Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I am honored to welcome you to this year’s Clinical Program Newsletter from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law’s Bluhm Legal Clinic. As we reflect on the work of our clinicians, students, staff, and community partners, we are reminded that clinical legal education is not only an academic endeavor—it is an ongoing commitment to justice, service, and the rule of law.
In clinics across our program, students have advocated before federal appellate courts, advanced landmark policy reforms in youth sentencing, protected the rights of immigrant families and other marginalized communities, supported environmental justice efforts, and challenged the systems of incarceration and surveillance that too often operate without transparency or accountability. They have worked in partnership with grassroots organizers, international human rights advocates, and community-based organizations to advance both individual rights and systemic change. These efforts—many of which you will read more about in the pages that follow—demonstrate, in real time and in real lives, the profound impact that trained, thoughtful, and ethically grounded future lawyers can have when given the opportunity to work in real-world practice settings. We are so proud of them.
We are living through a moment in American history when the norms and institutions that sustain our constitutional democracy are under strain, and when access to legal representation all too often depends on wealth, geography, and identity. Clinical education stands at the heart of the response to these challenges. By teaching students how to serve clients holistically, collaborate across disciplines, navigate systems with humility, and ground their advocacy in lived experience, we are preparing the next generation of lawyers to be thoughtful stewards of justice and guardians of the rule of law.
This work would not be possible without the dedication of our faculty, staff, alumni, and supporters who continue to invest in the Clinic’s mission. Thank you for the many ways you contribute—through mentorship, partnership, philanthropy, and belief in the transformative power of experiential education.
We look forward to the year ahead with optimism, determination, and deep gratitude. Thank you, as always, to our community for the inspiration and support you so reliably provide. We are grateful for you.
With gratitude and pride,
Robin Walker Sterling
Associate Dean of Clinical Education
Director, Bluhm Legal Clinic
Mayer Brown/Robert A. Helman Professor of Law
The Environmental Advocacy Center (EAC) reached a landmark settlement this summer in its long-running case against Trump Tower Chicago, ending years of unlawful water withdrawals from the Chicago River. The $4.8 million agreement—the largest Clean Water Act settlement in Illinois history—requires the Trump Organization to upgrade its cooling water intake system, pay $1.5 million in penalties, and invest $3 million in river habitat restoration through a project led by Friends of the Chicago River.
“This case shows what persistence and public-interest lawyering can achieve,” said Professor Robert Weinstock, EAC Director. “It also gave our students an extraordinary opportunity to see environmental enforcement in action.”
Even as the case concluded, EAC advanced major initiatives across Illinois, including efforts to adopt California’s stronger vehicle-emission standards and expand electric-school-bus and fleet-electrification programs under the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act.
EAC’s achievements continue to earn recognition from its partners and peers, reflecting the Clinic’s deep impact on environmental law, policy, and education.
On August 15, 2025, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed the Funded Advocacy and Independent Representation (FAIR) Act (HB 3363) into law, marking the most significant reform to the state’s public defense system in nearly 80 years. The new law establishes Illinois’ first Office of the State Public Defender and a State Public Defender Commission to ensure statewide oversight, standards, funding, and independence for county-level defenders.
The Children and Family Justice Center (CFJC) played a pivotal role in advancing this historic legislation through years of research, advocacy, and coalition-building. Led by former Director Julie Biehl and Policy Director Stephanie Kollmann, CFJC staff and students conducted statewide analyses of public defense capacity and worked closely with lawmakers, the Illinois Public Defender Association, and the Cook County Public Defender’s Office to develop the Act’s framework.
“I was very proud to have sponsored the FAIR Act. This necessary law will bring greater transparency and accountability to the court system while providing much needed resources to the public defenders who are a vital part of protecting all of our constitutional rights,” said Rep. Dave Vella (D-Rockford), chief House sponsor and former assistant public defender.
“This law ensures Illinois is preserving residents’ constitutional right to counsel, regardless of financial means,” said sponsoring State Senator Robert Peters (D-Chicago). “We have a duty to reduce disparities in our system — and this law is a huge step in the right direction.”
CFJC students contributed research that helped shape the legislation and co-authored a comprehensive report on structural deficiencies in county defense systems — work that informed public hearings and legislative negotiations.
“This project represents the best of what clinical education can be,” said CFJC Director Alison Flaum. “It was collaborative, evidence-driven, and deeply impactful — a fitting capstone to Professor Julie Biehl’s remarkable career at Northwestern.”
The CFJC’s work on the FAIR Act exemplifies the Clinic’s mission: empowering students and communities to drive systemic reform toward a fairer, more equitable justice system.
Northwestern Pritzker School of Law has received a transformative $5 million gift from alumnus Harry J. Seigle (JD ’71) to expand and endow the Law School’s long-standing immigration clinic, now named the Seigle Clinic for Immigrant Youth and Families.
Housed within the Children and Family Justice Center of the Bluhm Legal Clinic, the Seigle Clinic represents young people and families navigating immigration court proceedings. Its mission is to secure humanitarian protection for children and parents facing violence, persecution, or torture in their home countries—and to keep families together.
Under the direction of Clinical Professor of Law Uzoamaka Emeka Nzelibe, the Clinic provides students with hands-on experience in every aspect of immigration advocacy: interviewing clients, conducting investigations, drafting motions and briefs, and representing clients before the Chicago immigration court and federal agencies. More than 150 students have participated to date, many of whom now lead immigration practices or continue pro bono work in the field.
Former Dean Hari Osofsky expressed deep gratitude for Seigle’s commitment: “This impactful gift endowing the Seigle Clinic will make a critical difference in our efforts to assist immigrants and to provide our students with vital opportunities for learning and service.”
Nzelibe added, “Our asylum system is broken, and immigration remains a pressing issue. This endowment establishes a permanent home for immigration work at Northwestern Pritzker Law and creates a space for honest dialogue on reform.”
Seigle made the gift in memory of his mother, Lora H. Seigle, a Jewish refugee who emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1936. “My mother’s life experiences inspired me to make this gift to improve legal services for immigrants,” Seigle said. “Immigrants have helped make this country what it is today, and we are better for it.”
Launched in 2024, the LGBTQI+ Rights Clinic at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law’s Bluhm Legal Clinic represents a bold new commitment to advancing equality through law. At a time when discrimination and violence targeting LGBTQI+ individuals continues to rise nationwide, the Clinic provides students with hands-on experience advocating for civil rights, challenging inequities, and learning to lawyer with empathy and purpose.
Led by Clinical Assistant Professor Kara Ingelhart (she/her), an accomplished civil rights attorney formerly with Lambda Legal, the Clinic engages students in direct representation, impact litigation, and policy reform on behalf of LGBTQI+ people and individuals living with HIV. “As a legal advocate, centering diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging is a driving force of the Clinic’s vision,” said Ingelhart. “Students gain the skills and sensitivity needed to serve historically marginalized communities and to lawyer across difference.”
Former Dean Hari Osofsky praised Ingelhart’s leadership: “Kara is an outstanding attorney and advocate for LGBTQI+ rights, and her vision will be crucial as we launch this Clinic devoted to the advancement and protection of LGBTQI+ rights.” Associate Dean Robin Walker Sterling, Director of the Bluhm Legal Clinic, added, “Given the unprecedented number of anti-LGBTQI+ bills across the country, this work has never been more important.”
Building on that foundation, the Evans Family Foundation, led by alumna Christine M. Evans (JD ’03, LLM ’11), recently made a $1 million gift to support the Clinic’s continued growth. The contribution will fund a staff attorney position beginning in the 2025–2026 academic year and expand opportunities for students to engage in high-impact litigation, teaching, and research.
Through Ingelhart’s leadership and the Evans Family Foundation’s generosity, the LGBTQI+ Rights Clinic stands as a vital addition to the Bluhm Legal Clinic—training the next generation of advocates to advance justice and equality for LGBTQI+ communities nationwide.
Northwestern Pritzker School of Law has received nearly $5 million in gifts to expand the Carter G. Phillips Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy Center, a cornerstone of the Bluhm Legal Clinic. The funding will enhance the Center’s programs, support Supreme Court programming across the Law School, and sustain its two clinics: the newly named Carter G. Phillips/Sidley Austin LLP Supreme Court Clinic and the Federal Appellate Clinic.
The gift honors Carter G. Phillips (JD ’77)—one of the nation’s most influential Supreme Court litigators—and celebrates his decades of leadership as a practitioner, educator, and mentor. More than 50 friends, family, and colleagues joined Sue J. Henry (JD ’77), Jessica E. Phillips (JD ’06), and the Sidley Austin Foundation to make this landmark contribution.
“This gift is a fitting and well-deserved tribute to Carter’s tremendous impact,” said former Dean Hari Osofsky. “His extraordinary advocacy before the Supreme Court and his leadership of our Center have profoundly shaped generations of students.”
Phillips, who continues to serve as an adjunct professor and director of the Supreme Court Clinic, reflected on the gift’s purpose: “I am honored to be recognized by my family and colleagues through this extremely generous gift, which will help provide Northwestern Law students with the best possible tools for a career in appellate law.”
The Center, led by Professor Danielle Hamilton, partners with Sidley Austin LLP attorneys to offer students unparalleled experience in federal appellate and Supreme Court litigation. For nearly 20 years, this collaboration has prepared future lawyers to advocate at the highest levels—advancing both justice and excellence in appellate practice.
At the intersection of law and social work, the Social Work Advocacy Program (SWAP) is deepening its impact on both clients and students. Under Director Marjorie Moss, SWAP continues to model the Clinic’s interdisciplinary approach—ensuring that every client’s legal case is met with holistic, trauma-informed care.
This year, SWAP’s social workers and students supported more than 25 clients across the Clinic. Their work included writing clemency and mitigation reports, preparing reentry plans for individuals transitioning from incarceration, and providing case management to address housing, employment, and family needs. SWAP also formalized its client intake process to expand access to social work support across practice areas.
The program is also building new collaborations. For the first time, SWAP partnered with the Tenant Advocacy Clinic and plans to support the LGBTQI+ Rights Clinic in the coming year. To meet growing demand, SWAP added Heather Saunders, LCSW, to its team and continues to strengthen ties with the broader social work community.
SWAP’s work demonstrates how integrated advocacy—combining legal and social services—can create lasting change for clients and inspire the next generation of empathetic, equity-driven lawyers.
Last November, the MacArthur Justice Center, working alongside the ACLU of Illinois and pro bono counsel from Eimer Stahl, recently secured a temporary restraining order in federal court addressing conditions at the Broadview ICE detention facility outside Chicago.
Following an evidentiary hearing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, the court found that individuals detained at Broadview faced conditions that warranted immediate judicial intervention. The order requires federal authorities to implement baseline standards related to bedding, sanitation, food and water access, medical care, and confidential access to counsel, and authorizes expedited discovery to monitor compliance.
The litigation, Moreno Gonzalez et al. v. Noem et al., is being led by MacArthur Justice Center faculty and staff, with students contributing to legal research and case preparation. The matter remains ongoing as the court evaluates compliance with the order and considers further relief.
In February 2025, Professor Priyanka Motaparthy, Director of the Center for International Human Rights, traveled with three students to RightsCon in Taipei, the world’s largest conference on human rights and technology.
The group joined more than 3,000 participants—from civil society, technology, government, and philanthropy—to discuss digital rights and accountability for human-rights abuses. Northwestern Pritzker Law students collaborated with partners investigating atrocities in Sudan’s armed conflict, helping advance open-source documentation of war crimes. They also met with Sudanese activists in exile, building cross-border connections that have continued to inform their clinic work this year.
In August 2025, the Center for Negotiation, Mediation & Restorative Justice launched The Perspective Project, a new five-day pre-orientation program designed to help incoming law students strengthen their ability to engage across difference. Led by Professors Annalise Buth and Alyson Carrel in partnership with the Office of the President, the inaugural cohort brought together 47 students representing diverse personal, political, and cultural backgrounds.
Through workshops on curiosity-driven questioning, restorative-justice circles, and panels featuring legal practitioners and peers, students practiced dialogue aimed at understanding rather than persuasion. Guest facilitators included Ilana Redstone (The Certainty Trap) and mediators David Stone and Pari Karim of inQUEST Consulting.
By week’s end, participants reported tangible shifts in how they listen, reflect, and connect. As one student wrote, “I realized that being certain about something doesn’t make me right. The goal is engagement, not persuasion.”
The Perspective Project fostered new friendships and a spirit of open inquiry that students carried into the academic year. Plans are already underway to make it an annual program and expand opportunities for dialogue-across-difference throughout the Law School.
On March 19, 2025, the Center presented the Global Jurist Award to Magistrate Belkis Florentina Izquierdo Torres of Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace. During her visit to Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, Magistrate Torres delivered a standing-room-only lunchtime lecture on her landmark jurisprudence recognizing the rights of Indigenous communities and of nature within Colombia’s transitional-justice process. That evening, she was celebrated at a dinner in her honor, which drew faculty, students, and alumni dedicated to advancing human rights and environmental justice worldwide.
In October 2025, Professor Tom Geraghty helped organize a multi-day training in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for 70 Ethiopian federal defenders, continuing a long-standing collaboration between Northwestern Law and the Ethiopian legal community.
The training was led by Judge Ann Williams (7th Cir., Ret.), now a partner at Jones Day, with support from the National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA). It marked the culmination of years of partnership with Addis Ababa University School of Law and Tewodros Mehreret, President of the Federal Supreme Court of Ethiopia and a former AAU Law faculty member.
Professor Geraghty participated alongside several Northwestern Law Clinic alumni, including Angela Vigil (Baker McKenzie), J.C. Lore (Rutgers Law School–Camden), and Anthony Tadaro (DLA Piper). Alumna Sara Andrews, Head of the DLA Piper New Perimeter Project, also played a key role in organizing the program.
Together, faculty and practitioners delivered hands-on training focused on trial advocacy and federal defense practice, reinforcing the Clinic’s commitment to global engagement and the exchange of legal expertise. The next training for Ethiopian federal defenders is scheduled to take place in Addis Ababa in October 2026.
A new documentary spotlighting the Center on Wrongful Convictions captures decades of advocacy challenging wrongful convictions and systemic failures in the criminal legal system. A sizzle reel is now available on the Bluhm Legal Clinic website.
A sizzle reel of the documentary is on the CWC’s page on the Bluhm Legal Clinic’s website.
Northwestern Law welcomed new clinical faculty across multiple centers, strengthening expertise in international human rights, externships, civil rights litigation, and appellate advocacy. These appointments reflect the Clinic’s continued investment in experiential education and public-interest lawyering.
Sarah Dorman joins the Center for International Human Rights as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law. Formerly a supervising attorney at Georgetown University’s Environmental Law and Justice Clinic and senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, she brings global experience in environmental and human rights advocacy across Mexico, Colombia, Egypt, and Tunisia.
Professor Anita Maddali (JD ’04) joins as Visiting Clinical Professor of Law and Interim Director of the Center for Externships. A Northwestern alum and former Director of Clinics at Northern Illinois University College of Law, she brings deep experience in experiential learning and externship program leadership.
Professor Jonathan Manes joins as Clinical Associate Professor of Law with the MacArthur Justice Center, where he leads litigation on surveillance, police misconduct, and wrongful convictions. A nationally recognized civil rights attorney and scholar, he previously taught at the University at Buffalo School of Law and Yale Law School and clerked for Justice Morris J. Fish of the Supreme Court of Canada.
Professor Alison Flaum has been appointed Director of the Children and Family Justice Center (CFJC), becoming the Center’s third leader since its founding. A longtime CFJC faculty member, Professor Flaum brings deep expertise in juvenile justice and a steadfast commitment to client-centered advocacy. As she reflected in her application, “Fairness matters. A functioning legal system matters. The quality of justice matters — and does not happen without each lawyer doing their part.”
Professor Danielle Hamilton joins the Bluhm Legal Clinic as Clinical Assistant Professor of Law and Director of the Carter G. Phillips Center for Supreme Court & Appellate Advocacy. A former partner at Loevy & Loevy and clerk to Judge Barrington D. Parker, Jr. (Second Circuit), she brings extensive litigation experience in civil rights, wrongful convictions, and appellate advocacy.
Wally Hilke joins as Visiting Assistant Professor of Law and Interim Director of the Community Justice & Civil Rights Clinic. He leads litigation and policy advocacy addressing over-policing, police violence, and mass incarceration, and collaborates with community organizations, including GoodKids MadCity, on youth-led violence prevention initiatives.
Stephanie Kollmann (JD ’10) joins the Children and Family Justice Center as a Visiting Clinical Associate Professor of Law. As the Children and Family Justice Center’s longtime policy director, she has managed a broad range of juvenile and criminal legal research, reform and implementation projects, frequently specializing in ending ineffective and adult-derived approaches to young people.
We are proud to recognize the following faculty promotions:
– Daniel Gandert, Clinical Professor of Law
– Joshua Jones, Clinical Associate Professor of Law
– Rob Weinstock, Clinical Professor of Law
At the 2025 Legal Legends Luncheon hosted by the American Constitutional Society’s Chicago Chapter, Danielle Hamilton received the Ruth Goldman Award, which recognizes Chicago-area women who have made significant contributions to advancing the status of women and furthering the mission of the ACS. The award is named in memory of Ruth Goldman, a pivotal figure in the founding of the ACS Chicago Lawyer Chapter and one of the driving forces behind the first Legal Legends Luncheon.
Congratulations to Professor Alyson Carrel, Co-Director of the Center on Negotiation, Mediation & Restorative Justice, whose essay “Shaping the Future of Law Starting by Shattering Negotiation Myths” appears in the newly published Discussions in Dispute Resolution: The Coming of Age (2000–2009) from Oxford University Press. The collection highlights influential scholarship that has shaped modern dispute resolution. Professor Carrel’s contribution challenges enduring myths about negotiation and invites a reimagining of how law students and practitioners approach conflict in today’s complex legal landscape. (Read the editors’ announcement.)
Associate Clinical Professor Eric Sirota, Director of the Tenant Advocacy Clinic, has released The Rent EATS First, published by Button Poetry, one of the country’s leading independent poetry presses. Drawing on his experiences as a housing attorney, the collection blends sharp wit and emotional honesty to explore systemic inequality, economic injustice, and the human cost of America’s housing crisis. Critics have praised the work as “a revolutionary manifesto” that transforms the language of law into a call for social change. (Available through Button Poetry and major online booksellers.)
Robert Burns received the American Bar Association’s Robert B. McKay Award, recognizing his longstanding commitment to justice, scholarship, and the legal profession.
Alexa Van Brunt was named a 2025 Civic Leadership Academy Fellow with the University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government.
On January 14, 2026, Eric Sirota received a Congressional Commendation from Representative Delia Ramirez (Illinois’s 3rd Congressional District), recognizing his work with grassroots housing organizations and his legislative advocacy.
Robin Walker Sterling co-authored two recent scholarly publications:
Tanya Washington, Catherine Smith, and Robin Walker Sterling, Religious Exemptions to Anti-Discrimination Law: Children’s Rights in the Constitutional Calculus, 26 Georgetown Journal of Gender & the Law 1293 (2025).
Catherine Smith, Tanya Washington, and Robin Walker Sterling, United States—The Absence of a Unified Theory in Children’s Fourteenth Amendment Jurisprudence, International Survey of Family Law 323 (2024).
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