstanding Service Award in 2021.

Prior to starting her teaching career, Professor Leahy was an attorney with Goodwin Procter, Latham & Watkins, and Aeton Law Partners. She earned a BA from Villanova University and her JD from Pepperdine Law School (magna cum laude).

Marni Goldstein Caputo is a senior lecturer in the Lawyering Program at Boston University School of Law, where she has taught Lawyering Skills to 1Ls since the program’s inception in 2017. Her research interests include law school pedagogy and professional identity formation. Along with her colleague, Kathleen Luz, she writes and presents extensively on these topics. Her scholarship appears in the Journal of Legal Education, the Brooklyn Law Review, and the Virginia Law and Business Review, among other places. Prior to teaching full-time, she was an international legal career advisor, a federal judicial law clerk, and a litigation associate at two Boston law firms.

Patti Winograd is a clinical professor of Law at LMU Loyola Law School, where she has dedicated her career to guiding aspiring and practicing attorneys in their professional journeys. A first-generation lawyer herself, professor Winograd spent nearly two decades in Big Law, where she not only honed her practice but also served as a mentor to young associates. Since joining the Loyola faculty, she has continued her commitment to mentorship and advocacy, focusing her teaching, research, and service on supporting marginalized and first-generation law students. Professor Winograd teaches Legal Research and Writing and Remedies, and she has developed an innovative course and programming designed to foster students’ personal and professional identities both in law school and in practice.

At Loyola, she serves as director of the Summer Institute, a program for incoming 1Ls, and as faculty advisor to the Loyola Interdisciplinary Journal of Public Interest Law—a publication she co-founded with her students—as well as the Young Lawyers Program, a 25-year initiative that introduces high school students to the legal profession. Through her teaching, mentorship, and leadership, professor Winograd exemplifies a deep commitment to advancing the professional development of the next generation of lawyers, with particular dedication to excellence and access in legal education.

Before transitioning to full-time academia, Rebecca Delfino served for 17 years as a Lead Senior Appellate Attorney at the California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, Division Seven. There, she researched and drafted over 900 bench memoranda and legal opinions across a broad range of subject areas, including complex civil litigation, felony criminal appeals, dependency and delinquency matters, probate, and family law. She joined Loyola’s adjunct faculty in 1999 and began teaching while maintaining her full-time role at the court. Professor Delfino has dedicated more than two decades of service in various academic and administrative leadership roles at LMU Loyola Law School. Her professional journey reflects a deep commitment to teaching excellence, institutional service, and scholarly inquiry that bridges doctrine, practice, and public relevance.

Krista Bordatto joined Campbell Law School’s faculty in August 2022 after retiring from the Army, where she teaches Legal Research and Writing, Workplace Law & Employment Law.  Bordatto began her legal career began as a litigator focused on labor and employment, civil, and appellate cases. Bordatto’s scholarship primarily focuses on the disparities that exist within the armed forces legal justice system and their relation to the civilian sector. She holds a JD (magna cum laude) from St. Thomas University College of Law, an MS in Couples and Family Counseling from the same institution, and a BS in psychology with a minor in English from the University of Oregon.

Benjamin Afton Cavanaugh is an assistant professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law, where he teaches Introduction to Lawyering Skills and Trusts & Estates. He brings more than a decade of experience in law, higher education, and academic leadership.

Previously, he served as assistant dean and service professor of Law at St. Mary’s University School of Law and co-founded a boutique law firm in Austin, Texas, focusing on real estate, business law, and wills and estates. His teaching and scholarship center on student success, equity in legal education, and reform in trust and estate law.